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

[Jacke]

29 minutes ago, Gunrunner said:

My point here is that in practical application, a 10 million inf pricetag is a paywall to a player who has yet to amass the discretionary income required.

 

The barrier isn't really Inf.  It's information on the best practices to play City.  Even using some of them make things much easier.

 

Many people, including myself, are working to get that information out to more players.  That big post I made on the last page, with all that stuff on Custom Windows, I've got it all saved in a text file on my computer and I'll see about getting a page made on the Homecoming Wiki so I can then point people to that, as opposed to finding bits and pieces and figuring out how to put it together.

 

If you want enough Inf to be able to afford things like most of the best P2W toys on a new toon, the first thing to do is pick the best toon you love to play and get it to 50.  Any level 50 toon played in any way easily makes millions of Inf per play session.

 

Right now, when I decide to really kit out a new toon, I like to get about 21 million Inf to kit them out with P2W stuff, a lot free and the rest worth it.  With over 0.8 million left.  Nearly half of that is 10 million Inf for Team Transporter.  For i27p1, Supergroup Portal will add another 10 million for 31 million total.

 

On any level 50, about 10 sessions of play can easily make more than 31 million.  And there's ways to make more.

 

And that 31 million Inf isn't necessary.  Even a few million, a single play session on a level 50, can kit out a toon with P2W purchases very well.  And there's a lot that's free, either from the P2W vendor or elsewhere.  You can get the 8 Atlas Park badges in well under 10 minutes of running around.  I've done that on so many toons I can do it without looking at the minimap.  Then the LTD power unlocks.  Or spend an hour in Pocket D to get the time-in-Zone badge and LTD as well.  Then it's just 1 badge per zone to add them to the LTD power.

 

I'm currently testing some new toons not spending anything they didn't earn themselves.  When i27p1 releases, I'll be making new toons and some of them will just spend what they earn.  I want to get a better feel for the i27p1 economy to provide good feedback to the devs.  Then we all can consider how things need to be adjusted in the future.

[Faultline]

33 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Fair enough. I suppose with enough "one time" purchases, as a unit, they can affect inflation levels.

While we are not tracking P2W purchases, I actually ran some queries yesterday on specifically the teleporter powers that I can repeat today to see how many characters bought the powers in the last 24 hours on a very ordinary day. Base Teleport 45, Mission Teleport 107, Team Transporter 63; that's 782 million inf drained in 24 hours just from those three powers on Excelsior alone. And while I didn't track it yesterday so I don't have a 24hr number, 107.3 billion inf has been spent so far on Excelsior just on Portable Workbench.

[Jacke]

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

You should actually be able to put all of these commands into a single macro. Depending on the shard you're on, the other 4 passcodes should just fail. Maybe. Give it a go and let us know 🙂

And indeed it does work.  Gets a bunch of "that didn't work" messages but the one that works engages.

 

/macro "JACKE Homecoming" "enterbasefrompasscode JACKE-673$$enterbasefrompasscode JACKE-83$$enterbasefrompasscode JACKE-439$$enterbasefrompasscode JACKE-673$$enterbasefrompasscode JACKE-459"

 

[Wavicle]

32 minutes ago, Jacke said:

 

The barrier isn't really Inf.  It's information on the best practices to play City.  Even using some of them make things much easier.

 

Many people, including myself, are working to get that information out to more players.  That big post I made on the last page, with all that stuff on Custom Windows, I've got it all saved in a text file on my computer and I'll see about getting a page made on the Homecoming Wiki so I can then point people to that, as opposed to finding bits and pieces and figuring out how to put it together.

 

If you want enough Inf to be able to afford things like most of the best P2W toys on a new toon, the first thing to do is pick the best toon you love to play and get it to 50.  Any level 50 toon played in any way easily makes millions of Inf per play session.

 

Right now, when I decide to really kit out a new toon, I like to get about 21 million Inf to kit them out with P2W stuff, a lot free and the rest worth it.  With over 0.8 million left.  Nearly half of that is 10 million Inf for Team Transporter.  For i27p1, Supergroup Portal will add another 10 million for 31 million total.

 

On any level 50, about 10 sessions of play can easily make more than 31 million.  And there's ways to make more.

 

And that 31 million Inf isn't necessary.  Even a few million, a single play session on a level 50, can kit out a toon with P2W purchases very well.  And there's a lot that's free, either from the P2W vendor or elsewhere.  You can get the 8 Atlas Park badges in well under 10 minutes of running around.  I've done that on so many toons I can do it without looking at the minimap.  Then the LTD power unlocks.  Or spend an hour in Pocket D to get the time-in-Zone badge and LTD as well.  Then it's just 1 badge per zone to add them to the LTD power.

 

I'm currently testing some new toons not spending anything they didn't earn themselves.  When i27p1 releases, I'll be making new toons and some of them will just spend what they earn.  I want to get a better feel for the i27p1 economy to provide good feedback to the devs.  Then we all can consider how things need to be adjusted in the future.

It should also be noted that running around for the Atlas Accolade gets you both LRTP and five Merits which can be turned into nearly 1 million inf all on its own.

[Wavicle]

The gap of knowledge for new players is regarding turning Merits into Converters and then into Inf. But if you've learned that then simply completing Exploration Accolades is enough to fund the P2W purchases of any toon.

[Lockpick]

1 hour ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Fair enough. I suppose with enough "one time" purchases, as a unit, they can affect inflation levels. Of course, I just sat in Pocket D for an hour messing with costumes/bios and never paid for that badge/power. I feel like I should be surprised people would pay influence for something they can get easily for free, but I'm not.

I have been paying for the Pocket D power since I started playing here.  I had no idea I could get for hanging out there.

[GadgetDon]

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

This is simply not the case though. You have LRT and Ouro for free, and for 1 million a piece you can get a personal base transporter and a personal mission transporter. Or you can of course fly / run / jump to the nearest base portal, which after i27 will be a much more frequent option due to all the new and moved portals. Or you can opt for the day job powers. There's tons of choices available, and you definitely don't need all of them. You can pick what's right for you.

 

The summoned base portal is absolutely an optional luxury, the same way that the team mission transporter is (which also costs 10 million). Note that these are the team-wide powers, you are not left behind by not having them, because the entire team can make use of them.

That's actually one reason I'm worried about a perceived discrepancy. If my teammate has a team mission transporter, I benefit, because I want to use it at the same time he does. But the personal base transporter is more personal.

 

If I'd thought of this earlier, I'd have suggested making it like the jetpacks, one million inf for 20 uses of the base transporter. (Numbers to be adjusted based on testing). That way, on the one hand, it's a continuing gold sink. And the jump to get started is a lot lower.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

The gap of knowledge for new players is regarding turning Merits into Converters and then into Inf. But if you've learned that then simply completing Exploration Accolades is enough to fund the P2W purchases of any toon.

 

Converters weren't in the game at all when I stopped playing near the end of '11, so I had to learn that from scratch.  Merits weren't useful for buying anything but recipes when I left, but all it took for me was to see converters offered by the vendors to know that I could use them, to make what I needed from garbage and make a profit.  And market prices are right there, in plain sight.

 

I had that figured out within 15 minutes.  I can't understand why anyone presumes new players will find it any more difficult.  There is no knowledge gap.  It's not even a crack on the sidewalk.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Luminara said:

 

Converters weren't in the game at all when I stopped playing near the end of '11, so I had to learn that from scratch.  Merits weren't useful for buying anything but recipes when I left, but all it took for me was to see converters offered by the vendors to know that I could use them, to make what I needed from garbage and make a profit.  And market prices are right there, in plain sight.

 

I had that figured out within 15 minutes.  I can't understand why anyone presumes new players will find it any more difficult.  There is no knowledge gap.  It's not even a crack on the sidewalk.

I played the game since i3, and when I came to homecoming what I instinctively thought was that I should spend my merits on recipes and enhancements from the merit vendor. It took me a while to learn that that was not really correct.

[CrudeVileTerror]

The Inf-Sink info is interesting to see . . . although . . . in this thread?

Wouldn't it have been nice to see those numbers in the threads back around April?

And important point:  If a player doesn't use the player-market, no amount of Inflation Curtailing Inf-Sinks are going to affect them, but the fixed-price items most certainly will.

I'm in a position of privilege right now with my spouse being my "sugar momma" in-game for Inf.

But should that source dry up?  Yeah . . . 10,000,000 is insanely steep.  I won't be able to afford it.

 

I definitely think Inf generation across all levels and Inf-Sinking needs to be re-examined in general.  Not an I27p1 thing, of course, but for now . . . do the Devs -really- feel that 10,000,000 is fair to players who don't touch the market?

I sure don't.

[macskull]

If you think 10,000,000 inf is too steep, you're not the target market for those powers. You can get LRT, Ouroboros portal, and the day job base TP/base portal powers for 0 inf.

[Luminara]

10 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

And important point:  If a player doesn't use the player-market, no amount of Inflation Curtailing Inf-Sinks are going to affect them, but the fixed-price items most certainly will.

 

They're also not directly affected by inflation.  Temporary power vendors don't raise their prices.  Merit vendors don't show something as unavailable.  SOs don't sell for less to stores because there's a glut on the market.  Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

13 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I definitely think Inf generation across all levels and Inf-Sinking needs to be re-examined in general.  Not an I27p1 thing, of course, but for now . . . do the Devs -really- feel that 10,000,000 is fair to players who don't touch the market?

 

It's fair in that there isn't a comparable merit sink to fight inflation, or inflationary effects on the costs of the goods they buy or sell, or stock shortages at the vendors they use, or taxes for characters contributing to inflation but not being affected by it.  Using or not using the market, there's an up side and a down side, and something that might not seem fair on both sides.

 

Inf* sinks are necessary.  And fixed price items are as fair as they can be in that no-one is excluded from generating the funds, even if they choose not to use certain methods.

[Faultline]

49 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I definitely think Inf generation across all levels and Inf-Sinking needs to be re-examined in general.  Not an I27p1 thing, of course, but for now . . . do the Devs -really- feel that 10,000,000 is fair to players who don't touch the market?

I sure don't.

I'm going to skip the long explanation: players are expected to use the market. Things like item bucketing were put in place to lower the barrier of entry and make it useful even at low levels. If you refuse to use the market, you will generally be overpaying for everything, with recipes at the merit vendor being more expensive by a factor of 20 or more.

 

The short explanation is that influence exchange between players = good, influence generation out of thin air by rewards = bad. If you want the long explanation, make a new thread and tag me there, because this is going way off topic. But bottom line is that the AH is the one core element in keeping the game economy healthy, so we want players to use it. Any argument about the AH should be about how to make it more easy and accessible to use, and not how to accommodate players who absolutely refuse to.

[CrudeVileTerror]

Thanks for the reply; I'll contact @GM ColdSpark and see if we can't make that an upcoming weekly discussion, @Faultline.

 

and now:  Back to the previously scheduled Beta Transit Feedback Thread!

[thunderforce]

16 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I played the game since i3, and when I came to homecoming what I instinctively thought was that I should spend my merits on recipes and enhancements from the merit vendor. It took me a while to learn that that was not really correct.

This happened to me too, but it happened early in Homecoming's release, before much of this stuff had been figured out. These days - well, I can only speak for Reunion - anyone who asks in Help or General will be told not to do that but to sell their merits; anyone who looks at the forums will be told much the same; the Wiki gives a warning that buying recipes and enhancements directly may not be cost-effective. (Bit off-topic, but perhaps the merit vendor could have a little rubric about how "it may be cheaper to (blah)"...)

16 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I definitely think Inf generation across all levels and Inf-Sinking needs to be re-examined in general.  Not an I27p1 thing, of course, but for now . . . do the Devs -really- feel that 10,000,000 is fair to players who don't touch the market?

There's a big difference between players who don't play the market - a perfectly sensible way to play, given the terrible AH interface - and players who won't touch the market, not even to sell merit products. The latter are cutting themselves off, for no very good reason, from a large supply of money from richer players which can be got with minimal effort. Obviously they're going to be short of money, but also obviously fixed prices can't be set with them in mind. One might as well worry about a hypothetical player who refuses to sell anything to a vendor.

Edited November 18, 2020 by thunderforce
Change "ISK" to "money"; I spent several years thinking about a 3-letter currency that begins 'i' and it's a hard habit to break.

[DoctorDitko]

21 hours ago, Lockpick said:

I have been paying for the Pocket D power since I started playing here.  I had no idea I could get for hanging out there.

Oh, man! Sorry to hear it!

May you get the Lockpicking Lawyer to represent you in obtaining a refund!

And many thanks for your contributions to the economy.

 

Apropos of which, I had an idea: A P2W temp power, for 10,000 inf or so, that let you have the Base Portal Summon for a short while, or a few uses.

Would that mollify the well-intentioned folks worried about a 10 million inf per character investment?

 

Sort of like the difference between renting or owning your home? Both are good for the economy, IIRC.

 

[Gunrunner]

10 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

Apropos of which, I had an idea: A P2W temp power, for 10,000 inf or so, that let you have the Base Portal Summon for a short while, or a few uses.

Would that mollify the well-intentioned folks worried about a 10 million inf per character investment?

 

Sort of like the difference between renting or owning your home? Both are good for the economy, IIRC.

 

Precisely my point.  Reveal costs 10k, is permanent, and while it dosnt use charges, eventually one runs out of zones.  Yes, you can use it in missions, but personally I use the fog of war to navigate ("Ok, that's not on the map yet, so those last few mobs have gotta be hiding there!").  What you have suggested for a base portal would provide another, low-cost option for new folks who have discovered the P2W vendor, but have not yet learned the other methods.

 

It's all beating a dead horse at this point, anyway.  The replacements for /ebfp are not ideal, but they work.  The prices are not going to change, for those bits that require inf.  We're a short span from seeing these changes go Live, so there's very little possibility of yet another power being added to the mix.

[DoctorDitko]

15 minutes ago, Gunrunner said:

replacements for /ebfp are not ideal, but they work.

Truth!

There has been much abuse of domesticated equoids, but the Devs appear to still be listening.

 

Speaking of which, any chance of getting /ebfp as an alias to /enterbasefrompasscode? If only to conserve bandwidth?

[Ironblade]

On 11/17/2020 at 12:53 PM, Jimmy said:

You should actually be able to put all of these commands into a single macro. Depending on the shard you're on, the other 4 passcodes should just fail. Maybe. Give it a go and let us know 🙂

Yeah, that comes in handy for a lot of things.  I have a keybind to summon my buff pets.  You can only have one on a character and the bind tries to summon every single one of them.  It ends up summoning the one they have and it does nothing on my characters who never bothered to pick a buff pet.

[Ironblade]

1 hour ago, Gunrunner said:

The prices are not going to change, for those bits that require inf.  We're a short span from seeing these changes go Live, so there's very little possibility of yet another power being added to the mix.

Yes - BUT - at a lot of points in these feedback threads, people have come up with good ideas that the devs have taken note of to look at in the future.

So don't stop spitballing the alternatives.

[Peacemoon]

This would be my tidy solution.
What I would like to see is zone hub built for Heroes, and one for Villains, which everyone of that faction can access, from a low level, and has access too via an inherent teleport power that is unlocked at say, level 10.

 

This means players don’t have to create their own base, or sit in their own SG,  and it is freely available for everyone.

 

Ideally the portals to each zone would be unlocked by getting the zone’s exploration accolade, but only if access could be an account-wide unlock. So once your main/first character unlocks them, they’re available for all your alts.  

 

Give the teleport power a 15 minute cooldown. That seems like a very forgiving compromise.

 

Then, because the power is an inherent power, you could add power customisation to it. So that people can tailor their ‘recall’ power to their character’s theme. Fire, ice, a massive jump into space, psychic, shadow, etc etc.

 

I think this would be a perfect solution, and you could do away with a lot of the messy temporary/paid teleport powers.

[chi1701]

With the removal of SG macro, would people object if maximum speed cap of fly, jump and superspeed is increased for that they can benefit fully from slotting speed boosting ios either from sets or single enhancements?

[Jacke]

18 hours ago, Ironblade said:

Yeah, that comes in handy for a lot of things.  I have a keybind to summon my buff pets.  You can only have one on a character and the bind tries to summon every single one of them.  It ends up summoning the one they have and it does nothing on my characters who never bothered to pick a buff pet.

You can actually have a few buff pets at a time.  I've got the Red and Blue Wisp Pets on a toon or two, just to test this out.  If you use '/execpowtoggleon' in your chain of commands, the right-most one will execute to turn on that pet.  Not quite sure here, but I think next use of the macro, the next-to-rightmost command will execute, which will force off the last pet as well.  And so on.

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, chi1701 said:

With the removal of SG macro, would people object if maximum speed cap of fly, jump and superspeed is increased for that they can benefit fully from slotting speed boosting ios either from sets or single enhancements?

Interesting idea.  I don't think the players will object to more speed, but it's a complex mess of equations that were made that way for balance.  The speeds of some powers and all the caps rise as the level goes up to 50.  And the actual speeds short of the cap are made of components that add together.  For historical reasons, that for fly speed is very complex, especially to give an appropriate speed for hover.  Layered on top of that are special speed powers like what the Kheldians have, all the teleport powers, etc.  It's a big set of interconnected design.  And somewhere above the Superspeed cap there was a limit to how fast the server and client code could properly handle a character or a mob moving, which may have changed.

 

I think revisions to speeds will be considered, but it would be best to put in a suggestion and get support for it.  I can't see anything happening until after i27p1 is released.  Then would have to be carefully examined and tested.

[Wavicle]

4 hours ago, Peacemoon said:

This would be my tidy solution.
What I would like to see is zone hub built for Heroes, and one for Villains, which everyone of that faction can access, from a low level, and has access too via an inherent teleport power that is unlocked at say, level 10.

 

This means players don’t have to create their own base, or sit in their own SG,  and it is freely available for everyone.

 

Ideally the portals to each zone would be unlocked by getting the zone’s exploration accolade, but only if access could be an account-wide unlock. So once your main/first character unlocks them, they’re available for all your alts.  

 

Give the teleport power a 15 minute cooldown. That seems like a very forgiving compromise.

 

Then, because the power is an inherent power, you could add power customisation to it. So that people can tailor their ‘recall’ power to their character’s theme. Fire, ice, a massive jump into space, psychic, shadow, etc etc.

 

I think this would be a perfect solution, and you could do away with a lot of the messy temporary/paid teleport powers.

That’s what Ouroboros is.