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

[QuiJon]

6 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

So all it really takes to keep what you currently have is to spend 1 million inf (per character) or log off next to any base portal.  I appreciate that this is a change and different and not as convenient, but it's not the end of the world either.

No it is not the end of the world. But as you say i have to choose to log off in a certain place, well what if i want to earn the other day jobs now i cant to keep that power working. Sure 1 million influence doesnt sound like a lot, and it isnt cause i farm. For others it might be. Especially for anyone new to the game and then suddenly teams will have to be waiting for those that dont have it to catch up all the time. 

 

And really the biggest question i have been asking and no one seems to want to answer is yes it is not the end of the world, neither  would be giving us a power like that 1m portal power for free with a 30 second cooldown and then suddenly we have the complete functionality of what we would be losing with the slash command being turned off. So why do we have to do "its not the end of the world" instead of "fix the exploit and give the players the QoL we let them get used to "?

[Bionic_Flea]

QuiJon, I understand that you don't like the change and are lobbying for a free portal.  Have at it and good luck.  It would certainly save me influence if you succeed.

 

However, you can't have it both ways in stating that you will have to force your characters to farm for exploration badges and then claim you can't log off next to a portal because apparently each of your characters needs all the day jobs.  That seems inconsistent to me.

[ZacKing]

7 minutes ago, Faultline said:

Honestly I think I'm going to leave this thread alone until the next patch hits, because some of the points that keep being raised have been addressed already internally and it makes the discussion tedious when the posts are based on what, to me, is no longer the case. I'll check back after the next patch.

This is encouraging to hear.  I think you all may want to ask yourselves why people used this so much instead of just taking an average out of raw data to make a decision.  The answer should be pretty clear - excessive travel time sucks.  it always was painful imo.

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Bionic_Flea said:

QuiJon, I understand that you don't like the change and are lobbying for a free portal.  Have at it and good luck.  It would certainly save me influence if you succeed.

 

However, you can't have it both ways in stating that you will have to force your characters to farm for exploration badges and then claim you can't log off next to a portal because apparently each of your characters needs all the day jobs.  That seems inconsistent to me.

There is nothing wrong with someone wanting to get all the day job badges on all their alts.  Play how you like and let others play how they like.  That is and always has been one of the best things about this game. 

[Bionic_Flea]

4 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

This is encouraging to hear.  I think you all may want to ask yourselves why people used this so much instead of just taking an average out of raw data to make a decision.  The answer should be pretty clear - excessive travel time sucks.  it always was painful imo.

That and a free base TP that had 0 recharge, 0 end cost, and no animation time was pretty sweet . . . but it was also a cheat code.

 

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

There is nothing wrong with someone wanting to get all the day job badges on all their alts.  Play how you like and let others play how they like.  That is and always has been one of the best things about this game. 

He can absolutely play however he wants and get or ignore whatever badges he wants.  I'm just pointing out his complaining about having to spend time getting exploration badges for LRT and simultaneously complaining that he's too busy getting day job badges to park by a portal.  But he can certainly do or say whatever he wants within the rules.

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Bionic_Flea

[ZacKing]

9 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

That and a free base TP that had 0 recharge, 0 end cost, and no animation time was pretty sweet . . . but it was also a cheat code.

Don't care about any of that stuff.  people use TT and Oro heavily too and those have costs.  why are they using them is the question.  it was just convenient not to have to piss away the time to move across an entire zone to get to a tram or portal.   that isn't fun for me.  actually playing missions and stuff is. 

Edited October 29, 2020 by ZacKing

[QuiJon]

1 minute ago, Bionic_Flea said:

QuiJon, I understand that you don't like the change and are lobbying for a free portal.  Have at it and good luck.  It would certainly save me influence if you succeed.

 

However, you can't have it both ways in stating that you will have to force your characters to farm for exploration badges and then claim you can't log off next to a portal because apparently each of your characters needs all the day jobs.  That seems inconsistent to me.

I am saying that to obtain and use all these powers means having to prioritize how i am playing the game, something that is commonly not done. For example i can PL a character in AE just fine. I can also get to level 35 and sneak into PUG ITS at +4 on kill mosts and get 4-5 levels in 45 minutes. But if they took all xp out of the AE they are choosing for me now how i play the game. 

 

To get all these overlapping powers to fill in a complete slash command use as they have stated it, means if i want the low recharge powers i have to choose to earn those badge but also give up earning other badges to keep them in use. It also means i have to choose to NOT play that toon to earn them in the first place, which means when starting out any alt you would have to park it to earn the powers and not play it. Making a choice for me of what character i want to play vs giving up progress for the power. Oh but i could use LRT, sure but again not so simple. To make it as complete as a base transporter might be means earning the majority of all the explorer badges in the gave save for a few odd zones. That then commits me if i want that to badging, something i dont do on every character i make but for this power would have to. 

 

We are the better way to the second anniversary of this game being out again. We all have a ton of alts we have made, even if i just took my top .... 15 lets say that i really really care for and say i want all these thigns on just those 15 i bet with my free time to play we are talking the better part of a week to do all the explorer badges, plus the influence, and frankly most probably have already been logged off around bases to earn those badges, but if i was making a new toon there is what atleast a week of not playing to get that up and running for a toon also. 

 

I date back to when we used to have to fly from the north of IP and then take the tram to brickstown and to the gate to south IP because there was only 1 tram in IP and no SG bases to teleport us. I remember having to agro a monster in the hive after hami raids to kill me to travel back to the top of Founders Fall to hop out the gate to Talos because there was no tram in FF and with no bases had to fly from Hive, through Eden, through FF to get back to talos otherwise. I get how to jump around the city quickly i remember doing it, i just dont relish going back to having to do it. What we have now IMO works nicely and balances between the travel power and teleport nicely when going between zones. You can hop to a base for the big trip and then into a new zone and then have to use your travel power. It isnt i cant go back it is why should we need to. Other then it being a exploited slash command the freedom is gives us doesnt break the game, just let us keep it. 

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

*glances back and forth*

14 times, you say . . . 

*tries to think of when that was and why*

 

Little jokes aside, thank you for taking the extra time to provide the helpful information, @Faultline.

I do think a 3 Minute cooldown (10 minutes divided by 3 uses per) sounds like a pretty reasonable Cooldown.

I also like hearing that you're looking at a way to reduce some of this redundancy of Powers.  Of course, the flipside of that is to member the True Meaning of City of Heroes:   Choice!

Kind of a precarious position to be in, of course, so sympathies all around to the Dev Team in trying to untangle this particular situation in a meaningful and beneficial way.

 

I imagine it's too soon to provide E.T.A.s for the next Build that'll hit Public Beta, so I shall do what I can to encourage folks to have some additional patience at this time.

I did the exact same thing! I am pretty sure I used LRT on live more than 14 times in 10 minutes when I was filling out and testing the details of the exploit I found. And the Warshade LRT power as well lol

 

Edit: ... this was as an extraneous circumstance that has never since been repeated.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Glacier Peak
edit: derp

[Bionic_Flea]

Giving this a little more thought and trying to put myself into QuiJon and others shoes . . . what about putting a base portal in Ouro?  You could place it close to the O-Portal for convenience or behind the building with the Echo teleporter. 

 

Alternatively, how about adding zones to the available ones you can get exiting Ouro?  Why can't you take a time portal to anywhere in the city?

[ivanhedgehog]

3 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

*glances back and forth*

14 times, you say . . . 

*tries to think of when that was and why*

 

Little jokes aside, thank you for taking the extra time to provide the helpful information, @Faultline.

I do think a 3 Minute cooldown (10 minutes divided by 3 uses per) sounds like a pretty reasonable Cooldown.

I also like hearing that you're looking at a way to reduce some of this redundancy of Powers.  Of course, the flipside of that is to member the True Meaning of City of Heroes:   Choice!

Kind of a precarious position to be in, of course, so sympathies all around to the Dev Team in trying to untangle this particular situation in a meaningful and beneficial way.

 

I imagine it's too soon to provide E.T.A.s for the next Build that'll hit Public Beta, so I shall do what I can to encourage folks to have some additional patience at this time.

probably crafting and needed salvage

[QuiJon]

54 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Giving this a little more thought and trying to put myself into QuiJon and others shoes . . . what about putting a base portal in Ouro?  You could place it close to the O-Portal for convenience or behind the building with the Echo teleporter. 

 

Alternatively, how about adding zones to the available ones you can get exiting Ouro?  Why can't you take a time portal to anywhere in the city?

I sort of disagree with just adding a base teleporter. I mean i am fine with adding one, but that still leaves you with having to do a second load screen to just get to the base. However allowing the exit of Ouro to go to any zone, or maybe anything but hazard zones, might be ok. Still one load to Ouro and one to the zone  you want to go to, and if you do need a hazard zone then you can hop to your base. 

 

Not quite as flashy as having a base portal do the exact same thing, but the mechanic is already in the game for the ouro portal, its already at a reasonable recharge rate and now since you can get the ouro portal for free at level 1 it kinds of fills the gap then leaving you to choose to pick up any of the base powers you want to your own decisions.

 

Nice idea, something i had not thought of.

[Apparition]

26 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

I sort of disagree with just adding a base teleporter. I mean i am fine with adding one, but that still leaves you with having to do a second load screen to just get to the base. However allowing the exit of Ouro to go to any zone, or maybe anything but hazard zones, might be ok. Still one load to Ouro and one to the zone  you want to go to, and if you do need a hazard zone then you can hop to your base. 

 

Not quite as flashy as having a base portal do the exact same thing, but the mechanic is already in the game for the ouro portal, its already at a reasonable recharge rate and now since you can get the ouro portal for free at level 1 it kinds of fills the gap then leaving you to choose to pick up any of the base powers you want to your own decisions.

 

Nice idea, something i had not thought of.

 

Uhh... do you know how crowded the Ouroboros entrance is already?  I already try to avoid Ouroboros as much as possible as a result.  I can only imagine if they added all zone exits to Ouro.

[DoctorDitko]

I still think they could short-circuit a lot of these complaints by offering an "Exit to Base" option to the end-of-mission "Exit Mission" menu.

That would take care of many use cases, without being exploitable. No hoops involved.

[Bionic_Flea]

13 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

"Exit to Base" option

I like the way you draw inspiration, Dikto.

[honoroit]

 

I wonder to myself: why wouldn't they implement the 'skip hop' safely?

(players not traveling through world but warping to destinations)

 

Homecoming team must have thought of 'put it on ouro' or 'exit to base'. So why not functionally identical, in a way that can't result in server crash, or whatever the problem was. 

 

There, I'd ask devs to describe the design intent, which I suspect might be: we want you in the world of homecoming, we want new players to see cool veterans zooming by... maybe helping them right quick if they're overwhelmed by a spawn.. or smacking the spawn and stealing xp share, out of badness. 

 

Encounters, with other players. 

 

I've often wondered if where doors spawn is designed so to draw traveler heros across high traffic areas, making you travel along an intercept line with where others are at time of door spawn... So chance encounters are more likely to happen. They should be. It's how you can make a big map feel more crowded. 

 

Even simple things like you going to a place to level up rather than 'skip hop transit' - - it puts you in the overworld. 

 

These folks are not daft or inept people. But they do not tell us design intent for this. I can only guess that this was the team's thinking. 

[CrudeVileTerror]

I don't believe that's the case, @honoroit.

The Contacts and mission doors just aren't positioned with that level of care or foresight, near as I can tell.  Never really have been.

Maybe the Homecoming Devs -want- players to cross paths in the public zones, but they would need to actively start changing the positions of Contacts and mission doors themselves to force that to begin happening.  And considering the ability to call a Contact is -still- one of the most often appreciated quality of life aspects of this game, I don't think it's a particularly wise way to go either.

The best place to create environments where players socialize is with social spaces.  The Contact/door mission format we have currently just isn't ideal for that.

[honoroit]

1 hour ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I don't believe that's the case, @honoroit.

 

It's definately an improvement from an entire populace ODing on melange. All this travel without moving. 

Edited October 30, 2020 by honoroit

[Apparition]

2 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

I still think they could short-circuit a lot of these complaints by offering an "Exit to Base" option to the end-of-mission "Exit Mission" menu.

That would take care of many use cases, without being exploitable. No hoops involved.

 

That would wind up breaking teams with Rogues and Vigilantes even more than they're broken already.

[QuiJon]

2 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

I still think they could short-circuit a lot of these complaints by offering an "Exit to Base" option to the end-of-mission "Exit Mission" menu.

That would take care of many use cases, without being exploitable. No hoops involved.

Only problem with that option really is that having not been able to get your next mission before exiting you dont know if you want to leave the zone when exiting the mission. But hey more options the better i guess. 

[dtj714]

My god, what a freakin mess. Why don’t you just give everyone a teleport power that can take them anywhere a base could take them on a five minute timer?  I mean, that’s sort of the result, isn’t it?

[Gunrunner]

On 10/28/2020 at 3:03 PM, Apparition said:

 

No, because there is a far bigger issue at play than just PvP and Master of TF/SF badges.  Not much more can be said until Issue 27 is live.

See, that's the problem.  This "Much greater issue at play!" that keeps getting bandied about.  We've been told it's a handshake-authorization thing, but as far as we can tell it's an exploit that has the potential for abuse, and has not actually been abused.  So on a maybe-possibly-whothehellknows reason, one of the best QoL things ever is being replaced by an array of kludges that don't satisfy anyone.  And what's worse, we are barred from knowing just what this problem is, until it's too late for us to offer suggestions on how to fix it.

 

I dunno about you, but I'm mildly put off by such a state of affairs.  Were it me, and it's obviously not, my response would be: "Here's what we got.  This is the problem.  We're gonna tell you up front, you get caught doing this, you get banned forfuggingever.  Help us resolve this issue".  If it's in reality not an avoid-death thing, but an actual gamebreaking exploit, I imagine the vast bulk of players will completely step up to help.  Those that try to screw us all will get yanked in short order.  Maybe it's so heinous that we'll with a single voice gasp in abject horror, and happily test out solutions.  Maybe it's not, and what we're seeing is a retail reaction to a pserver issue.

 

[Blackbird71]

7 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

He can absolutely play however he wants and get or ignore whatever badges he wants.  I'm just pointing out his complaining about having to spend time getting exploration badges for LRT and simultaneously complaining that he's too busy getting day job badges to park by a portal.  But he can certainly do or say whatever he wants within the rules.

 

Saying that getting day job badges is "spending time" kind of misses the point.  It's usually just a brief moment at the end of a play session before you log out to get to a job location; the "time" is spent while you're offline.  Completely different from spending several hours hunting down badges in game during play time.

[Gunrunner]

On 10/28/2020 at 3:44 PM, Blackfeather said:

Well, all I can really say to that is...my condolences for relying too heavily on the slash command. It's kind of clear that the dev team's not interested in making something that's a drop-in replacement for the /enter_base_from_passcode command for those use cases you stated.

Once again, hammering out an acceptable replacement for this incredibly effective QoL feature is the entire reason there's so much activity on this thread.  You must have read some of this stuff to have gotten this far.

[galaxgal]

I was proselytized at that 'everyone' should share their feedback on this change, so here's mine!

 

I like this change because I already don't like the negative effects these teleport-anywhere-from-anywhere-instantly commands have on the visibility of the game population and liveliness of the world. If this is a side-effect of some other problems the developers were going to fix, so be it, but either way I'm in favor and I hope that element for some of us in the silent group of mostly-unconcerned or in-favor is acknowledged.

 

Please keep up the good work on this project; it's clear you have a coherent vision of what you hope CoX can be and aren't just relying on design-by-committee, even where I disagree with those decisions or ideas.

[Gunrunner]

8 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Remember that /enterfrompasscode will still work when close to a regular zone SG portal or ANY players mini-SG portal.  So if each player on a TF has one it can be summoned inside the mission upon completion and you can still use the same macro and transportation hubs that you always have.

 

You also have the option to obtain (through purchase or badges) the Long Range Teleport which will get you to your destination zone quicker as you don't have to zone into and out of a base.

 

So all it really takes to keep what you currently have is to spend 1 million inf (per character) or log off next to any base portal.  I appreciate that this is a change and different and not as convenient, but it's not the end of the world either.

I'm going to point this out again:  if part of the solution is stating "The command is still there, you just need to be within arms reach of a portal to use it!", then we're wading in bullcrap deep enough to require a snorkel.  If you're literally inside clicking distance of a portal, why would you use the command?  More to the point, if the issue with the command is so much greater then we mere mortals know, why are we keeping it at all?

 

In addition, 1 million inf is absurd.  It took me six months before I was comfortable spending that much inf on anything. You can get Reveal for 10k, this is the number we should be looking at.