amusingsn

I had someone join a pug team doing flashback missions just two days ago, and someone didn't know how to get to ouroboros. It's obvious you take a lot of pride in your service to the community, the forum, discord, beta testing groups, etc. But there are a lot of people who don't read forum posts, don't check the patch notes, etc. I ran a team with my supergroup and someone in the group didn't know how to get to Kalisti Wharf, and this was someone who was not new to the game at all. Not everybody knows everything about the game. I don't know what sort of bubble people might be in, but I play the game several times a week for an hour or two each time, and I've encountered all manner of skill levels, game-proficiency, and system knowledge. I don't just limit myself to playing with veteran pro players or elite gamers, I'll play with anyone who is looking to play. Playing with people who are better at or have more knowledge of the game is how new players learn. I don't mind telling someone to use the tram to get to Kalisti. But I do draw a line explaining to them that they need to beg people at Miss Liberty to put down a portal before they can make their own portals. It's actually kind of embarrassing to explain to a player something like that, imo. But what's the alternative? To say: "Oh, you don't know how to get here? Well, you're not ready to play this leet flashback arc we're doing. Look me up when you know how to get here. Kick!"? Maybe the tutorial can be updated to teach people all that stuff, that would be helpful. I realize Ouroboros was supposed to be a "secret" originally, but the cat has been out of the bag for years. And the same thing about Praetoria. Maybe as part of the Tutorial, the Menders could contact the player and let him in on the secret. It's better that than to find out the truth about Santa Claus from the other kids on the school yard.

So entering Ouroboros will award the badge. So just asking someone to drop a portal near Miss Liberty and you get it. To not give it to everyone is just punishing people who are too shy or polite to ask for a portal at Miss Liberty. Or to new players who don't know to ask. And it creates the awkward dynamic of someone saying : "How do I get to Ouroboros?" And having to answer: "You need to ask someone near you to drop a portal and then click on the yellow glowy portal they summon, and then you'll enter the zone and after that you'll magically have the ability to drop your own portals. It's weird, I know, but for some reason you need to do that. *shrug*"

One of the important things to keep in mind with having some people with access to fast travel and some people without is that this is a team-oriented game. If everyone was playing solo, not having travel powers would only inconvenience the one player. But no matter how much time/effort/work I put into getting the fast travel abilities that make the game convenient for me, there are likely to be people on the team who do not have those powers, leaving me with the choice to sit around and wait for them, or to play without them. This is not fun. No matter how you look at it, its not an improvement to the game play experience. If you're someone who only plays with friends, or only plays with super group members, and never plays with pick up groups, maybe this doesn't make much of a difference to you. But when you are playing in pick up groups and adding and losing players with each mission of an arc, or taking the lottery with a Task Force or Trial, you never know who you are going to end up with. And having new players come into the game and ask "how do I get to Striga?" and wondering why it is that everyone else can just pop over there in three seconds while they have to fly between trams and ferries or alternatively explaining to them that they need to go stand in Pocket D for an hour and then earn an exploration badge in Striga after that so they can fast travel there ... I don't know. I started City of Heroes before Enhancement Diversification, so its been a long time since I struggled with traveling around, but I sympathize with new or returning players who don't know how to get around and now there are drop down menus and afking in zones to earn accolades and day job charges and millions of influence "prestige" powers to explain to them. It's been characterized by people that "fast travel" is cheating unless you jump through hoops to earn it. But why is that a problem when having capes or the fitness pool or travel powers before level 14 not considered cheating? The jetpack at the P2W vendor is remarkably cheap, its practically cheating. And that dagger they sell there. Or the recover-boost serum. What about the Knockback to Knockdown enhancement? All cheating. Then there's the fortune telling cards. Literally free. Or the origin prestige attacks. Ninja run. Are they cheating too? Warshades and Peacebringers get a bunch of power sets with just the cost of one or two picks (Nova and Dwarf forms). Cheaty cheaty! Consider this also: When I team with someone who doesn't have influence for SOs or IOs and is inexperienced in how to play the game, it makes things harder for me, but WE BOTH still get to actually PLAY the game. When I team with someone who can't get to the mission -- well, I can either wait, or hurt his feelings by playing without him. Sometimes (often) it's SEVEN people who are waiting because ONE person is slow or lost. Making it faster and easier to get to game play, at least when teaming, should be seen as a benefit. This is why a lot of MMOs teleport you straight to instances now when you group, they don't make you wander like nomads between dungeon entrances using 5 different travel methods. I love travel powers. One of my favorite memories of City of Heroes was getting Flight for the first time and flying around Atlas Park. I still fly or super-jump around the city for fun, because it is fun. People will use these powers because its fun for them, and if they aren't, maybe they can be made MORE fun, rather than making not-having-them LESS fun for people.

If by exploration, you mean the tedious task of flipping between a wiki and the game to locate badge locations, then yes: that's what the LTR encourages. 100% agreed. The LTR encourages the tedious task of flipping between a wiki and the game and flying around to 20 different locations. And repeating those same tedious tasks for each of your toons. Each and every one. From the notes, it seems that at least some people on the Dev team realize that this is a problem. But, imo, the solution isn't to provide a bunch of not-quite-as-tedious badge missions (I think they will be about as popular as the "arrest 10 skulls" style of mission), but rather to just eliminate the badge requirement entirely, or maybe make an exploration badge at each of the base portals in a zone so you get them by visiting the base portal. At least then I'd only have to afk in Pocket D for an hour and then visit all the base portals in all the zones to get the locales. Or maybe you could unlock the LTR with a mission from City Hall like the old Cape mission. Even that would be less tedious (and I notice that Cape mission no longer is necessary, presumably because its tedious and why not just let people have capes?). To see how much people like having to earn the ability to travel places: see how many people earn the Midnight Society badge through the story arc, compared to how many just earn it by walking into the Night Ward mansion. Also, see how popular it is to travel to Imperious via the LFG system rather than slogging through the Midnight Society portal every time. And for the love of Heroes, please lower the cooldowns. If you want there to be "many ways" to earn the right to teleport to a base, let one way be sufficient. Otherwise, you're making it so that people feel like they need to do "all the ways", and that's a burden. If you want to encourage exploration, don't tie rewards to exploration, make it more fun to explore. Hide little easter eggs that people might find amusing or fun. Put an ice slide (like in the Frostfire mission) somewhere for people to slide on. Have some NPCs engage in an amusing conversation somewhere. I don't know, it seems like tying fast-travel to something as a reward to "encourage" that thing is admitting that the thing you're encouraging isn't fun enough to do without a reward.

So why not just give everyone the ability to plop a base portal down wherever they are, whenever they need it, if the idea was to make traveling between zones more convenient? I understand that having people able to instantly zone even when in combat is a problem, but you could have the zone power not work when they are flagged as being in combat or in PVP or whatever, eh? I wasn't concerned with these changes and didn't really investigate the details, because I saw that you were all saying you were going to provide a "replacement" that was just as good. You have not done that, which is why I'm giving you feedback now. I didn't realize the replacements were going to have a 30 minute cooldown (or whatever it is, its long) and cost 10 million influence. Make it a 5 second cooldown and free, and you've kept it pretty much just as convenient. On top of that, leave in all the other teleportation changes you've made, with the new base portals and their locations, the long range accolades, etc etc, and you've actually improved the experience. Easy fixes.

Yes, I agree with you. The Tram system should be changed to take you to every zone. Or we could add a power that costs 5 influence called "uber" that takes you to the mission door. Good suggestion. +1 this!

There are no benefits that I can see to these changes. You've made the game more unpleasant to play for casual players like myself. I don't like hunting badges, and why did is there a charge at all for the P2W teleport powers (any of them)? What would be broken in the game if you just gave all the teleportation features free, without badge hunting, influence cost, etc? Even if I did jump through literally every hoop to get everything, because this game is so team oriented and alt-friendly (or at least it was), now I have to jump through all the hoops on all my toons. And even if I jump through them all on all my toons -- and this is the worst part --- even if I do EVERYTHING 50 times over, my fun is still diminished because now I have to wait longer for teammates to get into position because you know out of the 8-man team, at least one of them is not going to have whatever teleport abilities they might need at any given time. If you've every tried to do ITF with a pick up group, you know how often a teammate doesn't know how to get there, never mind doesn't have the badges necessary. Now imagine a version of that over and over again, for every Task Force, where the team has to wait five minutes for someone to figure out how to get where you are, while everyone else just teleports there using their accolade based long distance transporters or whatever other thing they had to "earn." Please, fix this.