@Ghost

That's fair, the Ouro portal completely slipped my mind. I'd still say that process is a bit arcane for someone brand new and keeping something accessible on the vendor is better in the long run, but I don't think appeals for extra convenience are catching much traction here anyway. I think that could work well. The idea floated for Badge Tour Guide NPCs was also really strong, and I think could be really neat as a Ski Chalet style race. DCUO does similar time trial challenges, and it'd be pretty cool to have leaderboards per zone.

A little off-topic, but I think something similar to the current CoH Modder was planned to be added to the HC Launcher to let people pick stuff like that up easier.

That makes me wonder if it was the Ki Push thing from Martial Combat. It's pretty weird with a repel effect and kinda sounds like what you're describing. And yeah, I'm lowkey interested in seeing what Fold Space can do. That and the Combat TP type powers are really cool implementations of the mechanic and feel way more appropriate for a superhero game than something like TP Foe. I meant the new tech from around April Fools, where Brawl was sending stuff flying in all sorts of fun directions rather than just back from your position.

I agree with the sentiment, absolutely, but Exploration badges aren't really a great means for that. Some are absolutely in natural spots; AP has the globe, the flag, inside City Hall. And then it also has two on the tops/sides of random buildings off in far corners of the map where nobody would really go to look without specific knowledge. imo I'd hand out the LRTP power with nothing on it at the vendor, and let the 1 badge/zone rule take effect everywhere. I think most of those will come by accident, but it's a large measure more accessible than expecting a brand new player to find every badge in a zone without resorting to a wiki or VidiotMaps or someone helping them (who could then just hand them some inf anyway.)

Situationally really interesting and kinda underexplored. I remember people asking for "reverse Repel" as a vacuum effect and it wasn't technically possible, but with stuff like vectored knockback now, maybe it could be?

Since we're up to a RC build now and things seem more set in stone, I figured it was worth reiterating some previous feedback re: inroads for new players. The current 0-cost options are still centered around VidiotMaps, standing around for an hour, or temporary options for logging off for a while. Something more akin to the "one free Ninja Run/Beast Run" to get people started with subsequent purchasables seems more accessible than current means, and could breadcrumb other options with the Fast Travel menu.

Sort of? "Emergency" is probably a misnomer in this situation. I think there are plenty of sets that are fine as they're designed, but just lack in the numbers department. Probably no coincidence that the holy damage formulas don't actually take cast times into account, and sets like DP/Staff/KM are considered poor performers - and you have instances of dev intent to revise DP's animations. You don't need to reinvent the wheel like what might be necessary with Stone Armor, just some tuning. I do agree to avoid any more situations like you mentioned, though. I don't think those would go over well even with proper communication of the intent.

Stone Armor's been totally workable for a while and I'm sure Combat TP will help a bit, it's just that Granite invalidating 4 other powers in the set and piling drawbacks on you is terrible design. It's not an "emergency numbers buff" candidate imo, it needs a lot more rethinking because the mutual exclusivity gimmick just sucks.

My very biased ranking would put it at Scrapper > Tank > Brute > Stalker. On a Stalker, you lose the only AOE in MA, and the nature of their guaranteed criticals minimizes the impact of EC and SK having higher crit rates. On a Brute, you do gain the benefit of SK granting defense, but you're also SR and the defense gets a little redundant unless you start building around it (and bonuses other than defense are harder to optimize.) This is even truer for a Tank since SR has even higher defense numbers, but a Tank does get more benefit out of EC's +dmg with their higher base numbers and larger radius on DT. A Scrapper though gets the most out of the combination. SR is independently solid, and MA's increased crit chances interact nicely with EC and SK's boosts. With both superior ATOs slotted, putting the proc in EC gives your follow up attack a 99% chance to crit! Follow it with SK while the proc's still active for a 75% crit chance! Look stylish and never get hit! I'd probably recommend MA and SR more on a Tank though, just not together. Pick up a resist set with MA and abuse the extra defense or try SR on something with a self heal.

I remember the packs themselves being pretty cheap and typically dumping my stipend points on those, so I'm guessing it'd be gambling on packs and burning converters? I don't recall ever picking them up from merit vendors either.

I played /Staff on a tanker (before the AT buffs, admittedly) and it's the only character I've ever just completely given up on, so that gets my nomination.

I actually had a pretty similar thought process after the inf sink topic came up. I don't mind them personally, but I do think it's very important to keep things in perspective for newer players. I've intro'd some friends and spotted them inf to get past a few hurdles, but from the brand new player perspective I think some of these travel options should probably end up free as a baseline? In the same way you can pick up Ninja Run for no cost, maybe SG Portal should actually just be free? From there you can start looking at putting costs on luxury for other items. I really think the "upgrading a power" idea has merit, so if your initial SG Portal is free, you can replace it with the 1m SG Portal Mk.2 with a faster recharge, and the 10m SG Portal Mk.3 with an even faster recharge. The quoted idea of selling the TP charges is pretty great too, but I'm not sure if it looks after the lower end quite as much. But you can go further and appeal to my laziness by selling LRTP destination bundles: 1m to unlock the accolade without exploring, 1m for one zone pack, 1m for another zone pack, etc. Earning them is still a viable option just like the Pocket D Pass works now - you can shortcut it if you'd like, or go out and unlock it yourself.

I do remember from some pigg diving that there was a shop listing for “target markers” or something similar? I don’t think it was ever tested, though.

It's 4 days and change to actually accumulate the charges and Patroller before you start getting both at once. And even then re: relative power, it's always a far more impactful day job choice than its peers. But, I think this is also true. My idea of the situation could be totally overblown and a non-starter, or there's other aspects people aren't considering, ie: not having LRTP or forgetting to pick up Base TP/SG Portal on every character, Ouro and LRTP only having certain destinations, slow computers making load times for TP->(Ouro->)zone->base->zone a real pain in the ass, etc. Bringing up the median metrics does remind me to just sort of look at the grander scope and say like, "would a 5m recharge break this? 2m? 90s?" And considering we already have a 0s option, I don't think the game has come unraveled even at that extreme end? So I don't see the harm in erring on the side of convenience and catering to the extreme end of those metrics.

I mean, you are totally right for how things exist on live right now. Right now there's no Day Job bonus that's so strong that I feel compelled to log out at one spot every single time to maintain it. The TP powers are so convenient with newly restricted options that it definitely feels like the correct choice is to always log out at a base portal. I'm sure you could brush my feedback off as "well, that's your choice and it's wrong, not our problem." And I guess that's technically true? But I'd still argue that no other bonus is so universally valuable as fast access to a teleport/level up/vendor/crafting hub is. I'd definitely prefer to not lose out on accumulating time on other badges just because the TP is that dang good to have in your back pocket.

I think an example was mentioned upthread of Numina's having extremely frequent zone swaps. In any case, more reasonable recharges certainly wouldn't hurt. I don't see how not playing the game for 4 days is more effort than... anything. It's kinda the opposite of a time investment, even. And even travel aside, no Day Job bonus should be so good that it discourages you from engaging with the rest of that system, and pushes people to do it at all. The portals do that right now.

Some quick pros and cons thoughts on the new changes: + LRTP: good! A single badge is worlds more reasonable and keeps the "explore it, unlock it" vibe going. Also narrows the gap on people with/without VidiotMaps installed. I think the initial power unlock still could be account wide? Making every alt do Atlas Park Tour Guide is still not something I look forward to. + Activation times: great! In lieu of fixing portals interrupting people, just having a reasonable time to activate the power is much better. + Fast Travel menu: excellent! Consolidating it all into a single button by default is tremendous. While it doesn't completely address the actual mechanical bloat, it's very appreciated. edit: if you could get the recharge text to display like it does on powers? A+ excellent many kisses much love. - Recharge times: potential issue. This would get pointed out rapidly in actual play on live servers, but certain TFs and mission chains still require a lot of jumping in short periods of time and the 10 minute recharges on most of these may not always cut it. - SG Portal cost: it's a lot. 10m/character for basic convenience in light of these changes is a PITA. But it also ties in to my main issue... - Day Job Powers: these shouldn't be the best. Xanatos put it very well before. Travel's essential to the game. Having the best travel powers locked onto Day Jobs undermines the whole point of logging out in various places and collecting them, and encourages people to just log out at portals always and forever. Not to mention, the "power" relative to others like... 10% end recovery out of combat? Is way out of wack. Swapping the Day Job power stats onto a 10k inf Supergroup Portal seems like the easy solution here, and just restoring the previous base Day Job bonus.

Spending a million inf per alt and logging off by a base portal for 4 days and continuing to log off exclusively by one to kinda maintain what already exists is definitely a noticeable downgrade in convenience, imo. I'm just imagining the fresh character scenario in my head of rolling up something new and being annoyed I have to sit around for that day job to access the best version of that transporter power, and it tripping up my dumb efficiency brain to make me feel like I need to keep going back and parking myself by one every time I log off.

I think assuming LRT as a viable constant is also jumping the gun a fair bit unless the destination granting badges are going account wide; ditto for having Base Transporter across every single alt, albeit less so (transferring inf around is a headache, but the cost is still relatively low.) It's fair to say it also matters most for those unequipped alts where getting around is even more of a hassle.

My personal “my brain is melting and I hate this” moment with the UI is how the chat’s font scales. By default? Relatively tiny. “Turn up the font slider” you say! Well, for reasons unbeknownst to any human alive, this game thinks a 13 point font is much closer to 18-20 point. My hacked together solution is scaling the overall UI up, while scaling the window sizes down to actually get at an in-between font size that’s not normally accessible through any option. The fact that this size does exist but requires so much obscure tinkering is pretty insane, and I’d love some kind of standardization pass on this stuff.

Which also means you can't put them on top of each other and make a bridge anymore. A moment of silence for the Ourobridge. 😢

I'm a little curious about this, too, except for why it doesn't work in PvP zones. Is it just the quick exit? I feel like you could condense a lot of these powers down into maybe 2-3 more universal options, ie: One SG portal that "levels up" its recharge time depending on how many of the powers/badges you have: Monitor Duty, Rapid Response Member, p2w Base Transporter, p2w Supergroup Portal. One personal portal that "levels up" and adds destinations depending on what ones you've unlocked: Ouroboros, Pocket D, and all the exploration accolades (which should probably be account wide.) Which leaves the mission TPs as their own thing (which is reasonable, I think) and the market TPs as... something. Maybe you could fit those on a personal portal, but it seems messy. I think ditching the long activations that get interrupted every time someone actually drops a portal is for the better, but it seems like PvP zones might be a hang up there?

It’s being said like that because there was one uber-convenient solution and now a nearly a dozen you’re meant to use in the wake of it being gone. There already were too many teleport powers and it was already a problem, it’s just that now people have to actually engage with that problem.

Not to get too snarky, but I think making 3 new powers and adjusting the surplus of teleport powers took more effort than it would have to just make one fast recharging supergroup portal. Extra trays aren't the solution to "we have too many teleport powers." Tackling the issue of why you need that tray space is, and consolidating teleport powers would go a long way in that direction.

Yeah, thematically it doesn't really line up much at all. People typically suggested Storm Kick more often as a cone, and we eventually got that! ... in Martial Assault. I know the idea's to make EC more appealing, but it's pretty weird. I'd sooner look to its crit/damage boosting effect for a buff, but I assume those conversations happened in closed beta already.