Shenanigunner

Yes, a little bit, but those two answers put things in context. Nope, I'm not missing some big gestalt of the power set; it just does what it does. I guess smashing damage explains itself, psi damage plus the regen buffs ditto, and energy damage would be useful against some foes. If there's a more elaborate working strategy, by all means, anyone, toss it in. But a good answer to a "duh, what"" question. 😛 Thanks, all!

Okay, so I am enjoying the hell out of my Staff Brute. (First time with the powerset.) But if someone could explain Staff Mastery to me, as a player asset... Yes, I've read and understand the descriptions. And I've used Swap Ammo, so I get the practice of fine-tuning a power with these kind of choices. But I can't quite... make sense of Staff Mastery or figure why you'd really use anything but Body (added smashing damage). So enlighten me, in actual, practical, experienced terms.

This (again). Badge-hunting is a great way to... do something else. When you're waiting for a team, or tired of running missions, and just want to explore and play the super-jump mini-game. Sort of like antique collecting, it gives a little purpose to your travels. 🙂

That's nowhere near what I meant. There are two player communities with vastly different goals, and eventually one or the other is going to get unhappy and leave. One more shard, with one (1) uber-command added (which already exists for beta and testing, anyway) is not a request to kick anyone out or excessively multiply the dev/moderation load. Keep the game balanced for "all these players" — and accommodate those who keep agitating for more and more shortcuts and antinerfs. Everybody wins. 'Nuf sed.

Then so be it. The two player communities may be compatible, but the devs can't accommodate both on one shard style and the development path is continually accommodating the power-level, end-game crowd at the expense of everyone else. One community or the other is going to wander away.

Not sure if this has ever been suggested seriously, but I'm doing it now: Split the game. Add a new shard that completely mirrors the others, updates and all, but has a unique menu/command to choose any starting level the player wants. 90% of players on that shard will go right to 50 and on to end-game content. Power to 'em. But these alts will not be transferable to other shards. Why? To end the continual demand that the game be bent to allow the fastest possible leveling and power acquisition. The HC devs have been steadily bending things in this direction, slowly removing the progress / leveling / strategy side of gameplay. For every change that has taken away a minor annoyance or hurdle and made veteran play a little more pleasant, there have been changes that (IMVHO) simply remove a proper part of the leveling strategy to make some character advance cost-free. Some of us still like the game much as it was, with the need to roll up a toon and choose powers and slots and enhancements as an integral part of play. It's not about mad power-leveling and grinding and shortcuts to get to end-game content. But the power gamers — mostly veterans who have rolled up more than their share of toons, to be fair — are continually asking for the game to be dulled/dumbed down for everyone else. (The current thread on making travel powers available at 4 is what triggered this post.) It's not reasonable to ask all other players to ignore these shortcuts and do things like play the Classic Hero path, just so that some subset of players has a dragstrip to 50. So solve the problem by creating a whole shard that completely caves to end-game players, let them skip directly to Go and collect their 200 powers and slots... and leave the rest of the game structured much as originally, with a few of the nice little conveniences and shortcuts and maybe even rolling some of them back. It's like the Designated Hitter rule in baseball: if you want to shortcut most of the strategy, have at it. Some of us want our pitchers to have to take at-bats. Hell, give new players 1M per level in Inf, even. I don't see this as having any downside, as long as the ONLY unique characteristic of the new shard is the command to set a starting level. Development would be seamlessly parallel, no special considerations needed. And preventing transfer would forestall game-jacking on the other shards. Maybe even require rolling up a 50 on a regular shard before entry to this new shard is allowed, to keep out an extreme power-gamer segment that might be... unwanted. Call it the Genie shard... unlimited cosmic powers, itty-bitty world space. 😄

This is definitely the answer for those who don't want to tediously unlock zones for the LRTP, or at least do it as time and chance permit. There are, after all, four base portal powers that can be used in rotation with no more than a couple of minutes' total cooldown. Pop a portal (self or shared), click your base macro button. Done. If you don't have a base with full transport and features, it takes an hour to build one, and there are dozens with free entry. Me... I kinda like snagging the 'porter beacons. 🙂

And OH so satisfying. Seems like villains, at least, should be able to push around a few civs...

Not sure if this has ever been suggested, or is possible within the programming framework, but a Notes field for each alt in Character Select would be aw'fly nice if it's not a gigantic effort. I have some thing I want to remember for many of my alts, and memory + my game pages on the desk doesn't do it. My immediate peeve is that I keep playing my E/E blaster for quite some time before remembering to toggle on Dynamo... it's the little stuff that gets ya. A note next to her name would make it easier to remember such small details when you have many alts you play in rotation.

Or /welldontputyourtongueontheflagpolethen Sorry.

I got stuck in the spikes on top of the Golden Giza once and the GM had to summon Elder Gods to get me free. But I agree, I don't think I've ever run into a situation where an NPC blocked my exit from a room, other than being a foe who had every business being there. Maybe this happens in badly designed AE missions etc.?

A transporter effect wouldn't bang too hard on copyright issues, I think. 😄

Irrelevant here, but a Borderlands 2 map has a tiny hidden hole I always go find at the end of a session there. 😄

Doesn't Null the Gull also offer a transport option? (I had to ask about this a month ago, when a teammate and I were trying to find that little map.) Wasn't the Winter Forest originally the 11-months-of-the-year substitute for the big winter/ski chalet map? So that toons could play in the snow?

As for #3, at the same time I'd like to see the leg slider allow shorter — normal — leg lengths. The first thing I do on every toon is set the legs to minimum, which looks okay with some costumes but (on the same alt) still looks comic book-ridiculous with shorts/tights. The normal and longer lengths look like giraffes. Even with a little exaggeration, the waist should be at 50% height, not 60-66% minimum. 😛

/stuck will return you to the map. It has when I fall through the floor of my base when I remove the wrong beam. 😛

It looks like I wasn't completely clear. Using the three shift keys (Shift, Ctrl, Alt) as pairs or sets is a great way to multiply the bind combinations, especially if you follow simple usage rules like "put all the primary, fast-access binds on unshifted keys" and "use shift keys in order of ease — Ctrl, then Alt, then Shift [for me, at least]" so that Ctrl's are secondary powers you use a lot and Alt/Shift are for non-combat, non-rapid-use commands like calling up menus and toggling screen elements. BUT using left and right shifts for different binds is needlessly complex, and using shift keys as "tap" commands themselves (that is, you tap LSHIFT or RSHIFT as the actual bind key)... bad practice and will cause many conflicts with normal shift-key use. Is that clearer?

Ah. Popmenus. Another topic I intend to look into one of these days... Thanks.

Does anyone know SPECIFICALLY when the Fast Travel power/icon/menu drops? It does not appear to drop when you have only Monitor or RR TP, but when you get any other power in the list — Ouro or LRTP. Not sure about the P2W powers. Confirm?

Good point. Yes, the /enterbasefrompasscode power works any time you are within clicky-distance of a base portal, including ones called with TP powers, and also whenever the "Your Base/Enter Passcode" menu is open, including the LRTP menu. I really wish there was some way to "preload" the base TP powers, so that you could write a single macro that would activate the power and use the passcode simultaneously. That's the only thing I miss from the "God TP" version. But having a base macro, or several of them, on which you can do a quick click to enter the base of your choice once the option is there, is a good second.

I'm always interested in the gritty nutz'n'boltz of these things, but it's probably not useful/relevant to this effort. I'd guess that the whole Fast Travel/LRTP/Beacons interface is a 'best option' for shoehorning in these features and functions without breaking the UI or the game. As a UI designer — or at least a guy who has a UI Designer hat in the rack, so old it goes back before the terms UI and UX — I can devise all kinds of cool ways to organize the powers and functions, but I'm happy to have them in a reasonably orderly presentation, knowing the limitations the devs have in time and no-breakage. Again, I just couldn't figure out why some zones were "activated" and highlighted when the power itself wasn't... and the answer I got is good enough for this thread.

I don't believe there's any inherent way to do it, but you can write a bind to pre-load chat entries with any info you like. Such as" /bind ENTER "beginchat [MySgName] [MySG] " When you hit ENTER, you'll be put in chat entry with the string following beginchat. Don't forget a space at the end. You could bind it to BACKSLASH or SLASH if you prefer, to give you both "naked" and "tagged" chat options.

Humor alert, friend. I've been documenting the details of the game's technical aspects for well over a decade and don't recall 'whining' about any of it. I find the convoluted complexity of the newly shaken-up TP system exasperatingly amusing and finally took two days to sort it all out and produce the chart/guide/notes I just posted. I did so because (1) no one else has done it in the ~3 months since I27s' changes, and (2) if I found all the explanations confusing, incomplete and scattered with mistakes, then I know some good part of the community was just as confused. I enjoy writing this stuff. It's what I do professionally, and this is a lot more fun. But some eye-rolls are occasionally appropriate. 🙂

There's only one list of beacons in the player UI that I know of... the Fast Travel / Teleport Beacon list. That's what I'm referring to. I found it confusing that I had highlighted, apparently active beacons on alts that did not have the LRTP, but the above explanation (that each beacon is unlocked when you have one exploration badge in the zone) is a complete answer to my question.

And, just to finish this up: Yep, if you get the LRTP via the Pocket D badge, it automatically unlocks the PD beacon. If you get the LRTP another way, you have to snag one Pocket D exploration badge to unlock its beacon. I think that's it. (?)