Luminara

Musculature and Spiritual don't enhance Flight Speed.

Get out of my kitchen.

I'm referring to the "Yo, Lumi, do me a solid and run this CD over to Jake Montoya while I look at porn on my phone" type of FedExes crammed into so many story arcs. Like this. First thing the contact does is FedEx you, and then later in the arc, it FedExes you twice in a row. And these contacts, you either already knew, would've been introduced to later anyway, or couldn't use because they were an opposing origin, so the FedExes weren't serving any purpose other than to stretch out the time it takes to complete the arc. There's a difference between "Go talk to Guy in Zone, he'll give you some work and and an intro to someone else", and "Do this thing so the arc takes another 5 minutes".

You're conflating immersion with engagement. They aren't the same. Yes, some of the design elements in story arcs and missions are immersive, but they aren't engaging. If they were, players would be doing them. Engagement isn't an office map with 17 floors and nothing, not even an NPC, on 9 of those floors. A FedEx quest that doesn't introduce a player to a new contact or area or enemy or something isn't engagement, it's extension. If call boxes were supposed to be engaging, they'd do something other than make players crisscross zones for several minutes. Hunt mission after hunt mission doesn't appear to provide engagement for players, but annoyance. Enormous outdoor maps with four glowies to find, no direction little purpose beyond keeping the player busy for a few extra minutes hasn't engaged people, it's frustrated them. All of those doors that lead to empty 12' square rooms in tech labs and offices aren't engagement, they're a delay. If you look at what the engine can and can't do, you can tell that it wasn't built for engagement. We don't solve puzzles by moving crates around or touching colored panels. We don't follow trails and find clues. We aren't fiddling with valves or levers to open and close things. We don't even have animations linked to click activities like operating a computer or searching a chest, despite those animations being in the game. All of the engagement that Cryptic created was in combat. They didn't build engagement into it beyond that. We're hitting things, or we're staring at progress bars or clicking through text boxes until we can hit things. We're traveling to the next mission to hit things. We're slogging through the FedExes and talk-tos and empty rooms to hit things. What Cryptic did was take short stories and try to turn them into novels, but instead of adding sentences and paragraphs, they added monosyllabic grunts and swaths of blank space. Don't make an arc with 5 missions, split up some of those missions, add a talk-to, add a hunt, add a FedEx, send them to a couple of different zones, make it fifteen missions that way. Slow the player down. Drag it out. Yes, that is wasting time. And it was deliberate. It gave them time to work and kept players subbed longer between Issues.

Paul Verhoeven must have written that line.

That's not complete list. Callan Mulvey isn't on it and he was one of the Strike Team in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the 2014 New York sequence in Avengers: Endgame, as well as Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. You have failed me for the last time, Admiral. ... I'm not doing the heavy breathing noises this time. Every time I do, 50 of you whackos start humping my leg.

I wasn't. I've never seen the show. I wanted to know more about Spider-Man being Superman. You've ruined this entire minute for me. The whole 60 seconds. All of them.

It's not the rewards or lack thereof that deter players, it's the design of the arcs. They were designed to waste time. Patrols exist solely as filler, as a time waster. They never spawn an ambush. They never spawn enemies around the call boxes. They could literally be replaced by 5 minutes of standing next to the contact and checking prices on the market and it wouldn't change anything. Objectives are at the end of the mission just to force the player to spend a couple of minutes to reach them. Mission doors are randomized only to prevent players from going straight to them. Story arcs design uses so much padding and filler, like sending you to multiple zones, scattering hostages across eight floors instead of putting them in a single room, making you click fifteen different glowies to find the "right" one, FedExes with as much purpose as patrols, hunts, defeat alls, missions so short that it took longer to reach them than to complete them, that they're three times as long as they should be and twice as long as many people consider tolerable. The popular *Fs and select scanner/paper missions avoid or minimize design elements like those. Most story arcs, like the unpopular *Fs, generally don't. Some of us are okay with running story arcs, because we have time to waste, we like using travel powers and crossing zones and sometimes even loitering next a call box to watch the sun set can feel rewarding. For a lot of players, though, being asked to spend 10 out of every 15 minutes twiddling thumbs, in a combat-oriented action MMORPG, is where they've drawn their line because the combat is what they're here for. All the rewards in the world aren't going to drag them out of their TF > TF > TF routine. They're doing it that way because they're getting to the action faster and more entertained than they would be if they were reading through Azuria's latest excuse for losing an artifact and asking them to deliver something to someone 3 zones away.

Heh. Peter Parkour. Heh.

?

Look at it again. The parenthetical target info at the end of that line. (self only) I was tempted to make a blaster just so I'd have another character with a Confuse, because Confusing enemies to get buffs puts all kinds of happy on my face... until I saw the bug reports (one in March and one in April, shortly after the power went live). Noped out of that plan so fast I had to break out the BenGay for my back.

It was an example, hence "a power like". The proc rate isn't relevant because the example assumed every proc fired, as indicated by the damage totals for both slotting approaches. The type of power, a power with a long recharge time that maximizes proc chances, and the slotting approaches compared, typical proc bomb slotting versus using an IO set and only slotting one extra proc, are relevant. And I did use the tanker version. Here's another example.

These builds require significant amounts of global +Recharge, which they aren't getting from IO set bonuses and can't get from inspirations. They're scrounging and scraping to find global +Recharge to compensate for the lack of slotted RchgRdx, and scrounging and scraping more to find +Recovery or +End, because those proc bombs have little or no EndRdx slotted. And to make it all work, they're rotating between multiple clicks which are reliant on one another and barely within the tolerance required to keep the whole thing from imploding. Instead of being built to be powerful, they're built to work around the flaws fundamental to that paradigm. They're ten times as much work to maintain, and the results don't even justify the sacrifices it took to achieve them. Sure, a power like Thunder Strike with 2 level 53 Nucleolus, the Armageddon proc and three rare procs can deal up to ~600 total damage, but slotting it with 5/6 Armageddon and one extra proc makes it available ~40% more frequently, constitutes only a 16% reduction in potential damage, and cuts the endurance cost by nearly a third so it's actually sustainable in a chain. This build paradigm not only imposes unnecessary complexity to maintain it, it's not even better enough from a damage output over time perspective to justify the sacrifices or effort. Those are the details I look at.

The "cake" most people are eating is a shit sandwich. The builds are extraordinarily convoluted, loaded with failure points (key not pressed at exactly the right time, power misses an enemy, one debuff cripples it, Incarnates not available, et cetera), bloated with procs typically slotted without regard to actual performance (or even functionality), and always designed to do one specific thing or are utterly reliant on having a pocket defender from one of their extra accounts to keep it upright. Don't lose any sleep over them. They're only impressive to noobs.

That was suggested when travel powers were being revamped. It was denied. They're not going to give us a Combat Jumping quality aerial control power, with bonus KB Resistance, 54.6% +Fly Speed, Fly Protection and the capability to mule an LotG: Defense/global +Recharge at no cost, no downside, no sacrifice. Nor should they. It would be grossly imbalanced, not only in and of itself, but in what it would mean for the other pools. Your claim that we "have" to run three toggles to make Fly feel responsive is an application of self-imposed limitations or requirements, not a reflection of the game's limitations or requirements. Yes, Hover lets you stop instantly, and yes, CJ or Evasive Maneuvers let you turn on a dime, but so do the keyboard and camera. Powers with MovementControl and MovementFriction aren't mandatory to make flight responsive, they're shortcuts for pressing keys and moving the mouse. Press S. Turn the camera. You don't have to run one or more of the other toggles to maintain control of your character during flight, you choose to. I will concede that starting to move forward is sluggish without those mechanics, but we're not talking about having to inch along for several miles before reaching full speed, we're talking about one second to go from takeoff to zooooooooom, and that one second doesn't feel remotely as janky as Super Jump's initial lurch (which is much more noticeable... but not the reason i despise the power). It's not a problem that it requires redesign of the Flight pool. It's not even annoying enough for me to complain about, and I just complained about a buggy interaction between Swift and the Alpha slot level shift causing a tiny speed loss for a few seconds immediately after zoning. Your assertion that Hover is painfully slow isn't without merit, but it also doesn't require Evasive Maneuvers to resolve. Evasive Maneuvers does add a significant amount of Fly Speed to Hover (54.6%, (contrast that with Swift's 13.65% and Increase Flight Speed's 20%)), but it isn't the only options, it's just the most convenient, and by "convenient", I mean immediately accessible and not requiring any thought or planning. I can build any character capable of Hovering as fast as a Sprinting character, using the same slotting/temp power tactics that I use for Run Speed, without Evasive Maneuvers and without compromising build integrity. That's been possible since the day the Invention system was added. You brought up endurance costs. Fly is a travel power. It's not a combat power. Cryptic said that over and over again, so did Paragon and if you ask one of the HC team, they'll say the same thing. Travel powers are for travel, combat mobility powers like Hover are for combat. And in the previous paragraph, I made it clear that you can make Hover very fast without Evasive Maneuvers (i'm looking at a build in Mids right now that hits 45.16 mph. 56.3 mph with Accelerate Metabolism. 59.81 mph, capped at 58.64 mph, if i use Agility instead of Musculature). Yes, it's possible to ignore the designed intent of turning off travel powers or not using unnecessary toggles. That doesn't mean the game, or a pool, or a category of powers, or even a single power, should be exempted from that design, it means we, the players, are stepping outside of the design and we, the players, are responsible for solving the problems that we create for ourselves. This is one of those problems. So solve it. You know how to use IOs, put that knowledge to work.

Phillip. It's called Phillip. It likes long walks on the main thoroughfare in Steel Canyon, rainy days with a bottle of Chateau Ohgodwhatisthis, and large groups of Circle of Thorns deep in its basements.

Yes, it does. Failing to address the other travel pools would be interpreted as favoritism or disregard by the multitude of players who use those other pools, especially after all of the travel powers were redesigned to be faster, and doubly so in light of powers like Flurry and Acrobatics being rendered all but pointless by IOs and Prestige attacks. The HC team had to deal with a lot of flak over Force of Will and Experimentation being untouched when Sorcery was revamped, they're not going to make that mistake again. You might be satisfied with one pool being adjusted, you might not complain if the others were left as-is, but you aren't the only person playing on the HC servers and the HC team has a definitive policy of trying to be as inclusive as humanly possible. They aren't going to fuck over everyone who uses Leaping, Super Speed and Teleportation just so you can have something shiny in Flight. Combat Jumping has air control and Defense, Super Jump has speed. Combat Teleport is Teleport with a shorter range and faster animation time (that's actually a very important aspect of teleportation), so the situation is reversed, CT has speed and Teleport has range and hang time (to give people with slower reflexes time to select their next TP point). Your assertion that CJ/SJ and CT/T lack the same kind of similarity that Hover/Fly share is balderdash. Whatever point you imagined that would make, it didn't. I used Hurdle and Combat Jumping as my only means of travel for 7 years. I wasn't the only player who did that, just one of the most vocal proponents of it. And I could easily make Combat Teleport an effective travel power in the game now, with all of the tricks and toys available. Don't try to paint Hover as the only viable ghetto travel power, I know better. And that's just bullshit. Fly allows you to fly. That's all you need. Fly. You don't need Hover to fly. You don't need Evasive Maneuvers to fly. You don't need either of them toggled on, or even taken, for Fly to work. "Basically just to fly", Fly. Group Fly is functionally identical in this respect. You don't need anything else active to fly with it. Choosing to keep Hover or Evasive Maneuvers active while flying is exactly that, a choice, not a requirement. You're either deliberately drawing a false equivalency and praying that no-one's educated enough to recognize it, or you don't know what you're talking about. In either case, you might want to stop before you dig that hole any deeper.

If they did that, they'd have to do it for Combat Jumping/Super Jump, and Combat Teleport and Teleport, and then they'd have to create something to combine with Super Speed (no, they're not going to make it a package deal with Hasten), and Infiltration would require the same treatment. So you're essentially asking for all of the travel pools to be redesigned. Can't do one and skip the rest, they learned that lesson with Sorcery. And there aren't enough words to express just how much I'd loathe having Super Jump forced onto all of my characters (i think i have 2, maybe 3 without Combat Jumping, out of 50ish). But I'd damn well try to express my dissatisfaction to a degree which I felt was sufficient, and I guarantee that it would be extremely unpleasant to read. The day I log in and discover that my characters are Super Jumping because I have Combat Jumping toggled on, I'm burning this fucking place down.

Many, all of which can be summarized as "Unnecessary." I say that as someone who built a Kin/Elec defender with only the default T1 ranged attack, eschewed the use of that attack in favor of Flurry, Air Superiority and Thunder Strike, slotted no damage enhancements in those melee attacks, and still soloed AVs and GMs. I say it as someone who plays a Grav/TA/Earth controller that only uses one control, Wormhole, and beats enemies to death with Cross Punch, Fissure and Seismic Smash. I say it as someone who has a 50+3 petless mastermind that wasn't farmed up, but played all the way. The damage is there for every archetype. If you want it handed to you, play a scrapper or blaster. That's what those archetypes are there for. If you want it on other archetypes, you have to build for it, and that's an integral part of the game. This is an MMORPG, not a console game with no options. It doesn't work that way. Even within an archetype, there's too much variation between primaries and secondaries to create a baseline of that nature. Some combinations won't meet that bar because they lack something, like -Res, -Def or -Regen, others will exceed it because they have extra. The only way to bring that kind of parity would be to replace all of the primaries, secondaries, pools, *PPs and temp powers with one primary, one secondary, no pools, no *PPs and no temp powers. To homogenize the game to such a degree that the only differentiation between characters would be the colors they selected.

This has been bothering me for a very long time, but I thought it was a result of Sprint's split Run Speed buff, so I never put much time into investigating it. I noticed it on Fly Speed, too, and now it has my full attention. After zoning, Swift's Run Speed and Fly Speed buffs are decreased for up to 10 seconds. Here's a character immediately after zoning into a mission map: And here's the same character a few seconds later: I have a single level 50+5 Fly Speed IO slotted in Swift on this character. This isn't happening with Hurdle, that's consistent after zoning. After testing on several characters, I've isolated the anomaly to characters with a T3 or T4 Alpha, meaning, level 51. What the Alpha does is irrelevant (tested with Agility, Spiritual and Musculature), it's the level shift causing the anomaly. It's also not an archetype-specific issue (one of the possibilities i investigated), I can reproduce it with all archetypes. Swift and the Alpha level shift aren't interacting the way they should. What's concerning about this isn't that the character is a tiny bit slower immediately after zoning, it's that the level shift is reducing the character's speed. The movement speed displayed in the second screenshot, after this anomalous speed reduction ends, exactly matches what it should be at level 50. Not level 51, level 50. Swift isn't dropping part of its buff, the level shift is somehow suppressing Swift. And it shouldn't even be able to do that. On this character, I have Musculature Radial Paragon, which doesn't buff Fly Speed at all, yet it's doing something to reduce my Fly Speed below level 50 value. This may be the visible part of a larger problem with level shifts, or it might just be Swift, but it definitely warrants investigation.

Kinetics > Speed Boost.

You know, using a toilet might be a little less work.

NPCs can't respond to dialogue options.

Add the Levitate + Telekinesis yo-yo so you can do it more often. And mod the sounds so there's some Boiyoiyoiyoing.