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

[arthurh35353]

 

1 hour ago, macskull said:

It's so people can't plant a base portal right on top of the Ouroboros exit.

The easy solution is to just have a SG base there already, so the need to drop one is diminished.

[VicZantosa]

Hi, I very rarely post, but when I saw the Beta announcement I was really curious about what changes are in store for us, and when I saw the list of stuff having to do with Teleport, especially the 'enterbasefrompasscode' thing, I realized I really needed to make a Beta character, and try this out on behalf of my group.  I was a player on Live, in fact was a Beta Tester in 2003-4 and was really happy to find out it was working again after all these years.  I'm saying this because I'm representing my supergroup of 10 people, which is mainly friends of mine that I know in real life, all of them over 45, all of them not particularly tech savvy, and all of them former Live players, who don't go to forums or beta test things, or even know how to make a base.  I discovered the base teleporter command, made a macro command and posted it on the supergroup MOTD, so that it was easy to use for my friends.  I have about 25 alts, and some members of my group have over 100.  All these facts are important, as these are players that often have not very long to play because of work or kids, don't want to spend a long time flying or jumping or whatever, and everyone was really happy about the fact they could teleport to the base and from there go to the next zone, and it was a big quality of life thing for us.  Even low-level characters that only had a few badges or levels or low influence could still have the benefit of quick travel, and it just felt, well, like a big improvement over Live.  In the beginning on Live, there were no trams, no supergroup bases, no quick travel at all, and travel powers didn't come in until later levels.  That was done as a deliberate time sink, because the devs wanted people to be on longer, and have a sense of accomplishment from getting travel powers.  Well, games grew, and fast travel became a way for more casual players to play as well.  P2W powers were done to get people to give NCSoft money, which is not a motivation here.  This feels like a giant leap backward.  I've tried all these new teleport powers on Beta, and none of them seem like good replacements for an appreciated quality of life item that is being taken away.  These changes feel like a punishment.  All of these replacement powers have something wrong.  The accolade long range teleport is cool, but it requires you to re-work it for every character, and when I am just trying out a low level alt that is way too much of a time sink for anything but my main alts.  The 10million influence P2W thing is too much money for a starting test alt, and it has a 30 minute cooldown, which feels too long to use to get back and forth from missions, if they are not in the same zone.  There's also the fact that not everyone wants to build a base just to have fast travel, and use each others transport hubs.  I haven't read all the comments here so I don't know what prompted this change, but guessing it has something to do with the fact you can use it to jump out of PVP.  I told the people in my group that they were taking away the base teleport macro, and the general response was 'that sucks, it's going to be a lot harder to play, why are they doing this to us?'  Is there no way to do a P2W power that won't work in combat, has a short cooldown like 5 minutes or something (so that you can do a short mission and jump back to your base) and has like a 5 second or less activation, and maybe not 10 million? Me and 9 other people want to know.

 

Also, big kudos for all the other stuff you are doing, it's awesome and I am very grateful and all devs win the lottery and all of your wildest dreams come true.

Edited October 26, 2020 by VicZantosa

[Jimmy]

2 hours ago, Xanatos said:

You left /enterbasefrompasscode in the game for over a year.

It was a cost/benefit decision.

 

We could've chosen to remove it as soon as it became public knowledge, but we thought the valid use that roleplayers had of easily sharing bases was valuable enough to let it slide until we could do something better.

 

Honestly, we should've just removed it immediately, but hindsight is 20/20 I suppose. If there's anything like this in the future, we'll almost certainly be removing it immediately regardless of the positive side effects.

[Jimmy]

1 hour ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I don't know the complexity and the potential for failure, but might I suggest a possible "Best of Both Worlds" thing for the drop-portal durations?

Last 5 minutes as long as owning player remains in zone.

That definitely would be the ideal solution but it's not simple at all to implement, so we went with the middle-of-the-road solution which increased the utility (keeping it around after you left so you don't accidently cut your teammates off).

[Xanatos]

5 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

It was a cost/benefit decision.

 

We could've chosen to remove it as soon as it became public knowledge, but we thought the valid use that roleplayers had of easily sharing bases was valuable enough to let it slide until we could do something better.

 

Honestly, we should've just removed it immediately, but hindsight is 20/20 I suppose. If there's anything like this in the future, we'll almost certainly be removing it immediately regardless of the positive side effects.

 

What did you think about the rest of the stuff I wrote in that post? 

[Jimmy]

3 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

What did you think about the rest of the stuff I wrote in that post? 

Honestly? You've made your opinion very clear plenty of times, both here and on the closed beta forums, and the tone of your posts are frequently venturing into questionable territory. There's nothing new in that post that hasn't already been answered in this thread by myself or someone else.

 

We've read your feedback. It has not been ignored. I think now it's time to let other people say their piece. It's a lot easier for us to gauge feedback if everyone makes their thoughts known once.

[Nerio72]

2 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

It's also why I don't use these windows in place of macro icons.  I have several macros I use across all of my characters.  But I also have a lot of character-specific macros, and having all of these from all characters in the same window creates unnecessary clutter.  Keeping a handful of macro icons unique to each character is much cleaner.

You could do both, put account wide in the custom window and the character specific in a tray. Using the custom window doesn't make it so you can't do them normaly.

[Xanatos]

20 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Honestly? You've made your opinion very clear plenty of times, both here and on the closed beta forums, and the tone of your posts are frequently venturing into questionable territory. There's nothing new in that post that hasn't already been answered in this thread by myself or someone else.

 

We've read your feedback. It has not been ignored. I think now it's time to let other people say their piece. It's a lot easier for us to gauge feedback if everyone makes their thoughts known once.

Don't understand the tone thing, but fair enough. I'll duck out of the thread now. Best of luck with it. Appreciate the work you folks do even if I disagree sometimes.

[Troo]

2 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

"Minor advantage to the player" <----_--> "mapserver armageddon."

See above

[DoctorDitko]

3 hours ago, Gunrunner said:

That's all well and good, but nothing like that exists redside.  Some of us do live on the Isles.  For me, my base is my travel hub.  Anything that makes it harder to access is a detriment.

What would be the best location in the Isles for a travel hub? Is there a place with a Base Portal, a Helicopter/Submarine, and maybe a Black Market near each other? I haven't hung out in the Isles much since before Sunset.

[DoctorDitko]

3 minutes ago, Troo said:

"Minor advantage to the player" <----_--> "mapserver armageddon."

Well, anything that gives aid or comfort to my Arch-nemesis Mapserver should be killed with fire, stat!

[Jimmy]

9 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

What would be the best location in the Isles for a travel hub? Is there a place with a Base Portal, a Helicopter/Submarine, and maybe a Black Market near each other? I haven't hung out in the Isles much since before Sunset.

Nerva is pretty good for this now with the adjusted base portal location.

[naraganeun]

Is there a way to access the accolade easily on the test server? I'd like to play around with the UI before I try earning it on live

[Darmian]

Hmmph. In my day there were TWO tram lines!!  And lots of running...slowly....When is that coming back?!?!

[Blackfeather]

3 minutes ago, naraganeun said:

Is there a way to access the accolade easily on the test server? I'd like to play around with the UI before I try earning it on live

The /badgegrant command might be able to give you the right badges...but I don't know what they're called off the top of my head, unfortunately.

[Jimmy]

4 minutes ago, naraganeun said:

Is there a way to access the accolade easily on the test server? I'd like to play around with the UI before I try earning it on live

@Vandento the rescue:

On 10/24/2020 at 5:26 PM, Vanden said:

Try using the /badge_grant command with the following names:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

AtlasParkExplorer

KingsRowExplorer

HollowsExplorer

SkywayCityExplorer

FaultlineExplorer

SteelCanyonExplorer

TalosIslandExplorer

IndependencePortExplorer

CroatoaExplorer

BrickstownExplorer

FoundersFallsExplorer

PeregrineIslandExplorer

MercyIslandExplorer

PortOakesExplorer

CapAuDiableExplorer

SharkheadExplorer

NervaExplorer

StMartialExplorer

GrandvilleExplorer

P_NovaPraetoriaExplorer

P_ImperialCityExplorer

P_NeutropolisExplorer 

FirstWardExplorer

NightWardExplorer

 

 

[ForeverLaxx]

As much as I'm for the removal of the command (granted, I never used it anyway), this really does highlight a couple issues. First is obviously the in-game methods of travel and their overly convoluted and bloated nature. The addition of two more powers to this system doesn't alleviate that problem unless those two powers make the other options redundant, which from all reports doesn't seem to be the case. This will obviously need to be addressed in the future.

 

The other issue is more a playerbase one and not one I feel will ever be rectified. I feel as if too many players, and I bet this will be echoed on a much larger scale once the patch is live, believe that they're owed a perfect analog to the command due to how long it existed and how "integral" it became to their play experience. I personally don't agree with this sentiment, particularly because we've known for over a year that the command was going to be removed eventually and these people really shouldn't have based their play around its existence.

 

That said, I feel there could have been a better implementation of the command "replacement" power by instituting a single, interruptible power with 5-10 seconds of activation time with a 30 second - 1 minute cooldown that summoned a base portal much like how one is summoned now. I just don't understand why that wasn't implemented instead. The tech for interruptible activations exists, so why could it have not been applied here in order to consolidate all the other cumbersome methods into a single convenient power?

[Blackfeather]

Come to think of it, @Jimmy might we able to get that into the built-in cheats menu?

[Troo]

You could run?!

I remember thinking 'Sprint is to run a fast as we can, isn't it? I guess it's meant leisurely jog all along and I just didn't know different.'

[Blackfeather]

4 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

That said, I feel there could have been a better implementation of the command "replacement" power by instituting a single, interruptible power with 5-10 seconds of activation time with a 30 second - 1 minute cooldown that summoned a base portal much like how one is summoned now. I just don't understand why that wasn't implemented instead. The tech for interruptible activations exists, so why could it have not been applied here in order to consolidate all the other cumbersome methods into a single convenient power?

It looks like the Day Job powers' cooldown times have been reduced to that amount:

Quote

•  Rapid Response Portal (New Day Job Power)
  • A new day job power which replaces the Base Teleporter Power
  • Summons a base portal on the ground that lasts for 90 seconds (even after you leave the zone)
  • 90 second cooldown
  • Cannot be used in Ouroboros, Tutorial or PvP Zones
  • Summoning a base portal will remove other summoned portals within a 15ft radius (to avoid blocking contacts, doors, etc)

•  Base Teleporter (Day Job Power)
  • This power no longer requires the Rapid Response Member Accolade to earn, and has replaced the Monitor Duty (prestige boost) day job power
  • Recharge time reduced from 600s to 30s
    • This would be 0s, but we wanted to prevent accidental double usage as this power has limited charges
  • Activation time reduced from 15s to 10s

I imagine for people who want to get around very quickly, that'll be more than adequate.

[mechahamham]

Just now, Troo said:

You could run?!

I remember thinking 'Sprint is to run a fast as we can, isn't it? I guess it's meant leisurely jog all along and I just didn't know different.'

Non-sprint run is already 15mph. I think that's before Swift, even.

[Lockpick]

1 hour ago, VicZantosa said:

Hi, I very rarely post, but when I saw the Beta announcement I was really curious about what changes are in store for us, and when I saw the list of stuff having to do with Teleport, especially the 'enterbasefrompasscode' thing, I realized I really needed to make a Beta character, and try this out on behalf of my group.  I was a player on Live, in fact was a Beta Tester in 2003-4 and was really happy to find out it was working again after all these years.  I'm saying this because I'm representing my supergroup of 10 people, which is mainly friends of mine that I know in real life, all of them over 45, all of them not particularly tech savvy, and all of them former Live players, who don't go to forums or beta test things, or even know how to make a base. 

 

I discovered the base teleporter command, made a macro command and posted it on the supergroup MOTD, so that it was easy to use for my friends.  I have about 25 alts, and some members of my group have over 100.  All these facts are important, as these are players that often have not very long to play because of work or kids, don't want to spend a long time flying or jumping or whatever, and everyone was really happy about the fact they could teleport to the base and from there go to the next zone, and it was a big quality of life thing for us.  Even low-level characters that only had a few badges or levels or low influence could still have the benefit of quick travel, and it just felt, well, like a big improvement over Live. 

 

In the beginning on Live, there were no trams, no supergroup bases, no quick travel at all, and travel powers didn't come in until later levels.  That was done as a deliberate time sink, because the devs wanted people to be on longer, and have a sense of accomplishment from getting travel powers.  Well, games grew, and fast travel became a way for more casual players to play as well.  P2W powers were done to get people to give NCSoft money, which is not a motivation here.  This feels like a giant leap backward. 

 

I've tried all these new teleport powers on Beta, and none of them seem like good replacements for an appreciated quality of life item that is being taken away.  These changes feel like a punishment.  All of these replacement powers have something wrong.  The accolade long range teleport is cool, but it requires you to re-work it for every character, and when I am just trying out a low level alt that is way too much of a time sink for anything but my main alts.  The 10million influence P2W thing is too much money for a starting test alt, and it has a 30 minute cooldown, which feels too long to use to get back and forth from missions, if they are not in the same zone. 

 

There's also the fact that not everyone wants to build a base just to have fast travel, and use each others transport hubs.  I haven't read all the comments here so I don't know what prompted this change, but guessing it has something to do with the fact you can use it to jump out of PVP.  I told the people in my group that they were taking away the base teleport macro, and the general response was 'that sucks, it's going to be a lot harder to play, why are they doing this to us?'  Is there no way to do a P2W power that won't work in combat, has a short cooldown like 5 minutes or something (so that you can do a short mission and jump back to your base) and has like a 5 second or less activation, and maybe not 10 million? Me and 9 other people want to know.

 

Also, big kudos for all the other stuff you are doing, it's awesome and I am very grateful and all devs win the lottery and all of your wildest dreams come true.

Thank you for this note.  I think it is very valuable to get this type of feedback from players that don't post often.  I have edited your post to add paragraphs to make it easier to read as I am concerned people will skip over your post because it is not easy to read in it's original form.

[ForeverLaxx]

24 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

It looks like the Day Job powers' cooldown times have been reduced to that amount

Seems so.

[ivanhedgehog]

On 10/24/2020 at 7:03 PM, Luminara said:

 

Thanks, @Coyotedancer.  A lot of the comments in this thread are more comprehensible now.

 

@Jimmy, are you and the rest of the crew noting this?  She's raising some valid points.  So has @CrudeVileTerror.  This is some solid feedback on how the removal of the slash command is going to affect players, and the ways the replacement options need to fill the gap.

I have to say, we are getting some good feedback, not just hell no and hell yes

[CrudeVileTerror]

@Jimmy, your point of wanting more diverse feedback is an excellent one and well-received, though . . . I know that there are many players who don't like to directly and actively engage in the feedback process.

I do notice some of these players like to utilize the passive in-forum Reputation system though.  Are the members of the Homecoming Team actively monitoring feedback posts' "Likes" to see which ones seem to be garnering positive interest?  I can imagine that might be a pain in the ass for you folks, but if you've got a way to keep track of it, I think it might be an easier for me to encourage some members of the community I am in contact with to provide feedback that way, at the very least.