Macchiato

Basically, you're concerned that making Stealth more accessible and potent will negatively affect the way people tackle missions, even though as you say previously, people had to go out of their way to build group/solo stealth capability? tbh, when it comes to combat invisibility, I'm a little lost on the details - I main a Stalker, I have a very simple view of how hide and invisibility work for me. But I guess I can see the concern, especially when you put it like you fear that it'll become a new must-have (although, I wouldn't mind an alternative meta pick to Hasten, it's a bit weird to me to have Stealth be it) for various builds. Unfortunately, I don't know enough yet to really compare how the changes tackle that kind of shift, especially when you add player psychology to the mix.

I don't see why not. Especially since the top of the thread contains the relevant notes for discussion, and Concealment is an example of a big shift from not being a travel pool, to suddenly being one. I also think that my post RE: GFX pushes it a little even though it is entirely relevant to travel pools as a whole, what with the GFX being cut or missing. Just make sure to read and tinker with the changes in the Beta before anything else, please, a lot of confusion can be avoided by going in and poking at things before making a post. Not naming names.

Moaning about Afterburner aside, I'm genuinely impressed by how most of the other things being complained about (read: offered actual feedback on) are universally in regards to GFX and aesthetics. (Though, I don't personally see the point in Infiltration even with the slot investment, but that's another story; I'm still trying to play around with it on the beta and there's genuinely not a lot that can be done to give it 'oomph' without overpowering other travel powers, I think. That, and something mentioned earlier in the thread about making a pass at Stealth are why I'm leaving it alone for now.) To be honest, I can see the argument for there needing to be a 2nd look at Travel Power animations and FX - if not in this Issue, then the next. Because not only is there that known issue with Hover and Fly fighting for animations, the big concern about fusing the Concealment pool powers is that Invisibility's practically-transparent FX were supplanted by Stealth's more ghostly-but-still-tangible FX. And on top of those two introduced with the changes in this beta, there's also the fact that Teleport still lacks a Min FX option in lieu of the big pop of light, as has been requested in the last Issue when Teleportation was reworked entirely. What sucks about this situation is that all of these GFX options are valid and desirable. There are people who love this Magneto hover flight, there are people who prefer Stealth's ghostly transparency over the complete invisibility, and there are still plenty of other people (and even other characters owned by the same people) where the converse options would make more sense. But with combining the Flight toggles, or literally fusing the Concealment powers, the number of power GFX options has decreased at the moment, and that is a concern in such an old game that lives and breathes on the amount of customization options it has.

Precisely. Though I'm not sure about how difficult it would be to code hard boundaries like that in other zones, I'm just making assumptions in line with a certain logic.

Putting aside the recharge/activation time issues, I feel two big changes that can and should be made are related to the access range for /enterbasefrompasscode being far too small to be useful without players constantly dropping portals for themselves. 45 feet is virtually nothing for portals out in the world and in many areas feels very, very redundant and almost insulting - particularly in Pocket D, which is ironic given its purpose as a portal nexus. Two things that can be done to minimize this bizarre feeling of clunkiness and redundancy: 1) Extend the useable range for /enterbase from 45ft to between 150-300ft to match both normal teleport power ranges and to closer match the boundaries of most areas with base portals. Especially since the base portals in the majority of zones exist in pockets of safe areas that go up to 300ft (or more) anyway. And if not the above, then 2) extend Pocket D's base portal range independently past 300ft, or at least make /enterbase a zone-wide command here. This is mostly a suggestion for roleplay and general accessibility, in line with the idea of being able to hop into a base at range in 'safe areas'; the Pocket D is literally the safest place to be, mechanically, and if a player is already within the Pocket D it stands to reason that the player's intent is to go somewhere else at some point.

Bin-Freak approved! This was a lot of fun to hang around in, and I'm definitely going to bring some other characters of mine. Might even put a bet up!