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

[Lines]

I think you left out the Mercy Island placement from the patch notes:

 

Spoiler

 

Dunno if I love the placement - it doesn't feel like a natural corner to me. Would a small platform tucked into the dead end up ahead with it on be possible at this point?

[Lines]

3 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Did you mean to quote me in this response?  Because I really have no idea what your post has to do with mine.  My comments had absolutely nothing to do with lore and everything to do with the intended functionality of the Ouro portal.  Is it intended for level 1 characters to have easy access to the power or not?  If so, just give it to them; remove the pointless speed bumps.  If not, keep level restrictions intact. 

I think the idea is it still has to be earned, but it now doesn't matter when it's earned.

 

So it's not that level 1s should be able to use the portal, it's that they can.

[Blackbird71]

1 minute ago, Lines said:

I think the idea is it still has to be earned, but it now doesn't matter when it's earned.

 

So it's not that level 1s should be able to use the portal, it's that they can.

Having someone else (or one of your own alts) drop a portal in front of you so you can jump through and then get the portal yourself is not "earning" it.  It's a speed bump at best, and a pointless restriction that does nothing.

[Faultline]

5 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

My comments had absolutely nothing to do with lore and everything to do with the intended functionality of the Ouro portal.  Is it intended for level 1 characters to have easy access to the power or not?

You get the portal because you're exposed to time travel. How easy or hard it is is entirely up to how quickly your character is exposed to time travel. That has everything to do with the lore, and nothing to do with your character's level.

[Blackbird71]

7 minutes ago, Faultline said:

You get the portal because you're exposed to time travel. How easy or hard it is is entirely up to how quickly your character is exposed to time travel. That has everything to do with the lore, and nothing to do with your character's level.

The disconnect here is deafening.  You need to talk to Jimmy and figure out what page the two of you are on, because my comment was in response to his, and it was a mechanics/design philosophy discussion, not lore. 

 

 

[CrudeVileTerror]

And now we're in the territory I was trying to talk about in that other thread earlier today . . . 

 

Ahem.

SO!

Five major points on the spectrum here.

"It's just a game.  Story is irrelevant."
"The story must adhere to the game."
"The game and story must be balanced."
"The game must adhere to the story."

"It's all about the story.  The game is irrelevant."

 

I think @Faultline is aiming for the middle of this spectrum, and commenting accordingly.

I think @Blackbird71 is trying to address this issue from the "top" end of this spectrum.

 

Do each of you think that's a fair assessment?

[Faultline]

@CrudeVileTerror is likely correct, based on this:

29 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Is it intended for level 1 characters to have easy access to the power or not?  If so, just give it to them; remove the pointless speed bumps.  If not, keep level restrictions intact. 

You do not get the power for being level 1, and you didn't get it before for being level 14 (or 25, when it was introduced). You get the power for being exposed to time travel. That is not a "pointless speed bump", that is a lore reason.

[Blackbird71]

2 minutes ago, Faultline said:

@CrudeVileTerror is likely correct, based on this:

You do not get the power for being level 1, and you didn't get it before for being level 14 (or 25, when it was introduced). You get the power for being exposed to time travel. That is not a "pointless speed bump", that is a lore reason.

If the only obstacle to getting the power is getting someone else to open the portal for you, then you might as well just put it on the P2W vendor and be done with it.  It would save a lot of "can someone drop an Ouro?" spam.  As it is now, yes, mechanically it is just a speed bump.

[Faultline]

3 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

As it is now, yes, mechanically it is just a speed bump.

And there is no reason to change that. Almost every story told is the result of the protagonist overcoming obstacles. Some are major, and some are speedbumps.

[Blackbird71]

1 minute ago, Faultline said:

And there is no reason to change that. Almost every story told is the result of the protagonist overcoming obstacles. Some are major, and some are speedbumps.

I get that there are lore reasons, and I'm all for lore where it make sense.  But this ignores the practicality of the matter and the nature of players.  With this change, no one is going to go through content to get exposed to time travel in order to get this portal, they're just going to get someone to drop one for them at level 1 and be done with it. 

 

At least with a higher level lock, there was a chance some people would take the time to seek out missions that had them cross paths with time travel and thereby unlock the portal naturally.  So if the intent was to keep the power restricted for lore reasons, I think it's still a failure in that regard, because no one is going to care about the lore in the face of the travel convenience of having the power at level 1.

[Lines]

I'm unclear what you're advocating, Blackbird. Do you think the portal should return to being more inconvenient to get?

 

But you're also saying it should be on the P2W vendor. P2W was a quick fix so that features that were locked behind transactions on live can still be obtained. Its stock doesn't need to be expanded any more (and I personally think it should be phased out and have its contents more organically placed in the game, but that's another discussion).

 

I don't think chat spam is much to worry about. It's an MMO and it's great when people help each other out. An Ouro portal dropped next to ms lib will last 90 seconds (and ALWAYS 90 seconds, whereas currently it vanishes when the caster zones), which means the spam would usually only reoccur that often at most. If it somehow becomes a problem, maybe the portal could sustain for longer, but I really don't see that becoming an issue.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Lines

[arthurh35353]

5 hours ago, @Ghost said:

Not to get too snarky, but I think making 3 new powers and adjusting the surplus of teleport powers took more effort than it would have to just make one fast recharging supergroup portal.

 

Extra trays aren't the solution to "we have too many teleport powers." Tackling the issue of why you need that tray space is, and consolidating teleport powers would go a long way in that direction.

Huh, just getting a base portal power for being in a SG would be an amazingly easy, QoL updated. Maybe it won't be the best, but if you have eight people with a 30 minute timer power (that upgrades to 10 minutes with the day job bonus) would be a simpler fix, IMO.

 

[Blackbird71]

2 minutes ago, Lines said:

I'm unclear what you're advocating, Blackbird. Do you think the portal should return to being more inconvenient to get?

 

But you're also saying it should be on the P2W vendor. P2W was a quick fix so that features that would be locked behind transactions can still be obtained. Its stock doesn't need to be expanded any more (and I personally think it should be phased out and have its contents more organically placed in the game, but that's another discussion).

 

I don't think chat spam is much to worry about. It's an MMO and it's great when people help each other out. An Ouro portal dropped next to miss lib will last 90 seconds (and ALWAYS 90 seconds, whereas currently it vanishes when the caster zones), which means the spam would usually only reoccur that often at most. If it somehow becomes a problem, maybe the portal could sustain for longer, but I really don't see that becoming an issue.

I'm saying pick a side, have it one way or the other.  This halfway-done stuff just feel like an unnecessary annoyance at best.

[CrudeVileTerror]

@Blackbird71, I don't intend to be rude, but I'm not sure if this is the particular hill any of us necessarily want you to die upon.

I think it's worth discussing the social impact that -all- of these changes are going to have, Ouroboros Portal included, but I don't think the blankets of "no one" is accurate in either of your statements.

From a purely game mechanics standpoint; sure.  It's reasonable to say that something like this would be busy-work that is going to be pawned off on social behaviour, and that for no small part of the community, that's all they're going to see here.  

And that also; yes:  There are players(Group1) who find it annoying and disruptive when certain players(Group2) actively request the help of other players(Group3) for what those first set of players(Group1) find to be a design oversight.

 

On the other hand, while it's been hit-or-miss as to what the game lore even -is- at times (good gravy do I need to write THAT essay one of these days), there is still a ludonarrative resonance which the overall game design attempts to adhere to.  And "hit-or-miss" really . . . oof.  It just doesn't fully and adequately engage with how many loop-de-loops have been done over the years.

And in the three group scenario above, Group 1's players aren't inherently more worthwhile than Groups 2 and 3.

It's perhaps not the ideal solution for any one of these Groups, but it does seem to be a fairly solid compromise (at least from my perspective).

 

All the same, I do not want to discourage you from speaking about the feedback which you are most passionate about.  If this really is a big deal to you, then by all means!  Have at it.

But I think we can maybe work on finding a more balanced solution than what you're proposing.

[DoctorDitko]

I really like the fact you can now drop most of these portals while Hovering. That's a huge QoL upgrade for all of my perpetual fliers.

Any chance we can have Pet summoning fixed like that?

I'd really like to get my pets fixed.

Never mind their opinions!

 

Also, if this goes Live, I am forever referring to Talos Island as Grand Talos Station.

 

[Jimmy]

8 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

I really like the fact you can now drop most of these portals while Hovering. That's a huge QoL upgrade for all of my perpetual fliers.

Any chance we can have Pet summoning fixed like that?

I'd really like to get my pets fixed.

This was a real pet peeve of mine too. Feel free to post a new thread in feedback and suggestions with powers you think need this treatment and I'll take a look when I have time.

 

Edit: Any further replies on this will be hidden - this thread is for travel stuff 🙂

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, Luminara said:

The exploit was discovered somewhat recently (not yesterday, or last week, it's been a while).  If they'd known earlier, they would've shut it down ASAP.  The fact that they've poured as many hours as they have into redesigning transport options, though, and the length of time the exploit has been known to them, suggests to me that it's not fixable.

It does seem odd, though, that if enterbasefrompasscode had an 'unfixable' exploit incorporated in it, the 'fix' incorporating all of these new base teleport powers still has an enterbasefrompasscode command, presumably rewritten to prevent this gross exploit, albeit limited to within 45 feet of a base portal. Without knowing what this exploit is/was, though, it's difficult to see how it was fixable by shackling it to a base portal, but not by simply disabling it in combat/PvP without having to have a new constellation of base teleport powers. It will be interesting to see what information gets released after the revised beta (betas rarely if ever make it through entirely unchanged) pushes to the live servers.

[zslane]

Oh man. Thanks for removing one of the best QoL features this game ever had. 😖

[CrudeVileTerror]

So, with the initial feedback that's hit, are the Devs considering anything particular for the next iteration of these changes yet?

Any elaborations on some of the decisions that have been made up to this point?

[Troo]

Seems to be a pretty good compromise. Plus a bag of goodies.

The new accolade is kind of an awesome concept. If we're fairly familiar with a zone we can teleport there.. is that right?

 

[Troo]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

how it was fixable by shackling it to a base portal, but not by simply disabling it in combat/PvP without having to have a new constellation of base teleport powers.

Is it because portals are not in combat areas? (apologies, I have not read all the pages)

[macskull]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

Oh man. Thanks for removing one of the best QoL features this game ever had. 😖

It's not gone.

[Number Six]

@srmalloy It's actually kind of backwards from that. Fold space and the LRT accolade came first during development, which led to a general revamp of the various teleportation powers, which led to discussions of "I guess we should finally fix enterbasefrompasscode now that the recharges on P2W/day job powers are getting reduced", which led to the creation of the base portal power* since it's something I had wanted to do whenever the command was patched. Somewhere in the middle of all that, we got some additional information about things related to the systemwide improvements to input validation in the travel/portal UI that made the whole thing more urgent.

 

That all happened in maybe the very last week before it went to open beta. So the design you're seeing today is definitely subject to change and may not be the final design.

 

* which let to several engine updates to support that, but that's a whole other rabbit hole

[Gunrunner]

23 hours ago, macskull said:

Because there are other issues with the command that will be in the patch notes when this goes to live.

I reiterate.  After a year and a half?  No, tauting "other issues" sounds way too much like apologist thinking.  The common consensus is this is a PvP issue, and if that is the case, borking the rest of us to "fix" it is the worst of available options.

[Gunrunner]

45 minutes ago, macskull said:

It's not gone.

Semantics.  A command that takes you to your base only if you're within 45 feet of a base portal is past foolish and into stupid.  Stating that "Well, it's still here!" is literally a smack in the face.