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

[Heraclea]

2 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

These day jobs'll be earned via logging out inside a supergroup, or near a supergroup portal - I believe Jimmy did mention that looking at Day Jobs would be on the radar, but not in this page.

 

With the numbers there, given 24 hours logged out near a supergroup portal, you could get about 8 charges of supergroup teleportation (4 for each day job power, as said here). I do believe the maximum was indeed mentioned to be 30 charges.

 

Hope this helps!

Needs to be tested:

 

What happens (and what is supposed to happen) if you log out from a SG base that you got to from a summoned base portal in Cimerora?  This is one of the chief uses of /enterbasefrompasscode for me.  Cimeroran Citizen is easily one of the most valuable day job powers to me.   I log out in base for the shorter countdown, but logging there counts as both logging out in base and logging out in Cim. 

[Gunrunner]

On 10/26/2020 at 3:55 PM, 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.  Really.  THIS is what we're trying to get across.  THIS is why gutting /EBFP is a grave error, and THIS is why our dev team really needs to sit up and take notice.  The vast bulk of the playerbase would rather see the command left in place, or tweaked so the handshake issue is resolved, rather then have to literally start from scratch with new powers.  Rather then spending time and treasure on these new powers, spend it on fixing the command we already have!

[Gunrunner]

On 10/26/2020 at 5:21 PM, 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.

Off the top of my head, I don't think there's anywhere on the Isles with that kind of an array of services in one place.  One of the advantages of redside is the ferry gets you everywhere that's not a co-op or PvP zone (and most everything is close to the ferry), so such a cluster was not really necessary.  With the advent of instantaneous base transport, even that becomes redundant once you have set up said base's travel hub.

 

Edit: A number of people have brought up Cap as a likely candidate, and they are absolutely correct. 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Gunrunner

[EmperorSteele]

So, here's a thought:

You guys made SG portals intangible, right? Could this have possibly fixed the issue that doesn't let us rotate them in our base?

That is, the ability to rotate sg portals, and thus have you emerge facing any direction except south, was removed because rotating it broke bases some how. But, since you've been working on the portals, is there a chance this issue got fixed?

[Faultline]

@EmperorSteele the problem is not with yaw rotation, it's with pitch and roll. Can't disable those independently for objects. What happens if you move the portal to a new room, rotate the room, then move the portal back?

[macskull]

3 hours ago, Heraclea said:

Needs to be tested:

 

What happens (and what is supposed to happen) if you log out from a SG base that you got to from a summoned base portal in Cimerora?  This is one of the chief uses of /enterbasefrompasscode for me.  Cimeroran Citizen is easily one of the most valuable day job powers to me.   I log out in base for the shorter countdown, but logging there counts as both logging out in base and logging out in Cim. 

The game doesn't track where you log out from, it tracks where you log in. If you log out in the SG base, you'll log back in in Cimerora so you'll get day job credit for Cimeroran Citizen. You will not get credit for Monitor Duty since that requires you to be at a base portal (and the summoned ones would certainly despawn by the time you logged back in).

[mrudat]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

The game doesn't track where you log out from, it tracks where you log in. If you log out in the SG base, you'll log back in in Cimerora so you'll get day job credit for Cimeroran Citizen. You will not get credit for Monitor Duty since that requires you to be at a base portal (and the summoned ones would certainly despawn by the time you logged back in).

I wonder, do you get Monitor Duty credit if, wherever you happen to log in is next to a summoned base portal? 😃

 

 

 

On the subject of cooldown time; would it be feasible/reasonable to have (some of?) the various long-range travel powers (sg portal/lrtp/...?) be recharged on mission completion? That way, you can return to base at the end of every mission, which would satisfy at least one use-case for the long range travel powers.

 

 

On the other hand, you could approach things from a different direction; why are you returning to base between missions; could we perhaps have a power to summon a:

• field trainer - levelling
• armoured car - depositing things in your bank; sticking stuff into the inventories of various base objects I suspect would be somewhat nontrivial.
• vendor of some sort - selling vendor trash, possibly buying some stuff
• there's already a power for summoning a crafting bench
• ...?

Is it simply a matter of going to your base between certain missions that have you bouncing all over paragon city, and taking advantage of the teleporters instead of trying to remember how to get there from here (or having to fly/jump/run to the closest public transport)?

 

 

I believe that there used to be a sufficient amount of data collected during the operation of the game that data mining could be conducted to see what (on average) has people going back to base for the most often, though I suspect that's been pared back to require slightly less massive servers to run everything on.

 

 

At least for heroes, it's thematic to have a bunch of police waiting outside the mission door for you to come out so that they can take the prisoners away, so it's not entirely unreasonable to have NPCs spawn at the end of a mission.

 

For villains, presumably you could have henchmen loitering outside the mission to help carry home the loot.

[ShardWarrior]

10 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

These day jobs'll be earned via logging out inside a supergroup, or near a supergroup portal - I believe Jimmy did mention that looking at Day Jobs would be on the radar, but not in this page.

 

With the numbers there, given 24 hours logged out near a supergroup portal, you could get about 8 charges of supergroup teleportation (4 for each day job power, as said here). I do believe the maximum was indeed mentioned to be 30 charges.

 

Hope this helps!

8 charges per day is simply not enough for a days playtime for me personally.  That is a mere pittance really.  I still cannot understand why the base portal powers need to be hidden behind large inf sinks, ridiculous recharge or limited use charges.  This fix for this creates new headaches while trying to solve the original problem.

[honoroit]

I can only imagine changes to world traversal  here were because of transit zones, and cross connect between zones that caused an emptying of the game world. 

 

If that is the case extracate it entirely; they've got ouro, theres long range teleport. 

 

As was, transit zones were the sole method of transit used, how training got done, and even invention tables. 

[Blackfeather]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

8 charges per day is simply not enough for a days playtime for me personally.  That is a mere pittance really.  I still cannot understand why the base portal powers need to be hidden behind large inf sinks, ridiculous recharge or limited use charges.  This fix for this creates new headaches while trying to solve the original problem.

On 10/27/2020 at 8:58 PM, Jimmy said:

At present all the active day jobs hover around 4~ a day. As I mentioned though, I do want to do a pass on these but it won't be in Page 1.

 

After Page 1 is out, feel free to send me a reminder via PM and I'll post them in the HC wiki club forum.

It sounds like future discussions about Day Job charges might be up on the table one day. But in the meantime, I'm fine with how things are myself. Of course, I also made a personal decision to refrain from using the /enter_base_from_passcode command where I could, given that it was stated that it was going away, so as to not become reliant on it.

[Blackbird71]

9 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

It sounds like future discussions about Day Job charges might be up on the table one day. But in the meantime, I'm fine with how things are myself. Of course, I also made a personal decision to refrain from using the /enter_base_from_passcode command where I could, given that it was stated that it was going away, so as to not become reliant on it.

So we're going to gimp travel until they can get around to revisiting the day job charges?  No thank you; if we're supposed to rely on these powers as the alternative then they need to be looked at before these changes roll out.

[Blackfeather]

1 minute ago, Blackbird71 said:

So we're going to gimp travel until they can get around to revisiting the day job charges?  No thank you; if we're supposed to rely on these powers as the alternative then they need to be looked at before these changes roll out.

If you're hoping for anything close to what /enter_base_from_passcode provided, I don't think there's really going to be anything that will satisfy, I'm afraid: nothing the devs will make is going to be exactly the same as it. While I'm sure they'd be happy to accommodate (they could have flat out removed the command without anything else, for instance), I get the feeling that they're not looking for a one to one alternative that people can just swap out for.

 

From my perspective, travel's been the opposite of hindered - like I said, I refrained from using the command once I found out that it was going away. As such, I'd be quite happy with these changes as they are, so long as there aren't any bugs with them.

[Bionic_Flea]

12 hours ago, CFIndustries said:

I mean that sucks, but whatever…just give me the Cliff Notes version. I tend to like options, but this change needs an Excel spreadsheet and detailed instructions…

Here's the easy thing to do: 

 

1) Log off next to a Zone's SG Base portal.  That will get you two TP powers - The SG Base Teleporter and the Rapid Response Portal (you can buy another of each from P2W); 

 

2) As you are playing and in a zone, take a minute to grab the exploration badges in that zone.  That will get you the explore badges, the accolade badge for getting all in a zone, 5 merits, and adds that zone permanently to the Long Range Teleport Power.  LRT will be faster than any travel using the base as you will skip the load in time in and out of base and go straight to the desire zone.

[ShardWarrior]

5 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

If you're hoping for anything close to what /enter_base_from_passcode provided, I don't think there's really going to be anything that will satisfy, I'm afraid: nothing the devs will make is going to be exactly the same as it. While I'm sure they'd be happy to accommodate (they could have flat out removed the command without anything else, for instance), I get the feeling that they're not looking for a one to one alternative that people can just swap out for.

Only speaking for myself here, I am not asking for an exact match for the command.  Having a power to summon a portal that is interruptible and has a brief cooldown is a perfectly fine alternative to me as it solves the problems as stated in the various posts about the command over the past year.  What I am objecting to is the limited use charges, large influence sinks and ridiculous recharge times.  There is no need for it to be locked behind these in my opinion. 

 

There seems to be a very pervasive misunderstanding about what the command does.  It is not an instant transport to a mission door that eliminates using a travel power entirely.  You still need to use your travel powers to get to a mission door once zoning in from your base.

 

There is a large community of base builders out there who have invested a lot of time and effort and put great care into building bases not only for family and friends but for the community at large.  These new base portal powers are making accessing them more expensive and more of a nuisance than before. 

 

6 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

It sounds like future discussions about Day Job charges might be up on the table one day. But in the meantime, I'm fine with how things are myself. Of course, I also made a personal decision to refrain from using the /enter_base_from_passcode command where I could, given that it was stated that it was going away, so as to not become reliant on it.

I take this with a very large grain of salt.  I will believe it when I see it.  8 charges per day is a joke.

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by ShardWarrior

[Blackfeather]

9 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I take this with a very large grain of salt.  I will believe it when I see it.  8 charges per day is a joke.

For you, and for the way you wish to substitute your previous use of the /enter_base_from_passcode command? Absolutely. For my own needs, given that I generally avoided the command in the first place? It's a nice bonus to get around, or even RP with if I so desire.

13 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Only speaking for myself here, I am not asking for an exact match for the command.  Having a power to summon a portal that is interruptible and has a brief cooldown is a perfectly fine alternative to me as it solves the problems as stated in the various posts about the command over the past year.  What I am objecting to is the limited use charges, large influence sinks and ridiculous recharge times.  There is no need for it to be locked behind these in my opinion. 

 

There seems to be a very pervasive misunderstanding about what the command does.  It is not an instant transport to a mission door that eliminates using a travel power entirely.  You still need to use your travel powers to get to a mission door once zoning in from your base.

 

There is a large community of base builders out there who have invested a lot of time and effort and put great care into building bases not only for family and friends but for the community at larg.  These new base portal powers are making accessing them more expensive and more of a nuisance than before.

Well, that's the thing. I don't think the devs are interested in creating a power like that - that'd hew too close to outright replacing the slash command that they restricted in the first place. While I'm sure all of our voices are being heard on this matter, I'm personally preparing for when/if these changes roll out.

[honoroit]

28 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

8 charges per day is a joke

Yes. Don't do it at all if your going to dribble out pittance. 

 

Keeps the memory alive, only causes bitter feelings. 

 

What's the design intent? 

 

Ruin community bases by removing all visit reason beyond tourism?

 

(as to this; the paragon board of tourism should provide ae like interface for accessing bases, where there's tag based search etc. Maybe some of those help terminals get fixed up by the tourism board. Villain side, head on a puke one might suppose). 

 

No. It's to prevent instance to instance hopping. Hop into transit, hop out in target zone, zoom to door, exit world. 

 

You foster more dynamic other player encounter, the world feels more populated, if that skip hop goes away. 

 

Playerbase, deal with the inconvenient. 

 

The problem here isn't that way travel gets done changes. It's that your 'changing the rules' after they've been normalized at a level that should have never been. 

 

So you rectify the situation, or you do not. If you are to rectify it, get the shock over with, leave no half measure glimmers of what was 'misconfiguration', and proceed. 

Edited October 28, 2020 by honoroit

[DoctorDitko]

1 hour ago, Blackfeather said:

I also made a personal decision to refrain from using the /enter_base_from_passcode command where I could, given that it was stated that it was going away, so as to not become reliant on it.

Different strokes... I have been using the heck out of it, I figured I'd enjoy it while it lasts! I guess I'm part of the problem, but I admire your self-discipline.

 

Deep breath...

It strikes me that a lot of the angst surrounding the loss of /enterbasefrompasscode is related to the perceived scarcity of the proposed replacements. I understand. I have had many characters die with a fully charged Wedding Ring that might have saved them, but I didn't want to "waste" it.

 

BTW, is everyone remembering that the P2W Self-Destruct power is both a debt-free trip to the local hospital and one more way to reach your base? (As long as you have a Rez circle there) If you remember to hit it in time it sometimes does enough damage to your murderers that you get some revenge. A bargain at 100,000 Inf!

 

But back on topic: if there was a way to reduce the perceived scarcity of travelling to the base, it might help with player acceptance of the change. Not sure what would be acceptable and easy to implement, but it could be a purchasable inspiration, a temp power, a chance that any particular use wouldn't eat a charge, a way to trade them, being able to get them in a Super Pack, saying Team Leaders travel free, making them able to be sold on the Auction House...

 

Any of these might help alleviate the anxiety I'm seeing here. Just a thought, but I think the perception is the worst part of this change.

 

Finally, to end this rant, please everyone keep in mind that the Devs here are doing this for fun. Everything they are doing is using time not spent with their families, playing with their dogs, or building their own B-9 Lost in Space robots. You know, like normal people.

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[Lockpick]

I added the following to my earlier post, but haven't seen it addressed, so I thought it might have been missed.

 

I copied a character over to Beta that had AP already explored.  On Beta he didn't automatically get the accolade.  I went to SC and did the exploration and got the LRT power.  When I tried to use it it only showed SC and no other zones.  Seems like a bug because I cannot re-explore AP to get the badges because I already have them.

 

Has this been addressed? The LRT power should be provided and the zones should be available immediately if you have have the exploration badges because you cannot explore and get the badges twice.  If it has not been addressed it is going to be an issue on Live for those that have the exploration badges.

 

Also, can the Hive and the Abyss be added to LRT?  I don't see them on the list and am curious why they aren't available.  I am sure there is a reason, I just don't know it.

[GetRidOfWires]

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don’t want the elimination of the /enterbasefrompasscode command.

 

I play this game for relaxation and fun. I think the command as it is it makes the game easier and more enjoyable. Yes, easier is OK. There’s no subscription fees, so there’s no reason to make people spend more travel time. Players don’t have to use it if they don’t want to. And adding a myriad of other TP functions makes playing more confusing, more tedious, and not as much fun.

 

I don’t want to go back to Synapse taking hours to complete and no one wanting to run it.

 

Removing fun, adding tedium and calling it “better gameplay” is standard MMORPG fare, but not needed here. Again, we play games for fun and enjoyment, not the grind or to prove how great we are getting six TP powers.

 

Just my two Merits, I’m sure others will have differing ideas.

Edited October 28, 2020 by GetRidOfWires

[Lines]

7 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

But back on topic: if there was a way to reduce the perceived scarcity of travelling to the base, it might help with player acceptance of the change. Not sure what would be acceptable and easy to implement, but it could be a purchasable inspiration, a chance that any particular use wouldn't eat a charge, a way to trade them, being able to get them in a Super Pack, saying Team Leaders travel free, making them able to be sold on the Auction House...

 

I was wondering something like this as well (namely a droppable and tradeable salvage or droppable base portal charges - a lot like maybe with inspirations), but I feel like it's best not to try to balance against the knee-jerk response to the changes and let a new status quo settle in over a few months of these changes being committed to live.

 

I'm really, really glad to see a lot less obsolescence caused by /enterbasefrompasscode. It made the game feel lazy and messy to me. I think some of the variety could be consolidated, but I'm glad that there is a variety of good and circumstantial options for getting around the world, rather than a whole lot of universally inferior ones.

 

That said, I still don't like the TUNNEL system. Bite me.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Lines

[EmperorSteele]

4 minutes ago, GetRidOfWires said:

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don’t want the elimination of the /enterbasefrompasscode command.

I play this game for relaxation and fun. I think the command as it is it makes the game easier and more enjoyable. Yes, easier is OK. There’s no subscription fees, so there’s no reason to make people spend more travel time. Players don’t have to use it if they don’t want to. And adding a myriad of other TP functions makes playing more confusing, more tedious, and not as much fun.

 

I don’t want to go back to Synapse taking hours to complete and no one wanting to run it.

 

Removing fun, adding tedium and calling it “better gameplay” is standard MMORPG fare, but not needed here. Again, we play games for fun and enjoyment, not the grind or to prove how great we are getting six TP powers.

 

Just my two Merits, I’m sure others will have differing ideas.

 

Too late for that. However, they've given us several replacement options, all of which require some level of investment.

The problem was that the ease of the TP macro actually let people subvert actual gameplay (cheesing out of dying in PvP and Master runs, for example), so it had to go away.

Synapse will no longer take hours again. Everyone can buy or earn ways to get to and from various zones quickly. Though I guess this is the kind of thing we can directly test now. Maybe I'll run a few TFs on Test later and see how much longer it takes compared to Live.

[Apparition]

11 minutes ago, GetRidOfWires said:

I don’t want to go back to Synapse taking hours to complete and no one wanting to run it.

 

Removing fun, adding tedium and calling it “better gameplay” is standard MMORPG fare, but not needed here. Again, we play games for fun and enjoyment, not the grind or to prove how great we are getting six TP powers.

 

Just my two Merits, I’m sure others will have differing ideas.

 

I've never used the slash command/base macro.  Not once.  When my friends and I run the Synapse TF (ugh), it still "only" takes about a hour and fifteen minutes to a hour and a half at +1.  That's without using the base macro.

 

Things will be just fine.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Apparition

[DoctorDitko]

L'esprit de l'escalier says:

What if the "Exit Mission" button worked more like the Defeat button and gave you the option to Exit Mission, or Exit to Base?

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[ShardWarrior]

31 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

Well, that's the thing. I don't think the devs are interested in creating a power like that - that'd hew too close to outright replacing the slash command that they restricted in the first place.

Except it is not.  The stated problems with the slash command were;

1. Dev only command not meant for player use
2. Escape death cheat in PvP and MoTF runs
3. Immersion breaking due to people disappearing into thin air

Turning it into a summon portal power that is interruptible with a brief animation of summoning a base portal solves all those problems.  Hiding it behind limited use charges, inf sinks and ridiculous recharges is overly punitive for a travel ability. 

 

 

[Blackfeather]

42 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

Well, that's the thing. I don't think the devs are interested in creating a power like that - that'd hew too close to outright replacing the slash command that they restricted in the first place.

4 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Except it is not.  The stated problems with the slash command were;

1. Dev only command not meant for player use
2. Escape death cheat in PvP and MoTF runs
3. Immersion breaking due to people disappearing into thin air

Turning it into a summon portal power that is interruptible with a brief animation of summoning a base portal solves all those problems.  Hiding it behind limited use charges, inf sinks and ridiculous recharges is overly punitive for a travel ability.

Could you clarify what you're refuting from that quote of mine? I said there that it's clear that the devs aren't interested in creating a power that'd function as a drop-in replacement for using /enter_base_from_passcode as a way of instantly entering bases (and subsequently teleport to a different map zone) at any given time and place.

 

The fact these powers are the way that they are is clear indication of that, as you've pointed out yourself.