Focused Feedback: Travel Updates: Base Teleportation, Long Range Teleporter Accolade, Special TP Powers

[Lines]

The new base portal portal is very nice.

 

I think all the powers could still stand to shave off a little bit off cooldown, and the 10s activation time still feels excessive on some of them to me. But I really like that we have so many organic options for getting around the city.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Lines

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, Xanatos said:

This seems more of a semantic issue around the use of the category/word "accolade", than an actual game balance concern.

Assuming accolades are the product of specific actions taken over time to achieve a required prerequisite, thereby unlocking access to the given accolade power - how would you say accolades are different? From my perspective, both will continue to require an investment of time and achieving certain actions (collecting badges). I can't agree that all accolades should be given account wide if unlocked on one character, which is why I can't agree on the LRT accolade unlocking for all characters as well.

[Mr. Vee]

10s is still excessive, not just you. Are they still interruptible by an ouro portal or time HoT ticks or a light breeze?

[@Ghost]

8 minutes ago, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

10s is still excessive, not just you. Are they still interruptible by an ouro portal or time HoT ticks or a light breeze?

This is what I really wanna know, since the bug fix notes didn't mention it. Shifting towards those long casts when anything will break them is gonna be a headache. 

[Lines]

They are still interruptible, yes.

[Keen]

I'm good with almost everything but 

8 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Activation time for all of these powers reduced from 15s to 10s

10s is way too much, specially on the charge-based powers (Day Jobs). 10s seems fine on the P2W powers, but please let us use the charge-based powers faster since they're not unlimited.

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Keen

[arthurh35353]

3 hours ago, Greycat said:

It doesn't only benefit melee. Think of a kinetics defender. Or any AT with a PBAOE nuke or hold.

 

Though, as mentioned with the warshade comments - a brief disorient (you DID just yank a group through space) would be nice for safety's sake.

 

... you know, I wonder how this will affect MSRs.

They do have to be able to survive getting that many dragged over to you. You might be able to survive a second of activating one more (maybe!) but likely your squishies are going to be mezzed to hell and hone later on.

And why is it that we can't still have the ranged teleport option while anyone can unlock the accolade to? Even if they are made so you can't use both or are exclusive? Shouldn't we have the option of a great utility power (that I don't see used that often) instead of this combat 'teleport whole mobs' power?

 

They literally are merging teleport foe with friend to then replace it with a larger teleport foe group in replacement of a utility power to the detriment of people's builds. 

 

I like that the teleport foe is being replaced with a combat power, that actually makes sense. The mass teleport foe actually doesn't. It's basically being put in there as replacement of long range teleport because they are (sorta) giving it to everyone for free-ish.

 

I'd much rather have something like Bifurcation like Trap Door had. Even if it was a gimpy pet version, it would still be cool.

Edited October 24, 2020 by arthurh35353
Clarification on point

[Vanden]

One idea I pushed in closed beta was to make it so your LRT options depend on how many Teleport pool powers you have. Something like: 0-1: collect zone accolades like everyone else; 2: Get one accolade and unlock all city zones as destination, still need to unlock hazard zones; 3 or more: all zones available with one zone accolade. There are UI issues with letting LRT give you access to every single zone, though, so such a change might have to wait for those to be resolved.

[CrudeVileTerror]

A thought (or two) . . . 

Would it be possible to create tradeable "Beacon Tokens" as a new Special Salvage item?

You earn one for every 8 Exploration Badges you find, which you can then redeem for a Zone unlocked on the Long Range Teleport Power List?

Tradeable, so that you can collect these Tokens on one character, then toss them over to another of your characters to facilitate the whole experience.  Or alternatively help out your friends who might be having trouble unlocking things themselves?

And these Tokens could be purchased from P2W or from the Market for something like 500,000 Inf?  

 

Otherwise . . . well, I already have a Taxi character on Everlasting.  I suppose I'll end up dusting them off . . . 

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, arthurh35353 said:

The mass teleport foe actually doesn't. It's basically being put in there as replacement of long range teleport because they are (sorta) giving it to everyone for free-ish.

 

It actually does make sense.  It existed in the original version of Gravity, but it was removed for precisely the reason you indicated above, giving a squishie with no status protection a "come kill me NAO" power didn't work well.

 

As a pool power, it's viable.  It can be used by melee characters safely.  It can be used by squishies to bring runners back into a debuff that's helping them survive.  It can be used by squishies who have access to powers which can be used to complement it, like PBAoE controls and debuffs.  In the post-Incarnate world, it's potentially even more utilitarian, something even the squishiest of squishies can use safely.  It makes sense from the perspective of allowing anyone to use it, whereas it didn't when it was restricted to Grav.

[ScarySai]

Did some running around on a DB/EA stalker to get a feel for how long it should take to gather every badge in a given zone on average. Timer starts when I enter the zone, SS/CJ are all that are used, no ninja run, no jump packs. SS itself has no speed boosts slotted.

 

PI: 2:52 (Poor starting spot.)
Talos: 3:57 (Had to go around a few things due to lack of jump height.)
IP: 4:05 (Shave off about 30s with more jump height.)
Terra Volta: 4:29 (With jump pack or flight this easily could have taken only two minutes)
Atlas: 2:19 (jump height handicap again.)

KR: 3:16
 

I could do the rest of the zones, but the fact PI, Talos and IP took only that long with the handicaps in place should be enough of an indication.

 

It's really not that much work to get a zone unlocked for your LRTP, I see this being overstated a lot and it's just not true. Unless you're taking every single alt to the shadow shard on the regular, I don't see this as an issue.

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Unless you're taking every single alt to the shadow shard on the regular, I don't see this as an issue.

The Shadow Shard zones (and all hazard zones) aren't even valid destinations for LRT.

[Mr. Vee]

1 minute ago, ScarySai said:

 

 

It's really not that much work to get a zone unlocked for your LRTP, I see this being overstated a lot and it's just not true. Unless you're taking every single alt to the shadow shard on the regular, I don't see this as an issue.

It's not that bad, I used to do it on every toon on live back when merits were at a premium. But I'm not going to bother if the cooldown is 10 minutes.

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

A thought (or two) . . . 

Would it be possible to create tradeable "Beacon Tokens" as a new Special Salvage item?

You earn one for every 8 Exploration Badges you find, which you can then redeem for a Zone unlocked on the Long Range Teleport Power List?

Tradeable, so that you can collect these Tokens on one character, then toss them over to another of your characters to facilitate the whole experience.  Or alternatively help out your friends who might be having trouble unlocking things themselves?

And these Tokens could be purchased from P2W or from the Market for something like 500,000 Inf?

 

That's a good compromise.

 

2 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Otherwise . . . well, I already have a Taxi character on Everlasting.  I suppose I'll end up dusting them off . . . 

 

Well, that almost sounds like you're expecting some of these changes to lead to players stepping out of the AE and/or bases and actually be present in the game world.  Ha.  HA, I say!

[CrudeVileTerror]

Bear in mind that some of us have dozens or hundreds of characters.  Having to repeat the process for each and every last one of them is not at all appealing, folks.

[Glacier Peak]

General Feedback & Testing Notes (hope this is seen amongst the sea of generic opinions!):

 

LONG RANGE TELEPORT ACCOLADE POWER

• After activating the Long Range Teleport Accolade power, a power tray pops up with the "Long Range Teleport Second Chance" power icon, allowing for a second attempt at using the power (much like the original T4 Teleport Pool Power). However, the icon that is displayed in this power tray is actually the T4 Long Range Teleport pool power icon and not the new icon given for the accolade teleport power.

Spoiler

 

• Activating the LRT power as a hero displays twenty zones which are eligible for travel, assuming all exploration badges have been unlocked. The in-game description indicates only sixteen for heroes. Doing the same thing as a villain displays fourteen zones which are eligible for travel, assuming all exploration badges have been unlocked. The in-game description indicates only eight for villains. This is only slightly confusing, as a character that is either a Rogue or Vigilante has access to twenty seven zones. This may be due to the power itself not being tied to alignment. See screenshots below:

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

• The description box for the Long Range Teleport Accolade power indicates that the following Paragon City zones can be unlocked: "Atlas Park, Brickstown, [...], Rikti War Zone, Rogue Isles, Skyway City...". Similar mislabeling is found in the following Rogue Isles zones that can be unlocked: "Port Oakes, Praetoria, Sharkhead Isles, ...". To alleviate any confusion, I would recommend removing the two underlined items in the description of the power, as well as reordering the zones which can be accessed via level progression or some other method.

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Glacier Peak

[skoryy]

10 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Bear in mind that some of us have dozens or hundreds of characters.  Having to repeat the process for each and every last one of them is not at all appealing, folks.

You can still P2W base portal and ZONE-8888.  Heck, I didn't even know about how LRT worked until today.

 

EDIT: Admittedly that's ten mil an alt, YMMV on how fast one could rustle up that much inf.

Edited October 24, 2020 by skoryy

[Vanden]

3 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Bear in mind that some of us have dozens or hundreds of characters.  Having to repeat the process for each and every last one of them is not at all appealing, folks.

The only way I could possibly see someone earnestly claiming they "have" to do that is if they also actually took LRT on dozens or hundreds of characters.

[arthurh35353]

Just now, Vanden said:

The only way I could possibly see someone earnestly claiming they "have" to do that is if they also actually took LRT on dozens or hundreds of characters.

Some of us have liked Teleport since Beta, thanks. 😛

[XaoGarrent]

I guess you really want people to experience how outdated many of the design decisions in this game are. I mean, not that they were good decisions back then, either, but that was also before over a decade and a half of progress in the industry.

 

"Bold strategy, cotton. Let's see if it pays off."

Edited October 24, 2020 by XaoGarrent

[Coyotedancer]

23 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Bear in mind that some of us have dozens or hundreds of characters.  Having to repeat the process for each and every last one of them is not at all appealing, folks.

That's my only issue with it, as I've already mentioned elsewhere. It's hell on people with a lot of alts.

 

Realistically... there's no way I'm going to hunt down all of those accolades for every single one of my crew. (Keeping in mind it's a "gotta do BOTH sides" thing for a fair few of them.) Not as things stand now. And that's likely to have an impact on travel for the ones who end up getting skipped when I say to heck with the grind.

 

Otherwise? I love having banners for the Shard Zones at long last... second the request for adding Cim to the LRT list... and agree completely that the 30 minute cool-down on the supergroup summonable portal power is way, way longer than it needs to be. 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[ShardWarrior]

4 hours ago, Xanatos said:

Base Teleporter

Remove charge function. (Have it work just like a regular power without charges.)

This please.  Thank you. 

[Zeraphia]

As someone with hundreds of alts, this LTR idea is good in theory, terrible in execution for how grindy and annoying it would be to have to get the badges for *every single zone* that the alt uses, and it would likely lead me to be discouraged from making new characters knowing I'd have to redo this process all over again, which would inevitably burn me out from playing a limited number of combinations. 

 

Also, I'm sick of the toxicity of some forum posters on here. Everyone has a voice and an opinion, and bashing others for their opinions is blatantly rude and uncalled for. 

[CrudeVileTerror]

As it stands, if the Cooldowns on all these travel Powers stay as long as they are, then I -will- need to unlock all of these various travel Powers to maintain the same speed at which I skip between zones as I do on the current live-release version of the Homecoming Servers.

 

Alternatively, if the Cooldowns for Base Transporter is dropped to 30 seconds, and Supergroup Portal becomes something like 90 second duration with 90 second cooldown, then sure.  Whatever on Long Range Teleport.  I'll just use the Base Transporter and Supergroup Portal instead.

 

Ideally, we'll get the best of both solutions so that players can meaningful choose between their transit options.

[Lines]

There's no need to get the accolades on all the maps. The one to Atlas plants you on the doorstep of the tram, where you're in spitting distance of the TUNNEL portal too. That's a lot of zone access right there.

 

 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Lines