Luminara

Start a TA team on the test server and find out. I think TA's contributions will be more evident than they were in the past. I can't address the likelihood of TA overshadowing any other support set, but the strengths of the debuffs alone will make for a notable play experience.

We can do that now. Creating the sounds and finding what needs to be replaced (substituted in the correct folder, which functions as an override, doesn't delete the existing sound) is the hard part. I think it's @Solarverse who has a thread dedicated to sound mods. I'm just not going to ask him to make a mod out of Lo Pan saying, "Indeed!" in Big Trouble in Little China, or "Yoink!"... not out of copyright concerns, or because I don't want to waste his time, but because I'm down to one good lung and I'd probably die laughing.

I want it to say "Yoink!" when it's used. I really, honestly do.

Thanks, @Coyotedancer. A lot of the comments in this thread are more comprehensible now. @Jimmy, are you and the rest of the crew noting this? She's raising some valid points. So has @CrudeVileTerror. This is some solid feedback on how the removal of the slash command is going to affect players, and the ways the replacement options need to fill the gap.

I suspect that's going to be a no, due to the potential for griefing. Being on the same team doesn't necessarily equate to being friendly with one another.

I can understand that, too. You Fly people are slower than my Hurdle bunnies. 😜 What about the other options, though? The Base Transporter P2W power, the two base portal day job powers, the SG Portal P2W power, the Team Transporter P2W power, the Mission Transporter P2W power? Even with 5-10 minute recharge times and limited charges, there seem to be a plethora of options, enough to allow you to go anywhere in the game any time you want without enduring multiple load screens, or having to pick up every exploration badge in every zone on every character. The Pocket D VIP pass, Ouroboros, or the multiple AH teleporters would save you at least some travel, as well. Is that not sufficient to compensate for the loss of the slash command? If not, in what way do they come up short? I know there's a concern for power tray slots, but what else is lacking here to give you enough travel options to make it palatable without forcing you to turn to the LRT accolade if you don't want to?

I'm not a badger either, so I understand. What's not necessary can be left for later, or never. My question, then, is, are the existing options unpalatable in some specific way? I know it takes a few seconds for the tram to roll over and send us to other zones, but we've also got the TUNNEL, several portal and base portal options, so what makes the LRT accolade and accompanying zone unlocks the primary issue? The recharge times on the portal/base portal options? The movement from, to give an example, the transit system to the TUNNEL system? Is it just not being able to go anywhere on a whim, or is it a specific need that all of the combined options fail to address, yet the LRT accolade would address? Too many load screens, too many transport hops, what?

I don't understand why it doesn't have a brief Confuse or Stun. Teleporting right into melee range of something is bound to be unsettling. A 3 second status effect would appropriately reflect someone's behavior if it occurred in reality, wouldn't be overpowering, and would open up a few more slotting options (both of those have IO sets with X/Range enhancements, so they could also improve the range of the power while adding utility). I was also expecting Fold Space to Stun. I still like it, but I think it would be improved by the same option I just proposed for CT, and remain thematically appropriate.

That was all worth quoting. I'm not going to address it line by line, but it was definitely worth quoting. Okay, so the RPG part of this game is important, people like to fulfill their RPG wishes with multiple characters and they're less interested in other aspects, like exploring, traveling through zones, using the existing transit systems (which, true, don't go everywhere, despite all of the connections), and not having rapid access to zones is a hinderance to that. That's notable, and I, speaking only for myself, understand your position a little better. You've got a lot of RP characters, you never really know what you're going to play until you log in, and you may or may not have the necessary badges, and having to fulfill the badge requirement on those which don't have it will cut into the time you could spend doing what you enjoy. How do the currently existing options fail to fill your needs? You can reach most of the zones in under a minute using any combination of rail/ferry, TUNNEL and portal. Is that insufficient for most of your characters? How frequently do you need to travel to different zones, or to zones off the main transit options, like Crey's Folly, Boomtown or Terra Volta? More frequently than the other options would allow, thus requiring you to get the LRT accolade and zones?

No-one's trying to be an ass. There's a lot of communication that isn't happening in this thread, despite all of the talk. People are saying that they have hundreds of characters and the LRT accolade is a bad thing for them. Some of us don't understand why anyone needs the accolade on that many characters. Explain it to us. Help us understand. People are saying that it's going to take too long to acquire the badges. Those of us who disagree are seeing it from a different perspective, we're either picking up the badges as we go, or we're taking our end-game character back to zones to get them later, and not finding it difficult to complete the set for every zone. Yes, it's going to take longer to do that with multiple characters, but were those exploration badges skipped initially on all of those characters because they were difficult to acquire? Was it because they weren't worth the effort to pick up on the way to missions, even if they were right next to the line of travel? Were the badges skipped because the characters were power-leveled? What? People are saying that it's going to take too long to get the full usage of the LRT accolade on every character they have. If a player has more characters than they can play if they played a different character every day for a year, why are they trying to get the accolade on all of them? We don't comprehend having to chase the accolade for that many characters, why it's necessary, why you (plural, not singling you out, @Zeraphia) can't just let some of them go until you circle back around to them, rather than trying to get the accolade as soon as possible. Tell us. Give us your (plural again) perspectives so we can understand what's really going on from your side of the monitor. Just telling us that you don't like it because it means you'll have to get badges on a lot of characters doesn't communicate the problems you're envisioning. So communicate with us.

That's a good compromise. Well, that almost sounds like you're expecting some of these changes to lead to players stepping out of the AE and/or bases and actually be present in the game world. Ha. HA, I say!

It actually does make sense. It existed in the original version of Gravity, but it was removed for precisely the reason you indicated above, giving a squishie with no status protection a "come kill me NAO" power didn't work well. As a pool power, it's viable. It can be used by melee characters safely. It can be used by squishies to bring runners back into a debuff that's helping them survive. It can be used by squishies who have access to powers which can be used to complement it, like PBAoE controls and debuffs. In the post-Incarnate world, it's potentially even more utilitarian, something even the squishiest of squishies can use safely. It makes sense from the perspective of allowing anyone to use it, whereas it didn't when it was restricted to Grav.

So... you're saying that the sad face response from @Jimmy means he wants me to post that picture more often and celebrate his obsession with his own nipples, and you support that? Okay! 😄 Also, I'm only messing with him because he was leering at his nipples. Not casually glancing, not even staring, leering. Those eyes, and that grin... 😨

According to the notes, no. It can be enhanced, but not buffed or debuffed in any other way.

I'd agree with your proposal, but Glue has a long recharge time, and despite my personal dislike of having Entangling as the T1, it has proven to be useful enough to make me question the viability of a change which limited the player's ability to Immobilize a target the way moving it to Glue would. Would I like to see Entangling set on fire and thrown into the Laurentian Abyss? Sure, but not if it means players have an Immob on a 60s recharge, it's too disruptive to lower level play. It also wouldn't provide any additional utility with the single-target Immob, as Glue's Slow is already sufficient to floor the movement speed of anything except specific critters (Warwolves, Crey tanks, etc), and it's not going to do much on AVs either with the recharge time being what it is.

It doesn't seem to be an issue, based on the feedback here. You're the only one complaining about it. Those powers were deemed better as location-targeted powers by Castle, working in concert with alpha testers, approved by beta testers and accepted by players on the original servers and here. There's no argument to fall short. You're dragging this way off topic. Are you going to test anything?

He/she is saying that any of those travel powers will speed up the process, not that all of his/her characters have all of those travel powers.

Wow. The HC team is downright amazing. They actually travelled back in time. I suppose I should stop picking on @Jimmy for staring at his own nipples, or he'll erase me from the universe. 😮

No, it isn't. It's your perspective. You're perfectly comfortable with requiring every other player to alter play style to suit you, because from your perspective, how you want things is better. Other players may not agree with your perspective, or how you want things. From my perspective, Glue is better as an enemy-targeted debuff because it doesn't require players to find, learn and use slash commands, and it allows the player to fluidly move between debuffing and attacking without using those commands. You want it your way. I think everyone comprehends that. But the way it is has worked magnificently since TA went live in '05, and you have yet to provide a rationale for altering the functionality of the power. If you can provide legitimate reasons for changing Glue, please do so. Legitimate, not "Because I want it this way and everyone else can suck it".

Movement suppression isn't the same thing as debuffs. -Jump will still completely shut down someone using CJ, -Fly will do the same to Hover.

I apologize, I intended to say, "in any given zone", not "in every zone". Sorry for the misleading phrasing. 🙂

So you want all of your future characters to forego all of the experience and merits they'd otherwise earn for picking up the exploration badges? Doesn't sound like an improvement to me.

It was, 16 years ago. It was changed to enemy-targeted for a reason - having to constantly switch between mouse clicking and keyboard pressing for TA was really annoying, distracting and not fun. You know what's changed in the last 16 years, in regard to that? Not a thing.

None of which I'm aware. Quick and dirty guide: Install the map pack from this thread. Set up the map window to an appropriate location and size (i prefer top right corner, about 3" square). Zoom in to at least 75% (on a smaller window) or 50% (on a larger window). Note the locations of each badge in the zone, plan out a route in your head. Right-click on the first badge to set a waypoint. Travel to badge. Drag the map (not the window, the map itself) to the next badge on your route. Rinse and repeat. At any time, you can right-click on a waypoint to dismiss it. That's how I acquire all of the exploration badges on my characters, if I haven't picked them up already. It never takes more than a few minutes, in any zone, and it's something I can do even with a 1500+ ping (hate Verizon so much), when I can't do anything else in the game.

In what way is OSA unreliable? The server tick bug which prevented it from igniting was resolved 13-14 years ago. The base recharge time is known, it's affected by +Recharge, so the actual recharge time with enhancements and global buffs is known, the base damage is known, the damage can be enhanced, it has -10,000% Resistance to Fire and Energy damage, it's not buffing it's own Defense... how is it unreliable? If you're referring to not having an in-set ignition mechanism, that hasn't changed. There never was one, there never was intended to be one, there never will be one. TA wasn't designed around igniting OSA, it was designed around debuffing. And @Captain Powerhouse didn't include a way to ignite OSA as part of the set because that would've significantly altered the balance of the set itself, necessitating further changes. You really want an auto-igniting OSA? Fine, turn in your Disruption and Entangling arrows. That's the kind of redesign that would be required. Trick Arrows is not "Oil Slick Arrow and a bunch of other things". OSA doing what it does, and being limited in the ways that it is, is a balance point, both in respect to balancing the set as a whole in the context of the game and in regard to other sets, and as a means of balancing the powers in TA against each other. It's a support set, not a blast set, and asking for the set to hand you a DoT nearly twice as powerful as defender nukes every 40 seconds is out of the boundaries of what it was designed, redesigned and currently intended to do.