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

[PeregrineFalcon]

Did some testing. All of the portals and porters seem to work as advertised. At least for me they did.

 

I do have one request of my fellow forum posters though. Can we PLEASE stop saying "this has been talked about for over a year"? Most players do NOT live on the forums and they do NOT know that this has been talked about. A lot of people don't know that the base pass code is dev command or that we were already told that it was going away.

 

You're literally yelling at someone for not remembering a conversation that they were not there for.

[macskull]

10 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

But didnt the pvpers ruin this?

No.

[QuiJon]

3 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Did some testing. All of the portals and porters seem to work as advertised. At least for me they did.

 

I do have one request of my fellow forum posters though. Can we PLEASE stop saying "this has been talked about for over a year"? Most players do NOT live on the forums and they do NOT know that this has been talked about. A lot of people don't know that the base pass code is dev command or that we were already told that it was going away.

 

You're literally yelling at someone for not remembering a conversation that they were not there for.

I dont see anyone yelling, but maybe even if they dont live on the forums they need to know this is not a new discussion. I think that is important information because when we look at how the devs have prioritized "exploits" in the past it is normally to patch it and shut it down asap. This feature, though a admin command was knowingly left open for use for over a year. IMO that means something. That it was not considered a high priority exploit. And though it has been hinted at that there is a bigger issue then just these two, the only reasons so far that has been told for why it was an issue was pvp and master of task forces. 

 

[QuiJon]

4 minutes ago, macskull said:

No.

Yeah they kind of did. I mean sure it needed to be resolved at some point, but it really only got to be an issue because some overly competitive player could not stand to be beaten and abused it to avoid being killed by another over competitive player who then complained about it. I guess each player can look at it as they wish, but kind of just like how the whining about farming influence lead us to lose bonus infl when turning xp off, whining about losing their kill sort of introduced this as an issue that needed a fix. 

[DoctorDitko]

I think one thing some folks are missing, particularly the roleplayers (and roleplayers can be quite particular), is that we still have this power available. If you are near a portal of almost any sort? Still works. If you are in anyone's base? Still works.

For roleplaying purpose specifically, what exactly are we losing?

Edited October 25, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[Vanden]

4 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

Yeah they kind of did.

Nope.

[Widower]

This debate on who caused this fix is quite irrelevant, and I ask for it to stop. (Also, the answer is the devs.)

[Luminara]

14 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

However if there is an exploit i would think it should have been turned off long ago.

 

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.

 

21 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

What i am saying is their solution is just to much, and to much work.

 

No, I understand, and I wasn't disagreeing with anything you said.  I just wanted to put that information in the thread again so more people would see it, and your post was as good a jumping off point as any.

[DoctorDitko]

I hope it's an "Oh, that sucks!" exploit and not a "Damn, that's cool!" exploit.

Just saying.

Edited October 25, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[Faultline]

1 hour ago, Blackbird71 said:

But I also don't like half-measures, or the sense that the devs aren't sure what they're doing or why they're doing it. 

Echo Zones: they're gone from base teleporters because that's time travel, not teleportation even across dimensions. It could be argued that traveling to Praetoria after it's canonically destroyed in the Magisterium trial is time travel, but that is not how the game treats it. Canonically, only Cimerora, Ourobors and the Echo Zones are time travel, therefore they don't belong in the Base Teleporter network. The only reason they weren't removed before was because people used it to get the Ouroboros portal early, so lore was bent a little until another solution was in place. Canonically, those portals were fixed points in time that were still accessible due to the portal being already there, but with the Teleporter Network being damaged, the original spacetime locations of the portal are no longer accessible.

 

Ouroboros/Cimerora access: it was always been the case that you get the portal from being exposed to time travel in any way. Originally the portal power was available at level 25, then it was reduced to level 14, now it is being reduced to level 1. There are no lore problems with this. The organization is just recruiting members at lower and lower security levels as the Coming Storm gets closer. Cimerora access from the Midnighter Club was originally restricted as the Midnighters didn't want the knowledge that they had access fully known, but that went out of the window during the Dark Astoria storyline, and Ouroboros is now fully aware of the Midnighter crystal to Cimerora. Due to this, the Menders are now tracking characters that travel to Cimerora in order to initiate them into Ouroboros before the Midnighters completely sell them into their side of the story, and the Midnighters are making Cimerora access available to all members since the secret is out.

 

Supergroup Portal powers: DJ Zero is a very powerful Celestial who created his own Pocket Dimension to have a dance club, and he doesn't much care about the politics or alignments of characters as long as they're having a good time. Creating connections through spacetime is his thing, and he was responsible for setting up the original base teleporter network. After the energy spike in Galaxy City destroyed it, an event that is very disturbing as it dislodged gates put in there by a Celestial, he was asked to assist in the rebuild. As part of it, he connected Praetoria and the Shadow Shard to the network, and also made a beacon accessible that characters can use anywhere in space and time to request a portal to be opened. The only thanks he requires for this service is that everyone visits Pocket D and has a good time, away from all the troubles of Primal Earth, Praetoria, the Shadow Shard, or any other dimension.

 

Those are the in-universe, lore reasons why those changes to Echo transporters and Ouroboros/Cimerora access happened. Roleplayers are free to integrate them, others are free to ignore them. The ability to access those zones hasn't changed; you can still get to Echo zones at level 1, and you could already get to Cimerora at level 1 by using Team Transporter. This just brings an in-universe justification for it.

[DoctorDitko]

16 minutes ago, Faultline said:

The only thanks he requires for this service is that everyone visits Pocket D and has a good time, away from all the troubles of Primal Earth, Praetoria, the Shadow Shard, or any other dimension.

 

Is there any chance that DJ Zero might allow the use of /enterbasefrompasscode within the bounds of pocket D? That might go a long way toward mollifying roleplayers.

(BTW, I was just there, and War Witch seemed pissed about something. I think she liked eavesdropping on the roleplayers...)

Edited October 25, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[Vanden]

1 hour ago, Faultline said:

Cimerora access from the Midnighter Club was originally restricted as the Midnighters didn't want the knowledge that they had access fully known, but that went out of the window during the Dark Astoria storyline, and Ouroboros is now fully aware of the Midnighter crystal to Cimerora. Due to this, the Menders are now tracking characters that travel to Cimerora in order to initiate them into Ouroboros before the Midnighters completely sell them into their side of the story, and the Midnighters are making Cimerora access available to all members since the secret is out.

On this topic, the badges for the ITF and Sister Solaris' DA arc should give Entrusted with the Secret now, too, since Cimerora isn't an Ouroboros blind spot any more.

 

Edit: And the souvenirs for Daedalus and Sister Airlia's arcs

Edited October 25, 2020 by Vanden

[Lockpick]

35 minutes ago, Faultline said:

Echo Zones: they're gone from base teleporters because that's time travel, not teleportation even across dimensions. It could be argued that traveling to Praetoria after it's canonically destroyed in the Magisterium trial is time travel, but that is not how the game treats it. Canonically, only Cimerora, Ourobors and the Echo Zones are time travel, therefore they don't belong in the Base Teleporter network. The only reason they weren't removed before was because people used it to get the Ouroboros portal early, so lore was bent a little until another solution was in place. Canonically, those portals were fixed points in time that were still accessible due to the portal being already there, but with the Teleporter Network being damaged, the original spacetime locations of the portal are no longer accessible.

 

Ouroboros/Cimerora access: it was always been the case that you get the portal from being exposed to time travel in any way. Originally the portal power was available at level 25, then it was reduced to level 14, now it is being reduced to level 1. There are no lore problems with this. The organization is just recruiting members at lower and lower security levels as the Coming Storm gets closer. Cimerora access from the Midnighter Club was originally restricted as the Midnighters didn't want the knowledge that they had access fully known, but that went out of the window during the Dark Astoria storyline, and Ouroboros is now fully aware of the Midnighter crystal to Cimerora. Due to this, the Menders are now tracking characters that travel to Cimerora in order to initiate them into Ouroboros before the Midnighters completely sell them into their side of the story, and the Midnighters are making Cimerora access available to all members since the secret is out.

 

Supergroup Portal powers: DJ Zero is a very powerful Celestial who created his own Pocket Dimension to have a dance club, and he doesn't much care about the politics or alignments of characters as long as they're having a good time. Creating connections through spacetime is his thing, and he was responsible for setting up the original base teleporter network. After the energy spike in Galaxy City destroyed it, an event that is very disturbing as it dislodged gates put in there by a Celestial, he was asked to assist in the rebuild. As part of it, he connected Praetoria and the Shadow Shard to the network, and also made a beacon accessible that characters can use anywhere in space and time to request a portal to be opened. The only thanks he requires for this service is that everyone visits Pocket D and has a good time, away from all the troubles of Primal Earth, Praetoria, the Shadow Shard, or any other dimension.

 

Those are the in-universe, lore reasons why those changes to Echo transporters and Ouroboros/Cimerora access happened. Roleplayers are free to integrate them, others are free to ignore them. The ability to access those zones hasn't changed; you can still get to Echo zones at level 1, and you could already get to Cimerora at level 1 by using Team Transporter. This just brings an in-universe justification for it.

Thank you for taking the time to provide this explanation.  It makes sense and is logical.

[EmperorSteele]

21 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

 

Is there any chance that DJ Zero might allow the use of /enterbasefrompasscode within the bounds of pocket D? That might go a long way toward mollifying roleplayers.

(BTW, I was just there, and War Witch seemed pissed about something. I think she liked eavesdropping on the roleplayers...)

 

What, they can't take five to ten seconds to jog to the main portal in the middle of the club, or drop their own base portal? Like, if the most used social zone was insanely huge and we didn't have pocket teleporters, I'd agree, but... PD is tiny, and we do have pocket porters. So, I don't really see the need for this?

I mean, I don't know what code changes had to be done to facilitate all this. Like, if it just involves turning a 0 into a 1, then sure, it's harmless enough. But if the devs just spent the last year hardcoding the command to not be usable except near a portal, then it seems like allowing PD only would be more trouble than it's worth. Especially after they just bent over backwards to give us all a bunch of new teleport options to make up for the loss of the command, when it probably would have been so much easier to just remove it all together and bring us back closer to the retail version of the game, when the passcode didn't exist (well, not for players, anyway), and people had to, you know, actually find base portals, which afaik, no one ever complained about.
 

They'll be fine 😃

[Coyotedancer]

19 minutes ago, Vanden said:

On this topic, the badges for the ITF and Sister Solaris' DA arc should give Entrusted with the Secret now, too, since Cimerora isn't an Ouroboros blind spot any more.

That's a good point...

[Vanden]

12 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

But if the devs just spent the last year hardcoding the command to not be usable except near a portal,

And in SG bases! If it's easy to implement, I'm all for Pocket D being another /enterbasefrompasscode free-for-all zone.

[QuiJon]

1 hour 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.

 

 

No, I understand, and I wasn't disagreeing with anything you said.  I just wanted to put that information in the thread again so more people would see it, and your post was as good a jumping off point as any.

The thing is most of us likely dont know about, or if we do dont care about the exploit. I know if somehow i am using the exploit i have no idea i am doing so. All i want is the ability to travel as easily as i can currently. And frankly these fixes do not allow for that. They either require me to badge on toons i dont badge on, spend time logged off in places i might not otherwise go so i can keep powers charged or travel across zones just to get to a public portal because a mission didnt take long enough to recharge the powers. 

 

And frankly as far as any exploit goes, if they are not willing to reveal it, and i understand why, then it is not really fair to base a topic of discussion on theoretical possible problems. What has been publically released is all we can really base the topic for this discussion off of. And if the devs felt that the pvp and tf issues were large enough to fix the issue that is fine, but i fix was available to them with much much less work then they put into it that would have kept mostly everyone happy. So far i am not reading many people being happy with the way things are being changed.

[DoctorDitko]

Seriously, just run the Talos Exploration gauntlet. That 5 or 10 minutes gets you access to a zone where the Tunnel, the Tram, the Base Portal, and a Trainer are all within arm's reach.

Plus 5 merits and a cookie.

 

It's really not going to be as much trouble as it first seemed.

 

[Dombloo]

My vote goes towards lowering the Supergroup Portal veteran power to 5 minutes (affected by recharge, same as Ouroboros Portal).

[CrudeVileTerror]

"as the Coming Storm gets closer."

 - @Faultline

 

uh oh . . . 

[Crater Kate]

Another +1 for accessing /ebfp from anywhere in Pocket D, that would basically make any of my remaining concern evaporate.

16 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

 

What, they can't take five to ten seconds to jog to the main portal in the middle of the club, or drop their own base portal? Like, if the most used social zone was insanely huge and we didn't have pocket teleporters, I'd agree, but... PD is tiny, and we do have pocket porters. So, I don't really see the need for this?

Speaking as someone who is currently spending the majority of her time RPing, the two obvious reasons to me are crowding and keeping Pocket D attractive as a central hub. Right now, most of my RP characters log out in scattered spots throughout Pocket D, which gives me easy access to the central RP space without getting crowded in one spot. My experience on EL has been that on nights where a particular club or event or something is channeling people through the Pocket D entrance, things can already get a little congested near the portal. If we're suddenly channeling ALL base-based (hah) roleplaying through the portals, then things could get a very noticeable amount more crowded. Because keep in mind it's not just the club scene or event spaces that'll take the hit, it's the RPing supers that maybe aren't making that much noise but are definitely active as well. So the obvious solution is to use other portals in the world as places to camp your characters while logged out... which solves the Pocket D crowding issue well enough, except then we've introduced another barrier between RPers and their central hub. Any way you slice it, this is going to be more of an inconvenience than just a "five to ten second jog."

Quote

I mean, I don't know what code changes had to be done to facilitate all this. Like, if it just involves turning a 0 into a 1, then sure, it's harmless enough. But if the devs just spent the last year hardcoding the command to not be usable except near a portal, then it seems like allowing PD only would be more trouble than it's worth.

Totally agreed! If it's a change they have to upend everything they've done to make, then it's not at all worth it. But if it's easy, then I think a lot of people would really appreciate keeping somewhere with the convenient access.

Quote

 They'll be fine 😃

Please forgive me if I'm reading too much into this last thing, but... I mean, yes, sure, we'll be fine, but to my eyes it does look like the RP community is going to be hit the hardest by this change for the least gain, and being spoken for in an almost... dismissive way? It just makes me bristle a little. Again, if that's not your intention, apologies, but I'd appreciate just staying aware of the fact that this is legitimately going to be at least somewhat of an inhibition on our corner of the community, thanks.

[CrudeVileTerror]

Can confirm:  Congestion already happens at the Pocket D Base Portal on Everlasting.  With the simultaneous changes of the Base Portal also being the -exit- from the Pocket D Teleport Beacon AND this . . . yeah.   100%, Pocket D should be an /enterbase free-for-all zone.   Or at least the entire dance floor and bar areas.

[Vanden]

Long Range Teleport has that Long Range Teleport Second Chance power that pops up in a bonus tray - any chance the other teleporter powers could get the same second chance treatment?

[ironjoe]

So after giving these changes a test today I was happy with several options but there were still several shortcomings that can be addressed. I currently really try to give Mission Transporter a try but the long activation and interrupt time really makes it a frustrating option. Nearly every time I've tried using it I have had an Ouro portal drop and stop me 8 seconds in to activating it. The time reduction doesn't go far enough for that here. Long Range Teleport, Mission Transporter, Base Transporter should all have their Activation/Interrupt times reduced to the same as Team Transporter 6 activation 4 interrupt. It seems to be in a sweet spot of not instantaneous but not frustrating on interrupts. 

 

On another thought leaving Ouroboros sends you out in different locations, would it be better to have that send out by the teleport portals in the zone?

[Blackbird71]

3 hours ago, Faultline said:

Echo Zones: they're gone from base teleporters because that's time travel, not teleportation even across dimensions. It could be argued that traveling to Praetoria after it's canonically destroyed in the Magisterium trial is time travel, but that is not how the game treats it. Canonically, only Cimerora, Ourobors and the Echo Zones are time travel, therefore they don't belong in the Base Teleporter network. The only reason they weren't removed before was because people used it to get the Ouroboros portal early, so lore was bent a little until another solution was in place. Canonically, those portals were fixed points in time that were still accessible due to the portal being already there, but with the Teleporter Network being damaged, the original spacetime locations of the portal are no longer accessible.

 

Ouroboros/Cimerora access: it was always been the case that you get the portal from being exposed to time travel in any way. Originally the portal power was available at level 25, then it was reduced to level 14, now it is being reduced to level 1. There are no lore problems with this. The organization is just recruiting members at lower and lower security levels as the Coming Storm gets closer. Cimerora access from the Midnighter Club was originally restricted as the Midnighters didn't want the knowledge that they had access fully known, but that went out of the window during the Dark Astoria storyline, and Ouroboros is now fully aware of the Midnighter crystal to Cimerora. Due to this, the Menders are now tracking characters that travel to Cimerora in order to initiate them into Ouroboros before the Midnighters completely sell them into their side of the story, and the Midnighters are making Cimerora access available to all members since the secret is out.

 

Supergroup Portal powers: DJ Zero is a very powerful Celestial who created his own Pocket Dimension to have a dance club, and he doesn't much care about the politics or alignments of characters as long as they're having a good time. Creating connections through spacetime is his thing, and he was responsible for setting up the original base teleporter network. After the energy spike in Galaxy City destroyed it, an event that is very disturbing as it dislodged gates put in there by a Celestial, he was asked to assist in the rebuild. As part of it, he connected Praetoria and the Shadow Shard to the network, and also made a beacon accessible that characters can use anywhere in space and time to request a portal to be opened. The only thanks he requires for this service is that everyone visits Pocket D and has a good time, away from all the troubles of Primal Earth, Praetoria, the Shadow Shard, or any other dimension.

 

Those are the in-universe, lore reasons why those changes to Echo transporters and Ouroboros/Cimerora access happened. Roleplayers are free to integrate them, others are free to ignore them. The ability to access those zones hasn't changed; you can still get to Echo zones at level 1, and you could already get to Cimerora at level 1 by using Team Transporter. This just brings an in-universe justification for it.

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.