Zone Travel Updates in Issue 27

[gec72]

Bah. I rather liked that base teleporters would put you in places that were otherwise not serviced by trams. For instance, that far corner in FF near Indigo.

[Jacke]

7 minutes ago, dominatr37 said:

Yeah , but WHERE in steel Canyon? Its not exactly readily visible. I'm flying around and getting bored with it already, ttying to find this needle in a  haystack.

 

I had to use a higher-level toon and then a Pillar of Ice and Flame to set the mission arc as a Flashback.  But then I can touch the Pillar to teleport to the contact.

 

FBSA NetOps Agent Watkins is in NW Steel Canyon just SW of the lake by a black van with lots of antennas and a whole big pile of boxes all around him.

[Jacke]

5 hours ago, Nerio72 said:

For heaven's sake go cook a turkey man! 🦃

Happy Thankgodwerealmostdonewith2020 Day!

Oh, damn, that's jinxed it for sure.

 

Places your bets, people, place your bets.  Whoever chose "Plague of Locusts Devour Kansas", do remember that 2020 may trump the locust being extinct in North America, it has a harder time warming up a cold season.  May I suggest either "Plague of Locusts Devour California" or "Fimbulvetr", both still open.

 

 

4 hours ago, Flintlock Burnfur said:

Ah, so he would have celebrated back in October... wait, do British have Thanksgiving in October as we Canadians do?

 

I think the set up of colours is great.

I like the colours too.  And the British have a slightly different Fall tradition.

 

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

I actually was born in the USA... but turkey is a very dull meat, so I'll pass.

I find that processed turkey in a can has better taste than similar chicken.  Perhaps they grind up the entire bird for both?

 

Quote

I much prefer our November tradition. Older countries know how to celebrate in style.

Ah yes, nothing like celebrating entrapping a bunch of slightly traitorous discontents with an impossible scheme and then executing them in the finest of the early 17th Century's brutal ways.

 

But a fair number of traditions' origins have their downsides.

 

More seriously, my mum grew up in Devon.  Even well into her dementia before she passed, one November 5th I said to her "Do you know what day it is, mum?  Remember, remember...." and her face just lite up and she said "Guy Fawkes Day!" 🙂

Edited November 27, 2020 by Jacke

[Troo]

3 hours ago, Flintlock Burnfur said:

Maybe it's the fact that I'm 50 years old, but I just don't find the changes made to the way you teleport to a base that big a deal.  I kinda like 'em, and to be honest I would walk to a base porter before using the exploit (there's been a couple of times I used the exploit, but often that was to show off a base when I wasn't on with a character that was in that SG).  Overall, I don't mind the changes.  The only real issues I had was with A) teleport abilities in Mystic Flight and Speed of Sound and both of those still work as before B) the fact that Myst Haven has Echo: Galaxy City as a teleport point and all I need to do is remove that one C) the teleport travel power and I quickly respecced outta that one.

This is a good example of how a change impacts different folks.

 

Didn't use the /enterbasefrompasscode and these changes are an improvement.

vs

Used the /enterbasefrompasscode very often and these changes feel like a massive QoL nerf.

 

As a whole the TP changes are like Incarnates. A lot, all at once, and the explanation could be better. (timeline and getting it this included not withstanding)

(also, once figured out, not too bad to work with)

 

 

/enterbasefrompasscode changes & Long Range Teleporter could be better explained separately. I think presenting them together causes unneeded confusion. Just my opinion.

[Darmian]

Had the base macro, and used it, but I like to walk the City/Isles/Praetoria to get a feel of the place, as a place.  So relatively happy with the new versions.

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Grindingsucks said:

Everyone is entitled to voice have and express their opinion.  But, I swear, if anyone bitches about moving the SG portal from up on that skyscraper in Grandville, down to the ground, I'll scream.  😛

/em facepalm

It's a vertical zone.. never mind

[Ironblade]

4 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

The enterbase thing, my biggest complaint is that the cosmic base became something of a minor social space. Lots of people crossed through it and it helped the game have a feeling of population. Thats gone, that sucks, whatever.

That has not been my experience on Everlasting.  Even though the 'Zone' base on Everlasting is nowhere near as fancy as the Cosmic Transport base (I play at least a little on all the North America shards), every time I have gone through the base in the past few days I have seen people there.

[Draeth Darkstar]

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

 

My boyfriend (who's incredibly colourblind) actually had more problems with this, as the darker background colours have much less contrast between them than the bright coloured foreground text.

Appreciated, but as a counterpoint, I'm legally blind and the darker colored text against black is pretty hard for me to read, so please try to keep the contrast high.

[Infinitum]

6 hours ago, Jimmy said:

but turkey is a very dull meat, so I'll pass.

My turkey is not dull, in fact there is a better than average chance it would change your life.

 

Its a long process that starts with a 24 hr brine of wine, kosher salt and texas pete - next you dry the turkey - then have this rub thats made of flour texas pete and seasonings till it becomes a paste coating the turkey - lastly I fry it till crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside....  Like i said - change... your... life....

[AboveTheChemist]

21 hours ago, Jimmy said:

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.

 

20 hours ago, AboveTheChemist said:

It should be fairly easy to tack a submenu onto the fast travel menu that uses the LockedOption mechanic to see if a zone has been unlocked as a destination, since the Badge parameter can take multiple badge tags.

Sorry this took so long, but family took priority for most of my afternoon. I've tacked a couple of submenus to the bottom of the fast travel menu, which basically represents all potential destinations and indicates which are unlocked and which are not. I split it in two to try to maintain a reasonable submenu size. In this instance, I've nested the 'N-Z' submenu inside the 'A-M' submenu, so that both submenus can be viewed simultaneously side-by-side. Normally I would just stack those two submenus in the main menu but it's just a prototype, and I wanted to show it together with that character's LRT destination window to show that it works.

 

 

I've attached the modified FastTravel menu (now called FastTravelZones) if anyone wants to try it out. Just drop it in data\texts\English\menus and open it in-game using /popmenu FastTravelZones, or by binding it to a key or making a macro for it as shown in the examples below.

 

/bind F7 popmenu FastTravelZones

/macro FTZ "popmenu FastTravelZones"

 This is just meant as a proof of concept and doesn't represent any kind of finished product. If you try it out and notice any issues, please let me know!

 

FastTravelZones.mnu

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by AboveTheChemist
added Jimmy's quote for context, updated menu per Jimmy's suggestion

[magicjtv]

Additional Feedback

• The Wentworth's teleporter does not appear on the Fast Travel menu.

 

Edit: I just saw in the release notes that this was intentional.

Edited November 27, 2020 by magicjtv

[magicjtv]

6 hours ago, Jimmy said:

 

My boyfriend (who's incredibly colourblind) actually had more problems with this, as the darker background colours have much less contrast between them than the bright coloured foreground text.

 

I'm glad to see this has the Dev's attention. I love this game, but the UI really needs work. The color scheme is a good place to start. I'm not legally blind nor color blind and some of the text in the game is nearly impossible to read.

 

The organization of information could use a good looking at too. How many menus, tabs, and right clicks does one need to use to look at your toon's info? I don't know, but it should probably all be centralized into a single toon screen.

 

Sorting of lists is strangely haphazard as well. For example, it's very difficult to find what badges you have because the lists aren't sorted in alphabetical order. Ingredients for recipes and incarnate powers are sorted by rarity and then sometimes sub-sorted by alphabetical order within rarity, and sometimes not. It's a small thing, but it increases the time it takes to make recipes and incarnate powers.

Edited November 27, 2020 by magicjtv

[NewXToa]

Why does the cooldown for Long Range Teleport need to be so high?

 

A lot of the changes in this patch are great, such as the improved base teleportation network (base beacons in the shadow shard, woo!). However, I personally dislike the change to /ebfp. It was great both for easy travel to other zones, and easy access to the base. I can understand why the devs would want to restrict it a bit, but I think these changes swing way to far in the other direction:

 

A 10 minute cooldown is way too high - why can't it be, for example, 2 minutes? Making the cooldown 10 minutes feels to me like the devs are saying "This is the right way to play". I don't play this game so I can spend my time traveling between zones, that isn't one of the things I enjoy. I understand that some people like that about the game (maybe for role-playing reasons, maybe for other reasons), but that doesn't invalidate my preference for avoiding that.

 

I also think the LRT is too grindy to unlock, especially when you have large numbers of alts. Exploration badges aren't something I want to earn on all of my characters. I might go get accolades on some of my favorites, or once I hit 50, but it's not something I usually do. Again, forcing me to get an accolade and then exploration badges feels like the devs are saying "This is the right way to play". The point of the LRT should be to make travel convenient, not to make people jump through hoops to get places.

Making the LRT account-wide would also be great, although I'm not sure how difficult that would be with the existing code base considering pretty much everything else is character-specific. I'm not sure why people argue against making it easier to get - there's nothing stopping them from getting the exploration badges anyways, it just means those of us who don't care about the exploration badges don't have to do them.

 

I also think the SG teleporter in the P2W vendor should be cheaper. 10 mil is a lot of influence, especially to spend on an alt that I'm not even sure I'll keep. Why shouldn't it cost less?

 

One of the great things about Homecoming is the large number of quality of life changes to make it less grindy and easier to fit into adult life - for example, the XP boosters, the /ah command, and auction buckets. Why the insistence on making travel harder to do?

Edited November 27, 2020 by NewXToa

[Jacktar]

2 hours ago, magicjtv said:

 

 

Sorting of lists is strangely haphazard as well. For example, it's very difficult to find what badges you have because the lists aren't sorted in alphabetical order. 

Souvenirs are a nightmare, Literally 100’s of souvenirs on my lvl 50 and trying to check if you have a specific one (FreakyOlympics as needed in new badge) is a complete bust given the totally randon way they are displayed.

Would love a sort system for them, then I might actually get round to reading them!

There is no incentive and no way of doing that in any rational way atm.

[Jacke]

On 11/26/2020 at 10:46 PM, AboveTheChemist said:

Sorry this took so long, but family took priority for most of my afternoon. I've tacked a couple of submenus to the bottom of the fast travel menu, which basically represents all potential destinations and indicates which are unlocked and which are not. I split it in two to try to maintain a reasonable submenu size. In this instance, I've nested the 'N-Z' submenu inside the 'A-M' submenu, so that both submenus can be viewed simultaneously side-by-side. Normally I would just stack those two submenus in the main menu but it's just a prototype, and I wanted to show it together with that character's LRT destination window to show that it works.

 

 

I've attached the modified FastTravel menu if anyone wants to try it out. Just drop it in data\texts\English\menus and it will override the default FastTravel menu. When done, you can move/delete it to return to the default menu. And if you try it out and notice any issues, please let me know!

 

I've been working on a larger popmenu involving badges for the last while, so I decided to add a few features to yours, @AboveTheChemist.

 

EDIT2: 20201128a version now.  Changed internal name to "FastTravelAreas" to be independent of the stock "FastTravel".  It also means I can put the version in the filename.

 

EDIT3: 20201128b version now.  Thanks again to information from @AboveTheChemist, I added Icons to the rest of the Zones.

FastTravelAreas.20201128b.mnu

 

Put the file in:

<Homecoming install root>/data/texts/English/Menus/

and use a macro like this, with the mouse moved towards the upper left to leave space for the menus.

/macro FTA "popmenu FastTravelAreas"

 

I used LockedOption instead of Title on "LRT Available Zones" with the internal badge name of "Passport", so they are greyed out if the toon doesn't have the LRT power yet.

 

Then I added the badges by zone groups, first Pocket D all by itself (with the old Pocket D power icon), then a submenu for Paragon City, Shadow Shard, Rogue Isles, and Praetoria, all zones in the same order as the LRT listing uses itself.

 

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by Jacke

[Jacke]

7 minutes ago, Jacktar said:

Souvenirs are a nightmare, Literally 100’s of souvenirs on my lvl 50 and trying to check if you have a specific one (FreakyOlympics as needed in new badge) is a complete bust given the totally randon way they are displayed.

Would love a sort system for them, then I might actually get round to reading them!

There is no incentive and no way of doing that in any rational way atm.

As I mentioned above, I'm working on a Badge popmenu.  They work by using the internal badge names in the popmenu file structure.  As far as I know, the same can't be done for Souvenirs at least at this moment.  I'll make a note and ask about it.

 

However, I think most (all?) Souvenirs are from arcs or important single missions in Ouroboros's Flashback system.  Try taking a look at the listing in a Pillar of Ice and Flame.  If the arc or important single mission is in gold type, you should have the Souvenir from it, if any.

[Jacktar]

3 minutes ago, Jacke said:

As I mentioned above, I'm working on a Badge popmenu.  They work by using the internal badge names in the popmenu file structure.  As far as I know, the same can't be done for Souvenirs at least at this moment.  I'll make a note and ask about it.

 

However, I think most (all?) Souvenirs are from arcs or important single missions in Ouroboros's Flashback system.  Try taking a look at the listing in a Pillar of Ice and Flame.  If the arc or important single mission is in gold type, you should have the Souvenir from it, if any.

Hi, thanks for the info, daft thing is I have actually 100%ed both blue and red flashback systems so everything is gold but it just never occured to me to link the souvenirs to the flashback system as a collected check.

Really good info for the future and does help. 👍👏👏

Thanks again.

[Jimmy]

@AboveTheChemist @Jacke a request: May be best to use an alternate file name for the modified menus when distributing them, if someone installs one of these it'll prevent any updates to the official version coming through, which is likely to happen in Page 2 🙂

[GM ColdSpark]

Folks, feedback is good and welcomed. Personal digs at one another isn't allowed. I've done a little tidying but please keep it to expressing your opinions, not attacking others. Thanks so much.

[krj12]

I would just have to say that from a UI perspective,  multi level cascading menus are extremely annoying.  Keep it one level if possible.  ( like the N-Z underneath A-M just isnt good )

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by krj12

[ZacKing]

13 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Correct. Nobody ever suggested otherwise, so I'm not sure why this is a surprise. LRT takes about 5 minutes to unlock, and you also get some free XP and merits for your trouble. I seriously struggle to understand what the problem with this is.

It's a hassle to do on multiple alts.   it may not seem like a lot to you and that's fine, but not everyone plays like you do or wants to do what you do.

 

13 hours ago, Jimmy said:

LRT allows base access. The very post you quoted mentions this multiple times. Why do you choose to continue to ignore this fact? The only reason I can see is that you wish to continue arguing?

We know,  some people set up bases to actually get used as hubs.  You've just handed people more of a reason to use them less because they can completely bypass using them so thanks for that?

 

13 hours ago, Jimmy said:

See how I clearly responded to your point, and after realising you were incorrect, you decided to simply ignore the facts again.

Sorry for this, you're right that I included recharge time in that.  that's on me.  I had meant just the inf costs were the same for two powers that don't do the same thing.  P2W base portal should be cheaper IMO.  Sorry for the confusion there.  my mistake.

 

13 hours ago, Jimmy said:

No, you're talking from behind a brick wall, and it's obvious that engaging with you any further isn't a good use of anyone's time.

Right back at you.  You all asked for testing and feedback, which people gave.  pretty clear now you all are only interested in hearing positive things about your changes, so its pointless to engage with any of you any further.

[Jimmy]

Ok, next up, with some help from @AboveTheChemist and @Jacke:

 

 

This is probably going to be a temporary solution though as we'd like to get something more integrated into the power itself.

[AboveTheChemist]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

@AboveTheChemist @Jacke a request: May be best to use an alternate file name for the modified menus when distributing them, if someone installs one of these it'll prevent any updates to the official version coming through, which is likely to happen in Page 2 🙂

Good point! I have now renamed mine 'FastTravelZones' and updated my post above accodingly.

[EmperorSteele]

6 hours ago, NewXToa said:

A 10 minute cooldown is way too high - why can't it be, for example, 2 minutes? 

 

For what it's worth, I've been playing missions solo, and 10 minutes is fine. I get in, do the mission, and by the time I'm done, LRTP is usually back up. And if it's not, I still have two portable base portals, two mission teleports, and an Ouro Portal to get from place to place. Or, I can just use my travel powers to get to a train in about a minute or two.

 

That's just been my experience though, YMMV.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, ZacKing said:

It's a hassle to do on multiple alts.   it may not seem like a lot to you and that's fine, but not everyone plays like you do or wants to do what you do.

 

We know,  some people set up bases to actually get used as hubs.  You've just handed people more of a reason to use them less because they can completely bypass using them so thanks for that?

 

Sorry for this, you're right that I included recharge time in that.  that's on me.  I had meant just the inf costs were the same for two powers that don't do the same thing.  P2W base portal should be cheaper IMO.  Sorry for the confusion there.  my mistake.

 

Right back at you.  You all asked for testing and feedback, which people gave.  pretty clear now you all are only interested in hearing positive things about your changes, so its pointless to engage with any of you any further.

It's not a hassle at all. You're making it sound harder than it is. Just like you said though, not everyone plays the way you do so this shouldn't be a concern for the larger community right?

 

You say this update (which gave players more teleporter beacons and made zone base portals closer to other zone transportation hubs) gave players a reason to not use bases as hubs, which is incorrect and misleading. Players have more accessibility than ever before. How are you not seeing that?