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

[Coyotedancer]

21 minutes ago, 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.

Uhm... You DO know that this is a power independent of the Teleport pool now, right? It's granted to everyone who gets the Accolades. 

[ShardWarrior]

23 minutes ago, skoryy said:

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

Given the currently obscene recharge time on the P2W base teleport portal, this is not an acceptable option in my opinion. 

[Glacier Peak]

2 minutes ago, Lines said:

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.

 

 

Not to mention the proliferation of the Ouroborus portal at level 1 now. There are so many more options for travel with these changes, not less!

[Player2]

I'm okay with all of the teleport changes, however, I am a little sad to see this one:

 

 

I remember the days of player-organized beach parties where people would drop O-portals on top of each other to create bonfire effects.  Lasting for five minutes was nice because they would linger and every now and again, people could just "toss another log" on to the fire when it started to dim with portals blinking out.  Having to refresh every 90 seconds will kill that vibe.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Player2

[skoryy]

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

Given the currently obscene recharge time on the P2W base teleport portal, this is not an acceptable option in my opinion. 

Yeah, 30 minutes is honestly excessive.

[Lines]

The p2w base teleporter recharge time is now 10 minutes.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Lines

[Coyotedancer]

1 minute ago, Lines said:

The p2w base teleporter recharge time is 10 minutes.

And the p2w Supergroup portal summon is 30. 

[Vanden]

Just now, Coyotedancer said:

And the p2w Supergroup portal summon is 30. 

But it's not the only way to get into a base from anywhere.

[EmperorSteele]

3 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

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. 

The Teleport hubs will still work (as long as you're next to a base portal), and you have 2 ways to get a power that lets you drop a base portal at your feet. No, it's not "as good" as what we have now. Nothing possibly can be.

But, listen. You would have made most of those alts even WITHOUT an easy way to get around, right? You don't HAVE to grind out accolades. But, those who do get a minor convenience. That's all.

[zenblack]

4 hours ago, Xanatos said:

SUGGESTED TWEAKS TO POWERS

 

Base Transporter 

Reduce recharge from 10mins to 30s. (To match Base Teleporter).

 

Pocket D VIP Teleporter

Reduce recharge from 10mins to 30s. (To match Base Teleporter).

 

Supergroup Portal

Reduce recharge from 30mins to 90s. (To match Ouroboros).

 

Base Teleporter

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

Rapid Response Portal

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

Increase recharge from 30s to 90s. (To match Ouroboros)

 

The above balancing will keep everything uniform and easy to keep track of, remove the weird "limited charge" restriction, and will have the added benefit of making the P2W powers optional, and only required for those who don't have the dayjob portals unlocked.

I support these changes to the recharge times.

[GM Tock]

Focused Feedback threads are under tighter moderation than other places.  Everone, please stay on topic concerning the powers in discussion.

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, macskull said:

It's not getting removed. Read the patch notes.

True, but I could have sworn it was screaming. I couldn't hear anything, but my dogs were running around like there was something setting them off, though...   

[CrudeVileTerror]

There is another issue with having SO MANY of these transit Powers: 

Power Tray Slots

 

I'm already at capacity:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/12662-ran-out-of-room-need-more-power-trays/

And not to mention that with all these additional transit Powers, post-Respec clean-up is going to be even more of a hassle for everyone:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14927-save-and-load-command-for-power-tray-configuration/

 

I get it.  

The enterbase command wasn't meant for us, and there are players who feel that the community should have never adopted the use of it.

But we did.  And it demonstrated something to many of us:  This game is much more enjoyable for us with travel times significantly demolished!

To the Homecoming Devs' credit, they opted to let the command stay in our hands until this point, and they're doing their best to find a fair compromise.

 

But with about a dozen separate Powers which, when combined, barely compete with the sheer usefulness of the singular command, then we're going to run in to some issues.

The community has largely been trained to accept and appreciate the enterbase command.  Maybe the Devs regret not dealing with it sooner, but the genie was let out of its bottle for a good long time and we're looking to find a better solution for everyone from this point on.

 

There are a lot of redundant transit Powers, frankly.  That wasn't the fault of the Homecoming Team; they were redundant already thanks to the Legacy Devs.

Removing options from players is not the ideal solution, and I think the Homecoming Team understand that.

Without getting a clear and concise breakdown of what the Homecoming Devs specifically want out of this, I'm operating under the assumptions listed above.

 

To those ends:

I feel the optimal play is to make EACH of the transit Powers meaningful by allowing the average player to get comparable use out of any one of these Powers when held up to the standards we achieved with the enterbase command.

To do that, each of these Powers need to have significantly lower cooldowns and/or cast times.  Having them blocked for Master of-... and PvP will hopefully be a small issue once they're all standardized.  Having them be inoperable for a few seconds after using a Combat Power or being attacked (not necessarily being hit) is also very reasonable and fair.  I think that with those limitations in mind, a 3 seconds or less activation time is very reasonable for all of these Powers, and a "drop" duration equal to the recharge time is also reasonable.

 

Hopefully we'll hear from the Devs and the rest of the Homecoming Team on how they feel about that, and what reasons they might have if they feel this is unreasonable.

[EmperorSteele]

So when I tint the portable Base teleporter, some parts of the FX remain gray.

[Macchiato]

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.

[arthurh35353]

Just now, EmperorSteele said:

So when I tint the portable Base teleporter, some parts of the FX remain gray.

That's pretty normal for how effects work at times, so I'd say less bug, more of limitation on the engine.

[Widower]

I know this is an emotional topic for some, but please don't take it as an invitation to troll everyone.

[Vanden]

4 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

There is another issue with having SO MANY of these transit Powers: 

Power Tray Slots

I solve that issue with popmenus.

[CrudeVileTerror]

I like the idea of Pocket D being flagged as globally "close to portal," @Macchiato.

Other "safe zones" could possibly be flagged in this way, such as the Mercy helicopter terminus and admin building courtyard, or Atlas Park City Hall courtyard.  Basically anywhere that enemies don't generally spawn could be "Transit Areas."

[CrudeVileTerror]

Sorry, @Vanden, I'm not terribly up on the whole popmenu this, but . . . do they display the cooldown timers for Powers like the Power Tray icons do?  If not, then I'm afraid that's not a solution for me.

[Luminara]

16 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

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.

 

No-one's trying to be an ass.  There's a lot of communication that isn't happening in this thread, despite all of the talk.

 

People are saying that they have hundreds of characters and the LRT accolade is a bad thing for them.  Some of us don't understand why anyone needs the accolade on that many characters.  Explain it to us.  Help us understand.

 

People are saying that it's going to take too long to acquire the badges.  Those of us who disagree are seeing it from a different perspective, we're either picking up the badges as we go, or we're taking our end-game character back to zones to get them later, and not finding it difficult to complete the set for every zone.  Yes, it's going to take longer to do that with multiple characters, but were those exploration badges skipped initially on all of those characters because they were difficult to acquire?  Was it because they weren't worth the effort to pick up on the way to missions, even if they were right next to the line of travel?  Were the badges skipped because the characters were power-leveled?  What?

 

People are saying that it's going to take too long to get the full usage of the LRT accolade on every character they have.  If a player has more characters than they can play if they played a different character every day for a year, why are they trying to get the accolade on all of them?  We don't comprehend having to chase the accolade for that many characters, why it's necessary, why you (plural, not singling you out, @Zeraphia) can't just let some of them go until you circle back around to them, rather than trying to get the accolade as soon as possible.  Tell us.  Give us your (plural again) perspectives so we can understand what's really going on from your side of the monitor.

 

Just telling us that you don't like it because it means you'll have to get badges on a lot of characters doesn't communicate the problems you're envisioning.  So communicate with us.

[Vanden]

1 minute ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Sorry, @Vanden, I'm not terribly up on the whole popmenu this, but . . . do they display the cooldown timers for Powers like the Power Tray icons do?  If not, then I'm afraid that's not a solution for me.

Not currently, but you could suggest the command be updated to include power recharge/owned status as one of the things that popmenus can check when greying out powers. They can already do that based on things like badges.

[Macchiato]

1 minute ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I like the idea of Pocket D being flagged as globally "close to portal," @Macchiato.

Other "safe zones" could possibly be flagged in this way, such as the Mercy helicopter terminus and admin building courtyard, or Atlas Park City Hall courtyard.  Basically anywhere that enemies don't generally spawn could be "Transit Areas."

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.

[ShardWarrior]

9 minutes ago, Luminara said:

People are saying that they have hundreds of characters and the LRT accolade is a bad thing for them.  Some of us don't understand why anyone needs the accolade on that many characters.  Explain it to us.  Help us understand.

Why should they have to explain themselves?  This is how they play.  Let them play how they like.

[CrudeVileTerror]

It's pretty simple, I think, @Luminara:

Roleplay.

 

There is no shortage of roleplayers in this game.  I can not speak for all roleplayers, but I do try my best to keep a close ear to the concerns of "my people" given the role I have in the OOC and RP Global Channels (which, don't get me wrong; I know there are discords and stuff which are far more active these days, and I'm not the only player out there who is advocating for roleplayers, and not all roleplayers are the same, at et cetera et cetera et cetera . . . but I -am- hearing a LOT of discontent from the ones whom I do try to accurately represent in this forum).

 

The current speed with which roleplayers can use the enterbase command is a thing of absolute beauty!   It's not just about popping in to a nightclub Base, or zoning out to "the real world" when we're done.  We create elaborate scenes and scenarios, with a great deal of travel taking us from locale to locale in a very short amount of time.

enterbase made that a reality, and we absolutely LOVE IT!

 

A lot of the players I've spoken to still aren't aware that this command was never intended for them.  They don't visit the forums and they think the people claiming such as just trolls.

This change is going to hit them pretty hard.

So this feedback that we're offering saying that the current transit Power options aren't ideal, it's with the context that we're looking to soften that blow as much as possible.  We're trying to maintain the level of enjoyment and pleasure we've grown accustomed to playing this game over the past year-and-change.

 

Travel, to us, isn't so much a part of gameplay.   It's a thing that gets in the way of gameplay.   If a scene is supposed to take place during a leisurely walk; cool.   We'll leisurely walk.  But if we're trying to keep a story/act engaged and pithy; sometimes we just need to get from point A to point B instantly.

 

Again, going to emphasize:   I do NOT speak for all roleplayers.  I am just advocating for some of the players who feel their voices will not be heard here; either because they don't trust themselves to speak clearly, or (as is most often the case) they're terrified of being shouted down by "hardcore gamers."

(Also, not saying you're not a roleplayer, @Luminara.  Just so that doesn't seem like an accusation I'm making.)