Zone Travel Updates in Issue 27

[Mr. Vee]

I like tidge's suggestion but if that's implemented can villain zones be moved above the shard, please? 

 

A minor tip for those with tons of alts - get an explore in every zone you plan on getting on one toon, then write down the name of each zone and the last badge listed in the accolade section. Can then check on each toon and jot down which zones they're missing. I cut a couple minutes of dancing around badges I already had on each alt this way.

[Myrmidon]

34 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

If it was something they could put into the P2W store for cash, without a doubt they would've. 

And I would have paid for it, just like I paid for STOs (Attuned) and stopped using the Invention system entirely after that was in place.

We have several of these options in P2W in exchange for the game asset known as running water (Influence), however, if you think tilting that “LRTP should be P2W” windmill will work, knock yourself out. 

[krj12]

Seems like it would have been much easier just to add all of the zones to the Oro portal, reduce its timer, and been done with it.   None of these other methods, or even the new menu would have been necessary.

 

[Jacke]

3 minutes ago, krj12 said:

Seems like it would have been much easier just to add all of the zones to the Oro portal, reduce its timer, and been done with it.   None of these other methods, or even the new menu would have been necessary.

I think that's not a good option.  It trivializes the Ouro Portal a bit too much, not to mention would overload its menu.  It is a knife-edge judgement though, but I think there are better options that should be investigated.

[blue4333]

9 minutes ago, krj12 said:

Seems like it would have been much easier just to add all of the zones to the Oro portal, reduce its timer, and been done with it.   None of these other methods, or even the new menu would have been necessary.

 

Or making Ouro the new "base/travel hub" with portals to all the zones.  It keeps the number of loading screens to the same Zone - Ouro - Zone and as the Ouro portal power can be disabled as and when needed, there probably won't be a way to exploit this. 

 

This will also cut down the need for other powers (Base teleporter or LRTP) which clutters and overwhelms newbies with options.

[Glacier Peak]

22 minutes ago, krj12 said:

Seems like it would have been much easier just to add all of the zones to the Oro portal, reduce its timer, and been done with it.   None of these other methods, or even the new menu would have been necessary.

 

That may be how you perceive these changes, but I think the opposite. Change is hard sometimes, but this is a good change that streamlines the process and brings consistency to how players can travel across the world.

[Glacier Peak]

11 minutes ago, blue4333 said:

This will also cut down the need for other powers (Base teleporter or LRTP) which clutters and overwhelms newbies with options.

The 'Fast Travel' accolade macro does this very thing.

[cohRock]

(posted in General, but it was suggested I repost here)

I love the Long Range Teleport (LRT) power.  In the long run it is actually a more convenient travel power than the instant-base-access-from-anywhere kludge we had before, since you can go directly to a zone instead of to base first.  But I have two ideas to improve it.

1. (Easy) Make the list of unlocked zones always available.  Currently, once you use the power, you cannot see the list again until LRT's recharge is complete.  This could be done in at least two ways.  The first is to make the power always available, even during recharge.  The entries in its zone list would be ghosted while recharging.  A possibly easier-to-implement solution is to keep a 2nd zone list in the Detailed Info for the power.  One could simply look at that instead of activating the power itself.  Note:  inconsistently, the power goes into recharge even when [Cancel] is selected.  IMO this is a bug, and the power should not be "used" unless the character actually travels.
2. Reward badgers.  To activate the power, one needs all the exploration badges in at least one zone, earning the exploration accolade (EA) for that zone.  My idea would be to reduce LRT's recharge time by 6 seconds for each EA one has.  For example, if 10 EA, then the recharge time would be reduced by 10*6sec, or one minute. The recharge could be calculated on login, and updated on earning of another EA.  Having just one exploration badge in a zone would still add that zone to the list, but having all the zone's badges would slightly improve the power overall.

[Jimmy]

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

How many under level 50s will get it?

These are some stats from just Everlasting a few weeks ago, and they aren't entirely accurate as they don't include players who purchased the Pocket D power and don't own one of the accolades:

• 59% of characters at level 50
• 47% of characters at level 32 or above
• 25% of characters at level 10 or above

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

unlocking all zones on all alts regardless of level and getting it set up with all zones is a lot of hoop jumping in a game that already has too much hoop jumping for accolades, incarnates and such.  now you're adding a big time sink and inf sink for people with a lot of alts.  this kind of stuff was needed for a live, pay to play game, not so much here.

This isn't a fair assessment though, because you didn't have direct connections to every single individual zone before i27 (unless you were using the more extreme version of the exploit). You had access to bases (which had fewer and less convenient drop-off points than they now have). Base access takes a 5 minute tour of a single zone to unlock.

 

Direct access to individual zones requires a bit more investment and is a reward for actually exploring the world. You don't need it, the same way that you don't need purple enhancements or your own personal summoned base portal.

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

TT SHOULD cost 10 mil and have the recharge it does because it's a direct port for the entire team right to the mission door.  Making the base portal P2W the same price and recharge doesn't make sense at all.  it doesn't operate the same way.  You have to load screen to a base, then load screen to a zone and then travel normally to the mission door.  You're pricing two different things the same even though they don't work the same. 

I agree, teleporting directly to a mission shouldn't be as easily accessible. That's why they don't actually operate the same way.

• Supergroup Portal = 10 million inf, 10 minute cooldown
• Team Transporter = 10 million inf, 30 minute cooldown

This was one of the many changes we made in direct response to feedback during beta, the Supergroup Portal had a 30 minute cooldown originally.

[blue4333]

10 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

The 'Fast Travel' accolade macro does this very thing.

To an extent, yes but why do you need 3 powers (LRTP, Base and Ouro) to move from one zone to another? Not to mention the costs (time and inf) involved in unlocking the first two.

 

I have two suggestions.

 

Option 1: 

Condense everything into LRTP (includes Ouro and Base)

 

Option 2

Scrap LRTP and make Ouro the travel hub.

[Glacier Peak]

2 hours ago, ZacKing said:

How many under level 50s will get it?  I don't think you understood the feedback there.  unlocking all zones on all alts regardless of level and getting it set up with all zones is a lot of hoop jumping in a game that already has too much hoop jumping for accolades, incarnates and such.  now you're adding a big time sink and inf sink for people with a lot of alts.  this kind of stuff was needed for a live, pay to play game, not so much here.

 

Appreciate you listening to feedback.  just wanted to say there was feedback in the beta on this that said it's too confusing and convoluted now with all the new options but that largely got ignored.  Hopefully you'll all come up with something to fix that.

 

It should be a lot of work to unlock the accolade on all characters, do players just want things handed to them without any difficulty? If a player really wanted to unlock every zone, they will do so on every character you want it on. If a player wants the reward, they will work on the challenge to unlock it. Where is all of this entitlement coming from? Nothing valuable is unlocked account wide in this game.

 

This isn't even a time or inf sink, you unlock the LRT without any cost of inf and taking a player less than 10 minutes to do so.

 

The feedback was listened to on beta just as it has been now. This is not a "too confusing and convoluted" system if a player actually takes the time to learn something new. Change is difficult for people, but this is a much more streamlined and consistent travel system to get players around the game world.

Edited November 26, 2020 by Glacier Peak
double words

[Glacier Peak]

5 minutes ago, blue4333 said:

To an extent, yes but why do you need 3 powers (LRTP, Base and Ouro) to move from one zone to another? Not to mention the costs (time and inf) involved in unlocking the first two.

 

I have two suggestions.

 

Option 1: 

Condense everything into LRTP (includes Ouro and Base)

 

Option 2

Scrap LRTP and make Ouro the travel hub.

Because they are options, that aren't required. They give players more options. I don't understand the problem with having more options? You can choose not to have any options if that is your playstyle. You can literally choose to keep the macro out of your tray even if you accidentally unlock it. 

[blue4333]

Just now, Glacier Peak said:

It should be a lot of work to unlock the accolade on all characters characters, do players just want things handed to them without any difficulty? If a player really wanted to unlock every zone, they will do so on every character you want it on. If a player wants the reward, they will work on the challenge to unlock it. Where is all of this entitlement coming from? Nothing valuable is unlocked account wide in this game.

 

This isn't even a time or inf sink, you unlock the LRT without any cost of inf and taking a player less than 10 minutes to do so.

 

The feedback was listened to on beta just as it has been now. This is not a "too confusing and convoluted" system if a player actually takes the time to learn something new. Change is difficult for people, but this is a much more streamlined and consistent travel system to get players around the game world.

Because there appears to be an arbitrary line of what counts as player experience. On one hand, you have the P2W temp and prestige powers that are made available at lower costs, the incarnate system is made less tedious by having Incarnate XP dropped outside of Incarnate content and Incarnate Threads/Emp Merits provided upon level up. Not to mention Base Building being made free.

 

Wouldn't these go against the reasoning behind the whole Zone Travel revamp (aside from the exploits that is)? 

[Jimmy]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

LRT: Quality of Life Suggestion Follows

 

Can the LRT zone interface be modified such that the (accessible by alignment) zones a character does not have access to (because they have not collected the beacon badge) appear in a different font (such as red italic) rather than simply not appearing on the list?

 

Not only would this help players identify which badges they have not collected for the LRT power, but it would double as a nicer mechanism than scrolling through the Exploration tab of the badge window.

11 minutes ago, cohRock said:

• (Easy) Make the list of unlocked zones always available.  Currently, once you use the power, you cannot see the list again until LRT's recharge is complete.  This could be done in at least two ways.  The first is to make the power always available, even during recharge.  The entries in its zone list would be ghosted while recharging.  A possibly easier-to-implement solution is to keep a 2nd zone list in the Detailed Info for the power.  One could simply look at that instead of activating the power itself.  Note:  inconsistently, the power goes into recharge even when [Cancel] is selected.  IMO this is a bug, and the power should not be "used" unless the character actually travels.

Unfortunately none of these specific suggestions are as easy as they sound to implement, but I do agree we need to find a good way to show the list of zones you do and do not have access to without needing to put the power on cooldown.

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, blue4333 said:

Because there appears to be an arbitrary line of what counts as player experience. On one hand, you have the P2W temp and prestige powers that are made available at lower costs, the incarnate system is made less tedious by having Incarnate XP dropped outside of Incarnate content and Incarnate Threads/Emp Merits provided upon level up. Not to mention Base Building being made free.

 

Wouldn't these go against the reasoning behind the whole Zone Travel revamp (aside from the exploits that is)? 

I think the line isn't arbitrary at all. The example you use of P2W temps and prestige powers aren't altering the experience of the game to such a degree that it requires a higher influence or time investment. Incarnates are only available at Level 50, meaning characters have invested time in getting to that level. Base building being made free opened up an opportunity for the community to be creative while not affecting other players gaming experience at all.

[Jimmy]

20 minutes ago, cohRock said:

• Reward badgers.  To activate the power, one needs all the exploration badges in at least one zone, earning the exploration accolade (EA) for that zone.  My idea would be to reduce LRT's recharge time by 6 seconds for each EA one has.  For example, if 10 EA, then the recharge time would be reduced by 10*6sec, or one minute. The recharge could be calculated on login, and updated on earning of another EA.  Having just one exploration badge in a zone would still add that zone to the list, but having all the zone's badges would slightly improve the power overall.

Just speaking for myself here - I do like the sound of this, but I'm not sure how feasible it is due to how complex the cooldown for this power already is (we use a very intricate hack to make the second chance functionality work).

[Jacke]

I think we can all agree that there's now quite a bit of knowledge new players need to learn to play City of Heroes even middlin'ly well.  And that they should be able to get more of that knowledge in the default game as opposed to going outside of it.

 

There's a Tip system being developed to help guide players through a Zone's Badges, but there's so much more.  The existing tutorials, Outbreak/Breakout/Destroyed Galaxy City, as well as the initial mission arcs, like the Shooting Stars arcs, do cover some things, but I think they don't quite cover enough.  And I don't think they're advertised as a tutorial either.  That's important because they aren't required content, so they should have some indication

 

But vital things are not covered.  There's no mention of Reward Merits, except briefly when a toon earns them, same as the first Invention Salvage drop and the first time logging in at a Day Job location.  I think the Shooting Stars missions cover the Auction House in passing, but it may not be enough.

 

Taking a look at the current tutorial system and improving that is something that needs a greater priority.  A new player who's never played or heard of City of Heroes should be offered a good way to get that basic knowledge that will help them play well and better enjoy the game.

[Jimmy]

5 minutes ago, Jacke said:

I think we can all agree that there's now quite a bit of knowledge new players need to learn to play City of Heroes even middlin'ly well.  And that they should be able to get more of that knowledge in the default game as opposed to going outside of it.

 

There's a Tip system being developed to help guide players through a Zone's Badges, but there's so much more.  The existing tutorials, Outbreak/Breakout/Destroyed Galaxy City, as well as the initial mission arcs, like the Shooting Stars arcs, do cover some things, but I think they don't quite cover enough.  And I don't think they're advertised as a tutorial either.  That's important because they aren't required content, so they should have some indication

 

But vital things are not covered.  There's no mention of Reward Merits, except briefly when a toon earns them, same as the first Invention Salvage drop and the first time logging in at a Day Job location.  I think the Shooting Stars missions cover the Auction House in passing, but it may not be enough.

 

Taking a look at the current tutorial system and improving that is something that needs a greater priority.  A new player who's never played or heard of City of Heroes should be offered a good way to get that basic knowledge that will help them play well and better enjoy the game.

I do agree with all of this as well.

 

Remember the game was originally live from 2004 to 2012, an era where YouTube and video guides were nowhere near as prolific. My hope is that once we're able to lift the ban on videos, content creators will produce some video guides for newer players to help fill this gap.

[ZacKing]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

And I would have paid for it, just like I paid for STOs (Attuned) and stopped using the Invention system entirely after that was in place.

We have several of these options in P2W in exchange for the game asset known as running water (Influence), however, if you think tilting that “LRTP should be P2W” windmill will work, knock yourself out. 

What are you talking about?  You said the live devs never would've put anything like the fast travel stuff into the game, now you're saying they would.  pick one.  I never said anything about putting LRTP into the P2W store.  no idea where you've getting that from

[Luminara]

12 minutes ago, blue4333 said:

Because there appears to be an arbitrary line of what counts as player experience. On one hand, you have the P2W temp and prestige powers that are made available at lower costs, the incarnate system is made less tedious by having Incarnate XP dropped outside of Incarnate content and Incarnate Threads/Emp Merits provided upon level up. Not to mention Base Building being made free.

 

Wouldn't these go against the reasoning behind the whole Zone Travel revamp (aside from the exploits that is)? 

 

No, because all of the changes you refer to were not changes in the original live game, they were done here, recently.  As you note, bases used to cost Prestige.  The HC team made them free.  The Incarnate system was heavily restricted and unwieldy to navigate.  The HC team removed several restrictions and made it easier to work with.  In the same manner, the HC team has applied their vision of easier and better access to zone travel with these changes, making inter-zone travel less burdensome than it was on the original servers.

 

It's the same reasoning and approach they've applied to other aspects of the game, improving problematic areas by making them more universally accessible and less of a grind.  Calling it arbitrary because it resulted in the loss of access to the slash command if the player isn't in a base or within 45' of a base portal is wrong because that slash command was never accessible to players on the original servers.

[ZacKing]

35 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

It should be a lot of work to unlock the accolade on all characters, do players just want things handed to them without any difficulty? If a player really wanted to unlock every zone, they will do so on every character you want it on. If a player wants the reward, they will work on the challenge to unlock it. Where is all of this entitlement coming from? Nothing valuable is unlocked account wide in this game.

 

This isn't even a time or inf sink, you unlock the LRT without any cost of inf and taking a player less than 10 minutes to do so.

 

The feedback was listened to on beta just as it has been now. This is not a "too confusing and convoluted" system if a player actually takes the time to learn something new. Change is difficult for people, but this is a much more streamlined and consistent travel system to get players around the game world.

no account unlocks are a relic from when the game was first launched man.  Vet rewards were working in the direction of account unlocks because other games were doing it.  most modern MMOs all have account unlocks.  accolades and such should be work, yeah.  traveling around the game more efficiently, not so much.   but you go right on jumping all over everyone who thinks the new system is too complicated. 

Edited November 26, 2020 by ZacKing

[cohRock]

30 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Just speaking for myself here - I do like the sound of this, but I'm not sure how feasible it is due to how complex the cooldown for this power already is (we use a very intricate hack to make the second chance functionality work).

What is "second chance functionality"?  Could these complexities be related to why the power sometimes goes into cooldown even though the player cancelled?  I'm going to speak from ignorance here, and I have no idea if what I say is completely naive.  Could LRT be rethought from a high level?  I am thinking it might be re-implemented as a menu (à la Fast Travel).  Currently the power seems to activate when selected instead of when a destination is chosen.  If it didn't activate until a destination is chosen, would there still be a need for a "second chance"?

Edited November 26, 2020 by cohRock

[Coyotedancer]

33 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Unfortunately none of these specific suggestions are as easy as they sound to implement, but I do agree we need to find a good way to show the list of zones you do and do not have access to without needing to put the power on cooldown.

 

Hmm... Can it be done as a right-click Power Info thing?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

2 minutes ago, cohRock said:

What is "second chance functionality"?  Could these complexities be related to why the power sometimes goes into cooldown even though the player cancelled?  I'm going to speak from ignorance here, and I have no idea if what I say is completely naive.  Could LRT be rethought from a high level?  I am thinking it might be re-implemented as a menu.  Currently the power seems to activate when selected instead of when a destination is chosen.  If it didn't activate until a destination is chosen, would there still be a need for a "second chance"?

A fun little modern MMO adventure quest 3d uses a very player friendly travel/drop down menu allowing fast travel to virtually every part of the game, as well as the ability to teleport to anyone in your part,friends list, or guild no matter what content they are doing even if you are locked out of the zone because you have yet to do the story content to unlock it yourself.

 

And that is a game that every single zone has unique cosmetic gear one might want, so there is always a reason even when you out level a region you may want to wander through on your way to pick up a few material bits to casually work toward some set of boots or a cloak or armor you want to wear just for the looks.

[Jimmy]

4 minutes ago, cohRock said:

What is "second chance functionality"?  Could these complexities be related to why the power sometimes goes into cooldown even though the player cancelled?  I'm going to speak from ignorance here, and I have no idea if what I say is completely naive.  Could LRT be rethought from a high level?  I am thinking it might be re-implemented as a menu.  Currently the power seems to activate when selected instead of when a destination is chosen.  If it didn't activate until a destination is chosen, would there still be a need for a "second chance"?

The second chance functionality is exactly the thing which prevents it from going on cooldown if you close the menu. What you may be seeing is it going on cooldown if you use the power, close the menu, and then zone through another method. This is intended - well, not exactly intended, but not really something that can be solved.

 

Originally the power went on cooldown immediately, regardless of if you closed the menu or not. Now it can be used again if you close the menu, but only until you zone away. The power isn't able to detect if you use the LRT menu to zone, or some other method.