Why were the Echo zone beacons removed from bases?

[Flashtoo]

Some of us base builders were using them for concept reasons - like in my group's base, I had them hooked up to a 'magic history book,' and in another base in my coalition, there was a 'memory crystal' that led to the Echo zones when clicked. I can't find an explanation anywhere for why they were removed - in fact, I would have liked MORE Echo zone beacons, to add more chapters to my book. 

 

I assume they can't have been removed for no reason, but I'd like to know what that reason was - and is there a chance that we'll ever get them back?

[Greycat]

The following zones have had their beacons removed:

• Echo: Dark Astoria
  • These beacons will now be directed to Dark Astoria
• Echo: Galaxy City
  • These beacons have been destroyed by an energy spike of unknown origin
• Note: Both of these zones can still be accessed through Ouroboros

 

And (at least in the beta notes) -

A strange energy spike in Galaxy City reached the old Supergroup Portal and caused a cascade overload in the entire Teleport network. Most of the damage has been repaired, but destinations in temporal flux have been lost to the past.

 

So that's the "in game" reason. But there was discussion elsewhere. From Faultline (dev):

 

Quote

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.

 

Personally, I'd like them back as well, but it was more a nicety than a theme for me.

 

[Coyotedancer]

It seemed pretty silly to me... petty even... and the supposed justification for the decision wasn't the most convincing.

But I assume that this was someone's personal lore-related bug-bear, so likely long odds against it changing.  😝

[Vanden]

They might have something planned for the echoes, maybe.

[CrudeVileTerror]

Granted, there was the counter-argument posted in that same thread as Faultline's post that the Base's Emergency Medical Teleporters can grab a defeated player anywhere from beyond time and space.   As long as the player-character is in a Group and the instance of their current map doesn't have a teleport-hijack prison, those Emergency 'porters work from any distance, physical or temporal.

 

The addition of a Time Travel Beacon/Portal to the Base would be a wonderful quality of life improvement to address the removal of this feature.

[Flashtoo]

4 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

It seemed pretty silly to me... petty even... and the supposed justification for the decision wasn't the most convincing.

But I assume that this was someone's personal lore-related bug-bear, so likely long odds against it changing.  😝

 

That is intensely unsatisfying and unfair to those of us who had personal lore-related reasons we should be able to time travel from our bases. If there isn't a mechanical or code-related reason for removing this feature, such as 'we took it out because leaving it in broke X other aspect of our teleport revamp,' then it shouldn't have been done.

Edited December 12, 2020 by Flashtoo

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

...the Base's Emergency Medical Teleporters can grab a defeated player anywhere from beyond time and space.

 

The addition of a Time Travel Beacon/Portal to the Base would be a wonderful quality of life improvement to address the removal of this feature.

Or something like a "Temporal Stabilizer" power sold at the P2W vendor that allows you to use base teleporters to travel to temporally-shifted zones.

 

And not only can the base's emergency medical teleporters yank you across time and space, but the base exit portal will send you back across time and space, too.

Edited December 12, 2020 by srmalloy

[MsSmart]

Mmm...

 

Portal corps has no problem sending folks across time, dimensions and space, so why not make a portal corps "Gate" available to be installed in a base, and this portal provides for the Ouro, all echos, and Cimerora?

 

These gates can be made to fit the various types of sources (magical, and technological), after all magical has its own built in justification: "it's magic"

 

Sue

[Greycat]

I don't recall Portal Corp sending us "across time," though it can certainly deal with time moving at a different *rate.* But the magic thing is even more of a point - we *have* explicitly magic-themed teleporters (standing stones, fey rings, etc) as well as "generic swirlies." They wouldn't necessarily follow the same rules.

[Coyotedancer]

11 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Or something like a "Temporal Stabilizer" power sold at the P2W vendor that allows you to use base teleporters to travel to temporally-shifted zones.

 

And not only can the base's emergency medical teleporters yank you across time and space, but the base exit portal will send you back across time and space, too.

 

Not everything in the game needs to be an Influence sink.

[ninja surprise]

6 hours ago, Greycat said:

I don't recall Portal Corp sending us "across time," though it can certainly deal with time moving at a different *rate.* But the magic thing is even more of a point - we *have* explicitly magic-themed teleporters (standing stones, fey rings, etc) as well as "generic swirlies." They wouldn't necessarily follow the same rules.

I know there's portal door missions where you go to the future or the past to fix something.   The first one that pops to mind is Scirocco's arc where you go kill someone in the future and bring back a trophy to the present to show that person. Miss Liberty TF sends you around time too, using Portal Corp.

And in the portal corps mission arcs like Unai who's to tell that the time in an alternate dimension is on the same "present time" as ours? Oh I guess that's what your first sentence implies.

 

I don't know the official lore, but it could easily be explained that the Echo zones are alternate dimensions where those zones didn't get destroyed by the original dev team, rather than that zone as it existed 20 years ago.

[Flashtoo]

It's also well-established in this game that there are other methods of time travel besides the Pillar of Ice and Flame - in fact, the Entrusted With The Secret badge strikes me as being intended to be granted mostly for encountering those methods (which we forget because everybody just gets it by having someone else drop an O-portal for them). Professor Echo, for instance, doesn't use it, he uses his own method, whatever that is. In a lore dump, one of the "twelve methods of time travel" that an actual former employee of Paragon Studios cited was "whatever method your character uses." There is precedent and solid lore-based reasoning that we should be able to time travel through our base teleporters, end of story.

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Flashtoo said:

the Entrusted With The Secret badge strikes me as being intended to be granted mostly for encountering those methods (which we forget because everybody just gets it by having someone else drop an O-portal for them).

Exactly.  When Ouro (Issue 11) first dropped, Entrusted With The Secret was auto-granted on login to any one who had completed certain missions/story arcs and had the appropriate badge/souvenir.  If you don't already have it, it's still granted by completing certain missions/story arcs.  (I've had several characters on HC complete Mercedes Sheldon's arc just to give them an in character reason for having the Entrusted With The Secret badge.  Some of them earned it that way.)

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Entrusted_with_the_Secret_Badge

[Flashtoo]

Yeah, I remember back in the day when I made absolutely sure to ALWAYS pick up Marshal Brass as a contact in time to run his mission arcs and get the badge.

[Greycat]

*nod* I think the one I'd used most often (about when I notice I haven't picked it up some other way) is the unlock for science store in Brickstown.

[Coyotedancer]

Faultline used to be our go-to, though I don't remember exactly which arc anymore... It's been awhile. 

[Greycat]

54 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

Faultline used to be our go-to, though I don't remember exactly which arc anymore... It's been awhile. 

Doc Delilah's, I think, grants it. I *don't* think yin's does, but could be wrong.

[Flashtoo]

2 hours ago, Greycat said:

Doc Delilah's, I think, grants it. I *don't* think yin's does, but could be wrong.

Yep, it's Doc Delilah's.

[Aberrant]

2 hours ago, Flashtoo said:

Yep, it's Doc Delilah's.

Doc Delilah's used to but no longer grants it, since all you do in that is watch a video of a time-travel incident. You now get it from Agent G's last two missions where you interact with the PCM. The Entrusted with the Secret Badge page has the up-to-date unlock requirements, minus the Mender arcs.

[Flashtoo]

3 minutes ago, Aberrant said:

Doc Delilah's used to but no longer grants it, since all you do in that is watch a video of a time-travel incident. You now get it from Agent G's last two missions where you interact with the PCM. The Entrusted with the Secret Badge page has the up-to-date unlock requirements, minus the Mender arcs.

Yes, but in the context of what people used to do all the time, it was Doc Delilah, is what we meant.

[MTeague]

I've had a couple characters get to 50 without being Entrusted, just to get the badge by some Recluse's Victory action.

[Hyperstrike]

Note: I don't know this for sure.  But the logic sorta tracks.

Likely this is to stop characters from easily obtaining Entrusted at Level 1.
Since access to SGs is pretty much given these days, a brand new character out of a Tutorial zone can jump into Echo Galaxy or Echo DA (for villains) and make a death run (for villains) to the O-portal or tram.  They can then jump up on the Oroboros building, get the exploration badge and get Entrusted.

[Grouchybeast]

1 hour ago, Hyperstrike said:

Likely this is to stop characters from easily obtaining Entrusted at Level 1.

Ouro portals can now be used by level 1 characters, so that's probably not the reason.

[Placta]

7 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

Note: I don't know this for sure.  But the logic sorta tracks.

Likely this is to stop characters from easily obtaining Entrusted at Level 1.
Since access to SGs is pretty much given these days, a brand new character out of a Tutorial zone can jump into Echo Galaxy or Echo DA (for villains) and make a death run (for villains) to the O-portal or tram.  They can then jump up on the Oroboros building, get the exploration badge and get Entrusted.

TUNNEL to Night Ward.

Enter Midnighter Mansion.

Base portal to Croatoa or FF.

Enter Midnighter Mansion.

Take the crystal to Ouroboros.

Oro portal back to Atlas.

 

Just did this on a level 2, mostly fresh out of the tutorial (I took the time to get Atlas Tour Guide) character. No combat the whole way. (It might be tougher redside.)

[JKPhage]

As I gathered from the patch notes and explanations it boils down to something simple: You can now enter Ouroboros and obtain the badge at level 1, and Ouroboros has all of these echo transporters available at the back of the zone. Considering you couldn't even use echo transporters in your bases on Live, these were likely added as simple convenience for players before Homecoming came to the wider public's knowledge. You'll note that we also *never* had access to "Echo: Faultline", "Echo: Crash Site" and (I'm pretty sure at least) "Echo: Atlas" on live. These were purely Homecoming contrivances, and didn't have base beacons, and until Homecoming went public, didn't have explore badges or... really any reason to go to them at all, while DA and Galaxy did. With all that in mind, and knowing that one can now simply ask someone in Atlas to drop an O-Portal fresh out of the character creator, pop in, grab the explore badge and have permanent access to Ouroboros, where one can then time travel to the various echo zones, it seems like more of a flavor/thematic thing than anything. When literally anyone can get to the echo zones through the designated time travel zone, it's more of a matter of semantics that they're restricted to Ouro, and I'm okay with it.

 

That said... we also have a pillar of ice and flame in our bases that allows us to time travel and attune to different time streams to run past arcs, including a task force for Sister Psyche who is *dead*. If anything I feel like we already have access to time travel in our bases, and if they really and truly insist that we must not be able to use our basic teleporter system to get to echo zones, then at the very least they could find a way to retool the Pillar to offer two options when clicked on: One to access the mission list, one to access the echo zones. It would tie time travel to the "Ouroboros method", but still allow us to time travel from our bases. It's not like a creative base builder couldn't embed the pillar in a pile of other objects and functionally make the pillar into a completely different time travel device and/or artifact either. That would require a little doing on both parts though.

 

In the end, it doesn't really bother me at all, because Ouro can be accessed at the drop of a hat if you want to go echo exploring, and at the end of the day, there isn't even anything of true merit to *do* in those zones aside from explore badges. If the HC devs decided to put in a little elbow grease and restore full zone functionality to them, that might be a different story. They're time travel zones after all, so why exactly wouldn't there be classic contacts, mission arcs and such in them? I only ever started one toon in Galaxy as a novelty and got bored, so went to Atlas, but now? I might just enjoy rolling a level 1, having someone drop me an o-portal, and jogging to the back to hop into classic Galaxy and run the mission arcs, hunt around the beltway, and see how long it takes me to outlevel the contacts before I move on. If there was some real meat to the zones then I might be a little miffed that they're not SG base accessible, but even then I don't think I'd be all that bothered since you can access them through another method just as easily.

 

So yeah, devs, if you're reading this: Maybe add echoes as a second menu option from the Pillar and restore old NPC's/Contacts/Enemy spawns to echo zones so we have both easy access and reason to do so?

Edited December 16, 2020 by JKPhage