Travel Powers - what happened?

[Leogunner]

22 hours ago, tidge said:

Perhaps you weren't clear, but to get the PBAoE fear, you don't need to take both the taunt and placate, you can choose the single-target fear as your second power.

 

My complaint about the Presence pool is that both the PBAoE fear and Unrelenting are very good powers, and to get them both it is 4 picks into the pool.

I understand that, I just feel that requiring either the taunt or placate for the ST fear is my issue.  I'd rather take the ST fear and the PBAoE fear without having to waste the slot on a power that might not fit the concept.  I mean, Intimidate and Invoke Panic aren't *that* good nor is Pacify or Provoke.

[tidge]

24 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

I understand that, I just feel that requiring either the taunt or placate for the ST fear is my issue.  I'd rather take the ST fear and the PBAoE fear without having to waste the slot on a power that might not fit the concept.  I mean, Intimidate and Invoke Panic aren't *that* good nor is Pacify or Provoke.

I agree that I don't like having to take four powers from Presence to get the two I *really* want. For several of my toons it's because I want to 5-slot Invoke Panic and 6-slot Unrelenting. I find the PBAoE fear is a great control for defense-based characters that are going to be in the middle of a group of baddies. The single-target is less useful, although I did use it against (Elite) Bosses while leveling up to keep them out of fights. Pacify/Provoke serve different needs. While leveling solo, Pacify can buy precious time against big bads that are wearing you down. At the end-game, characters don't wear down as much (usually End costs are under control in attacks) and so if you have a toon that can take the heat, an AoE Taunt can help when teaming. I usually respec into Provoke once my toons can handle the heat. I find the choice of Pacify/Provoke to be an interesting one.

 

If I had to pick a power from the Presence pool to skip (and I didn't have to take both Pacify and Provoke) it would be the single-target fear. That one feels too much like a T1 power to me. Now if only the Fear powers had a Purple (or PVP) set...

[Haijinx]

19 hours ago, EmmySky said:

Dont let stalkers ride Harleys.....totally defeats the purpose of hide/stealth.  😝

But Fire Armor is cool ...

 

Cause nothing says sneaky like being on fire

[Haijinx]

19 hours ago, Troo said:

that's fair @Haijinx

it's also like me wanting to play a petless mastermind.

I can do it but that's not what was intended.

 

that said, if we can mount a flying carpet or rocket board we should be able to mount flying dragons or even a scooter.

Not really.

 

Since a petless Mastermind is basically an extremely weak defender.

 

Using a jet pack instead of fly costs me less than 1.5 mph fly speed, which only matters between missions 

 

And during missions themselves, it doesn't affect anything. 

 

 

 

 

[Sakai]

19 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Since a petless Mastermind is basically an extremely weak defender.

 

 

 

 

An extremely weak defender with a whip. 

[Haijinx]

46 minutes ago, Sakai said:

An extremely weak defender with a whip. 

Back before Dual Pistols it was Weak Defenders with Pistols 

[gurugeorge]

On 2/22/2020 at 7:53 PM, Snarky said:

I was there for the evolution.  So I really do not need a history lesson in getting travel powers earlier and faster and easier.

 

Let us look at where we are now.  Okay, I do want to go back after all.  For me it started when I found I could go to FBZ at level 1 and buy a jetpack.  PITA trip, but wow was that worth it.

 

But now?  P2W gives perma temp fly.  /macro zone teleporters are better and faster that the Long Range Teleport power from the pool.  In fact uyou have /macro zone TP, and Ouro, and Mission/group/assemble the team powers from P2W

 

I am not saying this is bad, hear me out.  We need this kind of speed to keep the populace racing to missions and grinding TF and content.  So, I like where these are, however odd the walk (teleport?) was to get here.

 

What I am saying is the Travel Power pools.  Ooof.  Do they look like a house that has not been painted in 50 years or what?  For the investment of power picks you get very little back.  Glad it is there for customizable powers and niche players.  But by and large?  not much good on ROFLSTOMP teams except as mules.  okay, hover is good for hoverblasting.  sort of by definition.  similarly CJ.  but when you can look at 10-11? 12? pools and name a handful of powers that are 'good' and the rest are like.   hrm….why do you take that?  oh really?  and that works for you?   No, still don't want it, GL.  

 

I realize how much the Homecoming Team is working on.  And I do appreciate it.  Stuff like the recent Tanker/Brute changes are moving the game forward.

 

But the Travel Pools...  Take Long range Teleport.  The first time I saw this I took it immediately.  Thinking I would pick the exact spot in the zone I would TP to... okay, funny now.  But how about just modifying this to mission teleporter if your door is in that zone?  Because you zone into Nerva and find the door is still 1.5 miles away and you die a little inside lol. There are probably a dozen little 'hacks' like this that could be quick and dirty patched onto the Travel Powers that would bring new relevancy to them.

 

Because as the game has moved forward (thank you all) our Travel Powers have stayed in the same spot.

 

 

I don't understand the rationale for having all the easy travel in the game.  I thought the Ouroboros portal had already killed the game to a certain extent back in 2009 or whenever it was (that's when I left). 

 

As a superhero MMO, CoH had already painted itself into a corner with the travel powers, but that was kind of unavoidable for a superhero MMO.  But having all the easy access powers on top of that, and now on this server the public teleporter - well there's just no point using anything else now, unless you're deliberately restricting yourself for the sake of roleplay.

 

But I suppose the current devs' rationale is that it's no longer a "live" game, so there's no need to keep players staying "in" the virtual world, so what the heck.

 

I remember ages ago a discussion on the CO forums, where people were complaining that the main city zone in CO (forget its name) seemed tiny and cramped compared to other MMOs.  Then someone demonstrated that it takes about as much time to walk from one end of that zone to the other as it does to cross one of the main zones in WoW.

 

IOW, that's the effect of travel powers - psychologically, they shrink the gameworld.  So devs who develop a superhero MMO are, in a way, making a rod for their own back (they have to compensate by making the zones even bigger).  (Which is probably one of the reasons we don't see more superhero MMOs.)  But then to have all sorts of easy instant travel on top of that - it completely kills the sense of space and vastness, and makes the virtual world seem tiny to the point of being a mere lobby.

 

But don't listen to me, I'm just an old man shouting at the clouds 🙂

[jubakumbi]

2 minutes ago, gurugeorge said:

I don't understand the rationale for having all the easy travel in the game. 

Time.

While if in the mood to do so, it is fun to just fly around, but time spent travelling is not, for most people IME, considered 'fun' in an of itself, most of the time.

The time element of MMOs is skewed, because the original idea was longer play = more money.

With no corporate entity to feed, lots of people are not interested is spending the precious time they have on the planet travelling in a game to get to the 'fun'.

Even before the Snap, this game and others were changing that.

Battletech just added a setting to stop yet another time sink that did nothing but make you watch paint dry in the form of a counter clock.

Making people wait to get to the 'fun part' just for the sake of waiting or to build anticipation is simply no longer a 'thing', IMO.

Time is precious.

[Lines]

7 minutes ago, gurugeorge said:

 

But don't listen to me, I'm just an old man shouting at the clouds 🙂

I echo you entirely, but am totally aware it's a very minority opinion. I love the feeling of being in a big world, so I travel everywhere at a slow pace when there's no pressure.

 

I wouldn't want the game to become inconvenient, but I would insist that the conveniences are at least immersive. The TUNNEL system makes no dang sense to me.

[gurugeorge]

11 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

Time.

While if in the mood to do so, it is fun to just fly around, but time spent travelling is not, for most people IME, considered 'fun' in an of itself, most of the time.

The time element of MMOs is skewed, because the original idea was longer play = more money.

With no corporate entity to feed, lots of people are not interested is spending the precious time they have on the planet travelling in a game to get to the 'fun'.

Even before the Snap, this game and others were changing that.

Battletech just added a setting to stop yet another time sink that did nothing but make you watch paint dry in the form of a counter clock.

Making people wait to get to the 'fun part' just for the sake of waiting or to build anticipation is simply no longer a 'thing', IMO.

Time is precious.

I understand all that, and of course it was partly about keeping up a timesink from the point of view of the devs.  But as I suggested by the example of WoW, there's also a factor of immersion.  You get into a game, in part, by being captivated by its virtual world aspect.  So the bargain was always two birds with one stone - the devs get some retention, but how do they get it?  Not just by the sheer factor of imprisoning people to yomping around on shanks' pony, but by the fact that that provides, for the player, a sense of time and place, a sense of virtual world (and then it's up to the art design team and designers to make that world feel like someplace you want to be).

 

What you're talking about, the time preference, is for veterans of a game who've already smelt all the roses there are to smell, and they're in a more mechanistic phase of gameplay, where they're into min-maxing characters, efficient raiding, etc., etc.  So yeah, for vets, they do need something that makes the game world shrink a bit, so the psychology is somewhat reversed - timesinks just annoy them.

 

And yeah, I understand that from the pov of the current devs, pretty much everyone playing now is a vet.  So it does make sense that way.

 

As I say, I'm just kind of vaguely lamenting the loss of the feel of the game in its earliest days, when getting the team together was part of the ambience of the game.  Getting the team together and keeping them together psychologically while waiting was part of gameplay for the team leader (part of the social aspect).  Waiting for someone to zone in was a chance for everyone to chat by the door, do emotes, etc. - again, little opportunities to feel more like you're in a different time and space from daily life.

 

All those little synergies to do with maintaining a sense of virtual space is what makes the difference, IMHO, between an MMORPG proper, and a massively multiplayer game with a virtual world lobby, say something like Warframe (an excellent game in its own right).  It's not that one is better or worse than the other, but they are somewhat different in terms of core concept.  The idea for MMORPGs was always to provide an actual virtual world, somewhere to "live" - in which case the idea that your'e "wasting time" living in a virtual space, well that kind of makes sense in contrast to daily life, but the point of MMORPGs initially was to provide a virtual alternative to daily life, a place for people to form community and grow together psychologically without the particular constraints and restraints of normal life.

 

But it seems that maintaining that sense of virtual space has been almost impossible for MMORPGs in the long run - because eventually most players become vets, and the virtual world aspect means less to them than it did initially (when it hooked them).

Edited February 25, 2020 by gurugeorge

[Haijinx]

Yes.  Super Heroes should spend more time on the monorail.

 

Y'all think that they can implement a city bus system?

 

 

[Lines]

Just now, Haijinx said:

Yes.  Super Heroes should spend more time on the monorail.

 

Y'all think that they can implement a city bus system?

 

 

Good point.

[Haijinx]

Can you imagine being an Uber driver and picking up some Bio Armor hero.

 

No .. no ... oh man, those are Leather seats!

 

 

 

[jubakumbi]

Just now, gurugeorge said:

I understand all that, and of course it was partly about keeping up a timesink from the point of view of the devs.  But as I suggested by the example of WoW, there's also a factor of immersion.  You get into a game, in part, by being captivated by its virtual world aspect.  So the bargain was always two birds with one stone - the devs get some retention, but how do they get it?  Not just by the sheer factor of imprisoning people to yomping around on shanks' pony, but by the fact that that provides, for the player, a sense of time and place, a sense of virtual world (and then it's up to the art design team and designers to make that world feel like someplace you want to be).

 

What you're talking about, the time preference, is for veterans of a game who've already smelt all the roses there are to smell, and they're in a more mechanistic phase of gameplay, where they're into min-maxing characters, efficient raiding, etc., etc.  So yeah, for vets, they do need something that makes the game world shrink a bit, so the psychology is somewhat reversed - timesinks just annoy them.

 

And yeah, I understand that from the pov of the current devs, pretty much everyone playing now is a vet.  So it does make sense that way.

 

As I say, I'm just kind of vaguely lamenting the loss of the feel of the game in its earliest days, when getting the team together was part of the ambience of the game.  Getting the team together and keeping them together psychologically while waiting was part of gameplay for the team leader (part of the social aspect).  Waiting for someone to zone in was a chance for everyone to chat by the door, do emotes, etc. - again, little opportunities to feel more like you're in a different time and space from daily life.

"You can never go home."

 

The thing you want is based on so many more things than just feeling like the world is large, it's also the feeling of there being unknown things and all the rest, IMO.

 

I look for what I consider time wasters in all games, even in the ones I start fresh when I am not a vet.

 

I'll play your game, I pay you to play it, but I won't pay you to sit and watch the screen - I want to have in interactive game, that's why I play games and not watch TV.

 

Immersion does not have to waste my time.

I play games for the escape, to be in a different world, but things like increased travel time for the sake of immersion is, to me, a very weak argument for it, there are better ways.

Even in comics, unless it helps tell the story specifically, you get "8 hours later" and the result, etc.

[gurugeorge]

2 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

"You can never go home."

 

The thing you want is based on so many more things than just feeling like the world is large, it's also the feeling of there being unknown things and all the rest, IMO.

 

I look for what I consider time wasters in all games, even in the ones I start fresh when I am not a vet.

 

I'll play your game, I pay you to play it, but I won't pay you to sit and watch the screen - I want to have in interactive game, that's why I play games and not watch TV.

 

Immersion does not have to waste my time.

I play games for the escape, to be in a different world, but things like increased travel time for the sake of immersion is, to me, a very weak argument for it, there are better ways.

Even in comics, unless it helps tell the story specifically, you get "8 hours later" and the result, etc.

It's not that I want it, I realize you can only lose your virginity once 🙂

 

But it's more a lament about the seeming inevitability of things going the way the do in MMORPGs - at least MMORPGs where everything has to be represented graphically (it's a bit different for the older text-based games).  I'm talking on another thread with someone about the dreadful inevitability of "damage is king" - which kills the game in another way.  

 

It's just a shame that devs, for all their efforts, have never been able to get around the seemingly inevitable progression from virtual world to multiplayer lobby.

[Lines]

SWTOR is a bigger culprit to me. I haven't played much of it and still have much, much more to do and explore despite years of sporadically playing it. Recently they enabled the galactic travel menu from anywhere, whereas before you had to use it from your ship.

 

So if you want to do things immersively and still use the ship, you're basically just picking a very roundabout way of accessing a menu that is always on the menu bar. For someone not used to the game, it's kinda just depressing and reaks of desperation to please and maintain their veterans. It's an offputting smell to me.

 

At least in CoX, travelling still feels organic when you choose to. That's a really big deal for me.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Lines

[jubakumbi]

1 minute ago, gurugeorge said:

It's just a shame that devs, for all their efforts, have never been able to get around the seemingly inevitable progression from virtual world to multiplayer lobby.

I would argue that the players are forcing this change and that developers are just giving the masses what they want.

Don't get me wrong, I would love some immersive worlds, worth exploring, not just filler for flyovers, but the current masses want a game where they can gather a few friends in a few minutes and then achieve a goal in under an hour, because have to leave for X in an hour.

 

As is being discussed in another thread to a degree, those of us that game for hours on end are more the exception than the rule - it's hard to get people to invest in games that have what appears to be a limited ROI due to a small audience.

 

Travel in COH works 'just right' IMO, I can get there as fast or as leisurely as I like - the world is small to someone with Super-powered travel options, as it would be if this many heroes were one place helping each other.

 

Personally, most of the options I see presented here to change Travel powers really end up being more power creep, forcing fewer trade-offs in character building, which IMO makes the game less immersive than the travel powers make the game too small...the trade-offs give the game it's flavor, IMO, and many of the ideas presented just make things generic and overpowered.

[Lines]

5 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

 

Personally, most of the options I see presented here to change Travel powers really end up being more power creep, forcing fewer trade-offs in character building, which IMO makes the game less immersive than the travel powers make the game too small...the trade-offs give the game it's flavor, IMO, and many of the ideas presented just make things generic and overpowered.

 

I agree with your point, though I'm not sure I'm seeing the suggestions you're referring to. The practical suggestions look like minor tweaks to me.

 

And yeah, I do agree that travel is in a pretty good place. Even better as the origin power pools broaden our options.

[jubakumbi]

18 minutes ago, Lines said:

 

I agree with your point, though I'm not sure I'm seeing the suggestions you're referring to. The practical suggestions look like minor tweaks to me.

 

And yeah, I do agree that travel is in a pretty good place. Even better as the origin power pools broaden our options.

Should have said pools and not travel powers, my bad - was thinking things like just adding Hasten as a inherent, etc.

[Ulysses Dare]

7 hours ago, gurugeorge said:

But as I suggested by the example of WoW, there's also a factor of immersion. 

By far the best add-on I ever got for WoW was the one that let me play Bejeweled when I was riding on the back of a griffon for twenty minutes. Because, yes, that is awfully cool and immersive the first time you experience it but, by the twentieth time, it starts to get old.

[Snarky]

Time.  Indeed.  I ran 1-34 content on one character.  Nerva was really getting on my Nerva.  Fly a mile.  say hi.  fly a mile.  go get glowie.  fly a mile.  back to say hi.  It was almost as bad as another kill all just for the sake of completeness.  TP pool.  F-ing useless (to me)  My version of TP powers.  TP Enemy.  TP other.  TP self (combat repositioning for stealthing or Granite Armor masochists. TP to Specific location in zone only.  (door, contact, location marker)  TP to Zone.  Any zone.  Hit power, go to map.  That's a power pool.  Blink from one end of the map to another, that's a power.  TP blink a20-50 times to get across a map?  As a pick?  really?  in the modern game?  Okay....sure (noooooo)  

Edited February 26, 2020 by Snarky

[VileTerror]

Try Jaunt from Experimentation on the Test Server while it lasts.  I can't imagine this Power making it to Live in its current state.  Not without humiliating Teleport in a BIG way.

[Bopper]

3 minutes ago, VileTerror said:

Try Jaunt from Experimentation on the Test Server while it lasts.  I can't imagine this Power making it to Live in its current state.  Not without humiliating Teleport in a BIG way.

I looked it up on City of data and it shows Jaunt was always intended to be 1s animation (others are 2s). My guess is it's a finished product, and it's the other Expermentation powers that are needing playtesting/balancing. I noticed toxic dart is already weaker than the initial version (which is good because it would've been too OP)

[VileTerror]

As I mentioned in the other thread; while the data states 1 Second, it really feels like it's closer to 0.67  . . . maybe that's just a perspective thing, but this sucker really does feel instantaneous.

[Bopper]

1 minute ago, VileTerror said:

As I mentioned in the other thread; while the data states 1 Second, it really feels like it's closer to 0.67  . . . maybe that's just a perspective thing, but this sucker really does feel instantaneous.

Perhaps the 1 second counts the entire teleport process, from start at X to end at Y? I'll really have to take a look now, sounds fun