Make Group Fly useful change it to Grant Flight instead

[plainguy]

There are several things wrong with Group Fly that need to be corrected. 

1.  Unless you went to Null the Gull to suppress Group Fly you will be affected by it if someone on your team uses it.
2.  Using Group Fly on team mates that have not gone to Null the Gull can upset them immensely.
3. The caster of Group fly inherently flies faster then everyone else within the bubble of Group flight, which means you will eventually out fly those you are supporting which can cause your team mates to fall to their death eventually.
4. The endurance drain is somewhat high for a power that no one wants on them without their asking and it has to be team/League wild consensus to agree.

 

Because of all the above Group Fly is EXTREMELY LIMITING.

 

Lets change it to Grant Flight.

1. Like Speed Boost and other buffs, the caster can cast Grant Flight on individuals either on their team or not on their team. 
2. If the Person is on the team with the Grant Flight person then it last as long as you are on the team/League. You as the person receiving the Grant Flight pay for the endurance out of your Endurance pool.
   • Once the person Granted Flight leaves the team it changes to a 10 minute timer. 
3. If the Person is NOT on the Grant Flight person team/League then its a timed buff.
   • 10 minutes of fly time again you paying for the endurance out of your own Endurance pool.
4. The BIG benefit is now everyone on the team is not tethered to the Granter of Group Fly or have to worry dying when the Granter gets out of range.

 

This change would allow for example a Mastermind with Group fly to allow his pets to fly around with him without upsetting the team or League. 

 

It doesn't hinder Jet Pack purchases as a Jet Pack last 30 minutes and they are still valuable to players.

 

 

[Redlynne]

25 minutes ago, plainguy said:

Lets change it to Grant Flight.

Take Inertial Reduction from Kinetics.

Swap the +Jump effects for +Fly.

Done.

[plainguy]

2 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Take Inertial Reduction from Kinetics.

Swap the +Jump effects for +Fly.

Done.

No problem with that.

 

I just think the buff is too short for flight. 

But I would be fine with a 10 minute rebuff or make it a buff all and allow the buff to be removed by the player as they deem fit. 

 

But there is no reinventing the wheel here as you are pointing out.  

a lot of the mechanics are already done, Just need to tweak the formula.

 

[Redlynne]

7 hours ago, plainguy said:

I would be fine with a 10 minute rebuff or make it a buff all and allow the buff to be removed by the player as they deem fit.

At MOST you'd want to have a 2 minute duration, not 10.

Any buff can be voluntarily canceled early by right clicking on it to make it stop.

[MTeague]

Two minutes will let you cover a lot of ground. 

But you'd still need to pay attention to the Granter and stick kinda near them if you wanted to cross the Shadow Shard, or all of Nerva.

if it's an instacast like Inertial Reduction, it would be no big deal for them to rebuff you. 

 

Now, I could see wanting some kind of option for extra heads up that it's about to wear off, etc so your group doesn't plummet to their doom while you say "ooops".  A tiny blinky icon could be easy to miss.  But I do like the "pattern it after IR idea".  It would definitely make it several thousand times more useful for MM's.

[SurfD]

It definitely needs to be some kind of "grant buff with moderately long duration" ability instead of an "aura" that falls off as soon as you are out of range.

 

I mean, you want the ultimate experience in why "group fly" is basically useless?  Take a mastermind with all 6 pets, and then try to successfully attack several of the Flying Hamidon seedlings with them using the Group Fly temp power you get after killing one.   Your pets will be all over the place falling out of the buff, and trying to move from one seedling to the next without losing half of them is an exercise in masochism.

 

Easiest fix would be to make the "aura" of Group Fly apply a "flight" buff that lasts for around 2 minutes, and refreshes every 10 seconds or so when in the aura.

[Redlynne]

Group Fly, as is, has an activation period of 2s and a buff duration of 10s ... and it already natively does not stack from same caster when used as a toggle aura (which costs 1.3 endurance every 2s, or 0.65/s before endurance reduction.

 

If you want to keep it as a toggle buff, you only need to do 4 things to it:

• Change the buff duration from 10s to 60s.  I figure this is an easy enough edit to make.
• Apply the Ignores Enhancements and Buffs property to the flight speed ... so everyone with the buff flies at the same speed (formation flying!).
• Set the flight speed buff to automatically hit the unmodified flight speed cap.
• Remove the ability to slot Fly enhancements into the power.

 

Alternatively, you can do all of that and change the power from a toggle to a click with a 60s recharge (so it's perma even with any recharge enhancement) and can slot Recharge enhancements and you're still good to go.

 

Either way you SOLVE the problem with how Group Fly works.

 

 

 

S imple

E asy

E ffective

 

... not being done ...

... yet ...

Edited May 1, 2020 by Redlynne

[tidge]

One positive of Group Fly: The 'caster' gets an awesome level of control with flight speed not seen in the rest of the pool. I have witnessed players who go ballistic because of Group Fly, and ultimately if a player plays in PUG and has that sort of reaction... it really should be on the player to hit Null the Gull as soon as they are aware of their 'allergy' to the power. Group Fly is a power that is very likely to be chosen at later levels, so it isn't as if PUG players are being griefed at the lowest levels. The most commonly witnessed use of Group Fly is with pets, although I have played with a few PUG where players used it (usually in caves). It surprised me, but as I play with all the travel powers across many toons, I recognized what was happening and adapted pretty quickly. No griefing necessary.

 

Since anti-griefing appears to be the entire motivation of the original post: The individual single-target granting of flight seems on its face to be reasonable... but that could lead to even more griefing. A better approach is to look at the behavior of the power, and not the behavior of the players.

[plainguy]

9 hours ago, tidge said:

One positive of Group Fly: The 'caster' gets an awesome level of control with flight speed not seen in the rest of the pool. I have witnessed players who go ballistic because of Group Fly, and ultimately if a player plays in PUG and has that sort of reaction... it really should be on the player to hit Null the Gull as soon as they are aware of their 'allergy' to the power. Group Fly is a power that is very likely to be chosen at later levels, so it isn't as if PUG players are being griefed at the lowest levels. The most commonly witnessed use of Group Fly is with pets, although I have played with a few PUG where players used it (usually in caves). It surprised me, but as I play with all the travel powers across many toons, I recognized what was happening and adapted pretty quickly. No griefing necessary.

 

Since anti-griefing appears to be the entire motivation of the original post: The individual single-target granting of flight seems on its face to be reasonable... but that could lead to even more griefing. A better approach is to look at the behavior of the power, and not the behavior of the players.

 

Never had an issue or heard of  anyone using a power to grief someone in this game.

I disagree with Null the Gull. It was put in place for a quick band-aid fix. 

 

Further Group Fly is still lacking as was mentioned with the fact that the caster of Group Fly can and will out-fly everyone being granted flight.  Thus causing everyone to drop and possibly dying. 

Plus I don't want to pay all that endurance to let someone fly.. Let them pay for it. 

 

  

 

[aethereal]

I'm not sure that the caster of group fly outflies everyone.  They outfly lower-level people (which would include anyone sidekicked up to their level -1, and unfortunately for the main use case for group fly, a mastermind's pets).