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

[Jimmy]

1 minute ago, Blackfeather said:

Out of curiosity, might it ever be accessible inside supergroup bases? I've heard there's some technical difficulties that need overcoming first though.

Unlikely, the performance concerns there are considerable.

 

(back on topic now please 🙂 )

[DoctorDitko]

Would there be a possibility of a superbase "station" that teleported you to a "limbo zone" where you weren't in your base, nor in a recognizable zone, but you could interact with the AH and then, on exiting, teleport back to your base?

(May I humbly suggest the "Matrix Room?")

That would be another use of /enterbasewhatever that could be obviated.

Just a thought.

Edited November 2, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[Blackbird71]

3 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

Would it be too upsetting to anyone if joining a supergroup granted the supergroup portal power? I mean, when you join the Justice League they give you a communicator you can use to get beamed up the the satellite in Geo-synchronous orbit. Seems like we could do as much for new players.

Just seems like a nice gesture.

I'm not against the idea.  But as even characters not in SGs can make use of SG bases, I don't want it to be the only way of getting the power.

[ABlueThingy]

4 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

Would there be a possibility of a superbase "station" that teleported you to a "limbo zone" where you weren't in your base, nor in a recognizable zone, but you could interact with the AH and then, on exiting, teleport back to your base?

(May I humbly suggest the "Matrix Room?")

That would be another use of /enterbasewhatever that could be obviated.

Just a thought.

Perhaps a small Pocket D style AH zone that can house multiple players and has acess points from any AH in the world?

 

My understanding is that the AH pings the server requesting all the data on the market.  It basically generates a new copy of the entire market for every zone that accesses it.  That's why it's limited to static zones and not mission maps and base maps.  As I understand it.

 

 

[Vanden]

I don’t understand why you can’t just pop out into literally any zone next to the base portal to use the auction house and then use the portal to go back to your base.

[Ironblade]

13 hours ago, Furiant said:

Who was asking for this? Of all the things in need of fixes or improvments, who would point to this and say "that is high priority"?

Do we actually need to point out that the team of VOLUNTEERS who are actually doing the work are the ones who set the priorities?

Should I also mention that, since they receive no payment for their efforts, they are clearly doing this because of their love for the game and are doing what they think is best for the game?

[ABlueThingy]

19 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

Should I also mention that, since they receive no payment for their efforts, they are clearly doing this because of their love for the game and are doing what they think is best for the game?

WHAT. I thought it was because the homecoming team was evil and wanted to destroy the game? 

 

More anti-redside bias.

[KaizenSoze]

This has probably been suggested a dozen times before in the thread.

 

LRTP needs to not fire until a destination has been picked.

 

Right now, clicking on the button fires the power and starts the ten minute cool down.

 

This would take care of user mistakes.

 

Example:

• Running a mission arc
• Click LRTP
• Realize you forgot to do something in your current zone
• Cancel LRTP
• Talk to contact, but now you have to wait ten minutes to use LRTP

I know there are other travel options, but this would be a nice to have.

[ZacKing]

On ‎10‎/‎31‎/‎2020 at 7:05 PM, Jimmy said:

Because this is still City of Heroes. Travel is and always has been part of the game.
 

Plenty of games (both offline and online) with no subscriptions or micro transactions still involve travel. That’s got nothing to do with it.

Appreciate that you all are following the feedback and putting in effort on this but your comment here doesn't make any sense at all.  We're still traveling a lot even with the GM command right now.  Something doesn't add up here.  When the new portals go live, we're still going to be traveling.  All you've done is add a brief animation instead of people disappearing into thin air.  If you are all so concerned about travel time and everyone traveling, get rid of the Oro portal, LFG port, base porting, TT, mission teleporter etc.  I don't get why you all are so stuck on this.  travel time is a time sink in for profit games.  the game isn't for profit anymore and was moving toward less travel even on live.

[Arcadio]

I see there's a lot of opinion in this thread, so I'll add mine.

 

I do enjoy travel in this game. I like navigating the city, and something about the mundaneness of waiting for the train is refreshing. Even though I have LRTP on (one of) my main character, I almost never use it because I'd rather run or TP to the train. So I don't necessarily care what happens with these dozen or so portal options, I'll just continue not using them, but I will say that that uninhibited access to portals at all levels absolutely affects perceived liveliness of the zones. Of course there's still intra-zone travel after TPing to a zone, but that travel is one-way. That's half the travel cut out of each zone, and it's noticeable, especially when every low level character can do it with little to no investment.

Edited November 2, 2020 by Arcadio

[QuiJon]

6 minutes ago, Lines said:

it operates on powers, we interact with it through our characters,

Check, base teleporter is used by means of having a base with teleporters that my character activates when he wants to go to his base.

 

7 minutes ago, Lines said:

it has a recharge time

Now you are making things up. Fly has no recharge time, or at least it is barely nothing, as does SJ, SS or standard Teleport. All the p2w travel runs have no recharge, all the jump packs, all the jet packs. And just to point out the slash command which was "Allowed to be used until an equitable solution could be found" also had no recharge time. And for a year and a half that was not a problem.

 

11 minutes ago, Lines said:

it's something to be earned

Again free beast run with sprint is essentially SS with better vertical. Same thing with Ninja Run. Jet packs cost little to nothing. And ok sure you earn a level at which you pick a travel power, however back in the live days i knew NO ONE that did take a travel power. Where as now it is very common to find people that decide to skip a travel power because they find the freebies at p2w vendors can do well enough when their power selection or slotting gets tight. 

 

14 minutes ago, Lines said:

it's something to be earned, it has some grounding in the game world. It's part of the ecology and mechanics of the game as opposed to an exceptional, hand-waved, all-access meta-mechanic as the slash command is now.

This one i will give you. You are right. Instantly disappearing was a bit borked. However as has been said everytime people make this point and is now just gleefully being ignored it seems, no one is saying to leave the slash command open or to use its same mechanic. So, base teleporter is grounded in the game world. It is an extension of the functionality of your base and its teleport system. As such it can port you at will to your base. Just the same way a public base teleporter does, or the teleporters that take you to auction houses, or to contact to start a TF in the LFG menu. It is in game already, it is a mechanic. However while you all seem to think it should be limited just no reason then just it should be. Most of us are saying why? Are the justice League told that can not be teleported because they have ran out of charges, or it has been to recently since their last teleport? What about star trek?

 

20 minutes ago, Lines said:

The devs can't just be sloppy about how people travel for the sake of convenience.

For a year and half we had a "sloppy" power by your standards. Did the game suffer? I mean seriously have we been riddled with complaints of people quit playing because to many people got to teleport to their bases to often? Cause i have not seen one. Have we seen a run of threads about how people are quitting because they think it is to easy to move around the city? I have not seen one. The devs are working with a game where teleportation exists already. I get butting limits on simply popping from mission door to mission door. But i dont think popping into your own person base should be hard to do, or be limited and is hardly sloppy so long as they make a power which explains it. And they did. They just want to add in random influence costs and use limitations for absolutely no good reason. That is what is sloppy. I mean from a story stand point, if i have built a base and built transporters to take me all over the city, why would i not build the little button dongle for my key chain that ports me to my base at will?  This system is like if i got a "free" garage door opener but then after they install it say "that will be 1m dollars for the clicker to open it." And so i pay the one million dollars and then am told "yeah but  you can only use it every 10 minutes but if you need more then that go on this scavenger hunt, or just sit at home for 7 days and we will let you open it more often." Talk about sloppy reasoning and mechanics. 

[ZacKing]

6 minutes ago, Arcadio said:

I see there's a lot of opinion in this thread, so I'll add mine.

 

I do enjoy travel in this game. I like navigating the city, and something about the mundaneness of waiting for the train is refreshing. Even though I have LRTP on (one of) my main character, I almost never use it because I'd rather run or TP to the train. So I don't necessarily care what happens with these dozen or so portal options, I'll just continue not using them, but I will say that that uninhibited access to portals at all levels absolutely affects perceived liveliness of the zones. Of course there's still intra-zone travel after TPing to a zone, but that travel is one-way. That's half the travel cut out of each zone, and it's noticeable, especially when every low level character can do it with little to no investment.

When there's only a couple hundred people or less on a server at any given time do you expect them all to be in the same zone as you or something?  AP and PI are always lively. 

[Xanatos]

On 10/31/2020 at 1:47 PM, Jimmy said:

•  Supergroup Portal (New P2W Power)
  • 10 minute cooldown, unaffected by global recharge buffs
    • Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 10 minutes

Two big thumbs up. This and the other P2W power pretty much cover me, now. (Plus Ouroboros and jumping to base portals.)

 

Thanks for sticking with it.

[Lines]

2 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

Again free beast run with sprint is essentially SS with better vertical. Same thing with Ninja Run. Jet packs cost little to nothing. And ok sure you earn a level at which you pick a travel power, however back in the live days i knew NO ONE that did take a travel power. Where as now it is very common to find people that decide to skip a travel power because they find the freebies at p2w vendors can do well enough when their power selection or slotting gets tight. 

Sorry not to respond to everything due to time - I do think you make a lot of good and thoughtful points, especially the last one, and I'm sorry I can't reply to them all adequately. But this one in particular is interesting (at risk of being off-topic).

 

I personally think the contents of the P2W vendors should find more organic places in the world and have their stock also balanced against what's reasonable to earn and how they fit in with the rest of the game. I think it's done a very good job of bridging the gap between live's store and homecoming and shouldn't go away until all its contents can be acquired elsewhere, but I do think it needs to find a better fit place in the world. (For instance, I would prefer to see Ninja Run/Beast Run be alternative customisations for some powers rather than their own power, and speed and jump height is back to being something gained from travel pools. The freerunning power from the utility belt pool would replace their functionality.)

 

For me, the changes and new features bring these methods of travel into a kind of balance threshold that I expect the game to have. I think other things could also be brought into that threshold, but that's a huge and nuanced conversation to have. I'm sure others will disagree with me, which is fine and it's the nature of adjusting these bits of content.

 

This might not be on the dev's radar at all, which is fine, but if it was then it would be quite a big job to figure out where things would land. I wouldn't expect it all to happen in one update.

[Shadowsleuth]

Will the Pocket D VIP Pass teleporter be added to the Fast Travel popmenu in a future build?

Edited November 2, 2020 by Shadowsleuth

[Apparition]

1 minute ago, Shadowsleuth said:

Will the Pocket D VIP Pass teleporter be added to the Fast Travel popmenu in a future build?

Considering that it is being removed from the game entirely...

[Shadowsleuth]

3 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Considering that it is being removed from the game entirely...

Thanks for the info.

 

Missed seeing it in the patch notes.

Edited November 2, 2020 by Shadowsleuth

[GM Tock]

Pocket D is going to be a destination in Long Range Teleporter.  Since it's in that list, the Temp Power by itself is a little redundant.

 

Nostalgia reasons, yes, I'll miss the in-game button myself.  I remember when I got the "Good vs. Evil Edition" and the Pocket D VIP Pass card inside that has the CD-Key hidden on the back.

[Widower]

On a less nostalgic note, please remember that this thread is for feedback and not for endless rounds of rehashed arguments. Thank you for reading; you may now return to your nostalgia.

[Luminara]

19 hours ago, QuiJon said:

And then just imagine when Batman calls up to the Watch Tower and say i just beamed down to the Joker's warehouse and snuck in and found his plans, he is at Gotham City Hall right now getting ready to gas the entire city council, beam me to the down town district. And Mr Terrific tells him "sorry bats, it has only been 7 minutes since we last ported you, you are gonna need to wait 3 more minutes."

 

Capacitor.  Wiki it.

[Faultline]

7 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

This has probably been suggested a dozen times before in the thread.

 

LRTP needs to not fire until a destination has been picked.

Not possible. The power firing is what triggers the monorail code to show the list of destinations.

[Dragon Crush]

3 minutes ago, Faultline said:

Not possible. The power firing is what triggers the monorail code to show the list of destinations.

Would if be possible to shorten the recharge if and only if you cancel out?

[Mr. Vee]

53 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

Pocket D is going to be a destination in Long Range Teleporter.  Since it's in that list, the Temp Power by itself is a little redundant.

 

Nostalgia reasons, yes, I'll miss the in-game button myself.  I remember when I got the "Good vs. Evil Edition" and the Pocket D VIP Pass card inside that has the CD-Key hidden on the back.

It's not redundant when there's cooldowns or charges involved in the other powers. Since there are it'd be a nice extra way to get to an sg base without burning a rapid response charge when the other powers are on cooldown. And since PD is the only place with a P2W contact that will talk to you during a TF/Ouro and Null lives there I think it warrants its own special power. And we also either paid for or earned it. Please, leave it in even if it doesn't get the activation time fix of mish/base tp.

[Faultline]

9 minutes ago, Dragon Crush said:

Would if be possible to shorten the recharge if and only if you cancel out?

No, there is currently no way for the monorail code to know that it was triggered by any specific power, nor a way for the monorail code to change the status of a power. Non trivial to add, it's very out of scope.

[KaizenSoze]

20 minutes ago, Faultline said:

Not possible. The power firing is what triggers the monorail code to show the list of destinations.

As a non-gaming programmer, I understand. Since, you're using the tram-monorail code. You're limited by that code.

 

Would be nice for a future patch. Thank you as always.