Focused Feedback: Travel Power Updates (FLIGHT POOL) - Build 4

[arthurh35353]

9 minutes ago, chi1701 said:

This is build 4. and yet no stance customisation for hover/combat flight on keldians.

I think they mentioned that messing with some animation sequencers is much more involved and it may not be as feasible to do that. The developer mentioned that trying to change the warshade teleport animation was not a simple thing.

[Glacier Peak]

50 minutes ago, M3z said:

Should apply speed cap raise to pvp as well, 0 reason not to and the movespeed is the biggest appeal of this game's pvp.

 

Doesn't change anything balance wise.

Unsuppressed speed at the cap in PvP does sound appealing!

[QuiJon]

8 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

You misunderstand.  I get why it exists.  I'm just saying that I would prefer if it didn't, and if an alternative could be found, even if that alternative is less powerful/dramatic than the proposed Afterburner.  These secondary powers on pop-up trays are an annoyance, no matter how you deal with them.  I would gladly take a reduced benefit over having to deal with that annoyance.

So far as marginalizing Mystic Flight, MF still has the teleport component.  And yes, that operates on a secondary power, which is one reason I've rarely used it.  One advantage of Fly has always been the simplicity of the power; in fact, that simplicity has been used here countless times to justify the significant difference in speeds between Fly and other travel powers.  Please keep that simplicity intact.  "Different but equal" does not need to mean "equally annoying."

I would agree with this. The over all differing benefit between Mystic Flight and Fly is simply it would appear now, one gets afterburner and one gets a teleport. So figure the difference between capped fly and capped with AB is like 14MPH? if i recall so lets call it 5mph is 1 third of that boost and just make fly cap at 94mph with no button to push and no cooldown and that cap can be reached with the standard idea of the 2 IOs like everything else. 

 

One of the main problems i have with this timed afterburner is that you grow accustom to how the game feels to play. So since i have invested in afterburner currently, when i exempt down to the point i no longer have it, fly feels incredibly slow again. Now i know that this is sort of being addressed with how they are removing the level scaling and such, but ultimately the cap of fly will have a top value. Afterburner with a timer will allow me to exceed that yes, but at any point it is not running after becoming used to 102 mph i will just feel slow again. I would rather have it cap a few mph slower but be 100 percent of the time so no matter what level i am at, no matter how far i have to go, i get used to a consistent speed to my travels that is always available. 

[Jimmy]

5 hours ago, M3z said:

Should apply speed cap raise to pvp as well, 0 reason not to and the movespeed is the biggest appeal of this game's pvp.

 

Doesn't change anything balance wise.

Honestly, I just disabled most of this for PvP when doing the very first iteration because I know pretty much nothing about PvP and didn't want to cause an upset. If you can agree amongst yourselves that you'd like the speed cap buffs added in PvP then we'll consider it.

[Jimmy]

4 hours ago, chi1701 said:

This is build 4. and yet no stance customisation for hover/combat flight on keldians.

 

4 hours ago, arthurh35353 said:

I think they mentioned that messing with some animation sequencers is much more involved and it may not be as feasible to do that. The developer mentioned that trying to change the warshade teleport animation was not a simple thing.

 

Peacebringers don't have the hover stance at all on live right now.

[Jimmy]

13 hours ago, QuiJon said:

One of the main problems i have with this timed afterburner is that you grow accustom to how the game feels to play. So since i have invested in afterburner currently, when i exempt down to the point i no longer have it, fly feels incredibly slow again. Now i know that this is sort of being addressed with how they are removing the level scaling and such, but ultimately the cap of fly will have a top value. Afterburner with a timer will allow me to exceed that yes, but at any point it is not running after becoming used to 102 mph i will just feel slow again. I would rather have it cap a few mph slower but be 100 percent of the time so no matter what level i am at, no matter how far i have to go, i get used to a consistent speed to my travels that is always available. 

This I can definitely appreciate, but I think after playing with it for a while you'll find the new base Fly speed is plenty fast on its own. The transition between it and Afterburner is pretty smooth.

[QuiJon]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

This I can definitely appreciate, but I think after playing with it for a while you'll find the new base Fly speed is plenty fast on its own. The transition between it and Afterburner is pretty speed.

Accept i have the new base fly speed now, or within 2 mph of it, full time on my current live fliers because of the current afterburner. And when i can not use after burner it feels like i am dragging my ass wherever i am going because i am used to the full time travel speed it gives me. It really is not a matter of saying 89mph feels fast enough, it is that 102mph feels faster, and when that toggle drops you are going to notice the slow down. I mean obviously my first choice would be 102mph with full time afterburner OAS. But IF matching jumping speed full time is a no go no matter what concession is put on afterburner, i would rather be the 7mph less then jump and not have to ever be slower then that. BTW i would also be ok with 102mph AB no toggle drop OAS, and just give the extra speed to jump to raise their cap a little bit also. ... Just saying. 

[Jimmy]

1 minute ago, QuiJon said:

Accept i have the new base fly speed now, or within 2 mph of it, full time on my current live fliers because of the current afterburner. And when i can not use after burner it feels like i am dragging my ass wherever i am going because i am used to the full time travel speed it gives me. It really is not a matter of saying 89mph feels fast enough, it is that 102mph feels faster, and when that toggle drops you are going to notice the slow down. I mean obviously my first choice would be 102mph with full time afterburner OAS. But IF matching jumping speed full time is a no go no matter what concession is put on afterburner, i would rather be the 7mph less then jump and not have to ever be slower then that. BTW i would also be ok with 102mph AB no toggle drop OAS, and just give the extra speed to jump to raise their cap a little bit also. ... Just saying. 

OAS is a garbage mechanic (outside of very specific use cases like Personal Force Field) and should never have been added to a travel power - it won't be coming back 🙂

 

I do definitely get what you're saying as I feel that way about Fly / AB on live too, but I would point out the differences are quite, er different: 87.9mph to 58.6mph is a 33% drop, whereas 102.27mph to 87.9mph is only a 14%~ drop. It really does feel much smoother.

 

At this stage I think we just need to see it hit live and get more feedback at that point, there's absolutely no reason why further adjustment couldn't be seen in the future if it turns out we've missed the mark here.

[Blackbird71]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

OAS is a garbage mechanic (outside of very specific use cases like Personal Force Field) and should never have been added to a travel power - it won't be coming back 🙂

 

Wow.  OK, that's very telling of the Devs' mentality, and frankly rather worrisome.  What's wrong with having a travel boost power (note:  AB was not a travel power in itself) that gave extra defense at the cost of OAS to be used as a panic/get out button?

[SwitchFade]

1 hour ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

Wow.  OK, that's very telling of the Devs' mentality, and frankly rather worrisome.  What's wrong with having a travel boost power (note:  AB was not a travel power in itself) that gave extra defense at the cost of OAS to be used as a panic/get out button?

What's wrong is, only affect self is a very poor way to properly implement game functions.

 

It's like not putting doors on bathrooms and giving the person taking a poop a blindfold.

 

Stinky.

[America's Angel]

For anyone curious. Hitting the flight cap is pretty easy.

 

I just hopped onto beta.

 

With the following slotting:

• A full set of soaring +5'd
• A single flight IO in swift +5'd.

I am at the flight speed cap.

 

This will apply to Flight and Mystic Flight.

[Infinitum]

17 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

For anyone curious. Hitting the flight cap is pretty easy.

 

I just hopped onto beta.

 

With the following slotting:

• A full set of soaring +5'd
• A single flight IO in swift +5'd.

I am at the flight speed cap.

 

This will apply to Flight and Mystic Flight.

 

You can also use any lvl 50 fly speed in swift and fly.

 

In combination with

 

Evasive a lvl 50 soaring fly + end at minimum and you are at the cap - plus your combat speed will be in the 40s.

 

Blessing of the zephyr is good also because of the defense set bonuses - if you have more than 1 slot to spend on fly or evasive.

Edited April 8, 2021 by Infinitum

[arthurh35353]

To just finish up my thought process from earlier, the travel power pools were all very heavily normalized and mostly to get my thought process off of it finally:

 

Fly = Mystic Flight, Superjump = Mighty Leap, Superspeed = Speed of Sound in a mechanical way with different sub powers. (Teleport does not have an Origin Pool equivalent, I guess as its mechanical equivalent is not directly affected by slotting for it in Translocation. Hmm.)

 

Fly, SJ and SS all got normalized toggle costs (yay!) and they and their mirror powers were all modeled to get roughly the same benefit from enhancing to reach 90% to 95% of their speed cap with IO travel set slotting and putting an enhancement of the correct sort in Swift or Hurdle (alas, Teleport does not get this cool perk. I actually suggested it for Hurdle as an alternate to just Jump +speed and +height. Shot down as too cool for range characters, I think.)

 

Probably all by design and to make them roughly equal. It finally (re)occurred to me that there's only one actual outlier that sort of 'breaks' the equality of them, and that's actually Super Speed as it's the only travel power that you can activate any of the Sprints and it will actually hit the enhanced cap. (I don't think you actually have to slot sprint even, either. But with all the prestige sprints, you have free choices anyone can have anyways. So meh.)

 

SJ and Fly don't have any free to any power that does the same thing. Maybe in a perfect world, you could put a +Fly speed or +Jump (for speed, not height) in sprint and be able to reach the caps just like Superspeed can.

 

Probably not as easy or doable (and might make sprint do weird things like making it faster to hop than to run). Not a hill that needs dying upon, but maybe my stupid brain wyrm being slain finally.

 

The only thing that I might suggest to make them 'as equal' as Superspeed would be to fiddle with the Fly and Superjumps enhanced maximums so that they get a baked in bonus equivalent to sprint without having to devote an extra slot or boosters. Or having to do odd slotting in comparison. 

 

Probably too stupidly ramble-ly.

 

 

 

Edited April 8, 2021 by arthurh35353

[chi1701]

10 hours ago, Jimmy said:

 

 

Peacebringers don't have the hover stance at all on live right now.

 

Hover doesnt have flight stance on live right now either, so will combat flight have hover stance added?

[VashNKnives]

Hey, nice changes overall. I just wanted to note that an old bind I've used since live doesn't seem to work on test:
/bind z "powexec_name fly$$em flypose1$$em flypose2$$em flypose3$$em flypose4"

 

Is there another way of doing this?

 

Also, I used to have to do something like so: /bind W "+forward$$powexec_toggleon hover"

I'm guessing I'll need to update those characters with something like: /bind W "+forward$$powexec_name fly"

 

However, using powexec_name like this is not ideal b/c the game gets confused if you're activating other powers and then all of a sudden the action you want (ie for fly to only work when you press W) is reversed (ie fly turns off when you press W).

 

Is there a way around this? I liked the bind for reducing the likelihood that I'd leave fly or SJ on during combat and waste endurance.

 

Also, I should note that I logged out and then back in after a few minutes to brainstorm and had double hasten and double domination for a while.

Edited April 8, 2021 by VashNKnives

[Seldom]

On 4/6/2021 at 2:30 PM, GM Arcanum said:

Group Fly

• This power now applies to all pets regardless of their distance from the caster
• No longer inaccurately claims it applies -Acc

 

I will say again what I said elsewhere: the pet part of this is a step in the right direction. Given that all travel pools are being adjusted, I think this is the perfect time to make this "right."

 

Observations: "Group Fly" is seen by many players as a 'Noob' power at best, and as a griefing/troll power at worst. In missions with friends I have to warn them when it is being turned on, in pick up groups its use is almost immediately greeted with at best polite requests to turn it off, at worst threats of being kicked for griefing.

 

The latter is not entirely wrong, as Group fly has several detriments:

1. Group fly has no 'opt in,' forcing players to play according to the power another user is running. The Null the gull 'Just say no to group flight' is in a specific zone, and has to be turned on beforehand. Few know about it, so it's far from being default.

2. This power actively disables/blocks any powers that require the caster to be grounded.

3. The availability of inf-sold jetpacks greatly diminishes any 'need' for a sharable flight power for team-mates.

4. Many players are used to a horizontal control, not being comfortable with maneuvering in flight during fights when a team member goes airborne.

 

There are, however, positives:

• This is the only way to grant summons flight.
• Flying summons can be kept out of aggro range much more easily
• Being able to fly summons and keep them out of aggro range help a lot when a summoner like a mastermind/controller would often have the dismiss/resummon later
• Being able to fly with summons in outdoor/multi-level maps can get them directly to a target with the summoner, avoiding 'run across the map/zig-zag around a hill/etc pathing problems running/jumping minions and summons often exhibit.
• For encounters like hamidon, this power is useful for players who did not get their jetpack, or their jetpack ran out

Note: Almost all of the above are summon/pet/minion based. The final point is a gap easily filled by player preparedness or learning after the fact in a single encounter, but it should be acknowledged.

 

Suggestion:

1. Rename 'Group fly' to: 'Flight aura' to make the new behavior apparent (see next points)
2. Default 'flight aura' to ONLY effect minions/summons/pets, and alter the text to call out that behavior
3. Have a per-character setting option set to 'off' by default that lets that character share their flight aura with other players. This would mean that to get the current 'group fly' behavior the player would have to knowingly both get the power, then go into the settings, and set a side-setting. The few times when they need to share with other players, they can do so, then disable it afterwards
4. Add in the character settings the null the gull 'disable group flight from affecting me' setting, so that in trolling circumstances they can 'opt out' but if there is a time they need it and it's offered, they don't have to go all the way to pocket D.
5. Consider making this new 'flight aura' boost affected pet flight speed AND max flight speed so that the pets affected pets can keep up with a full-flight summoner.

This would admittedly make the power a summoner/mastermind/pet niche power, but wanting flying pets without the downsides of aggravating teammates is a far more common use case than the current need for the power. The extra settings to share/disable receiving flight would allow those niche situations to let the players 'get back' the player-shared flight, as well as giving an easy way to opt out as well. The speed/max speed buff to pets would allow them to keep up with a flying summoner, as in the current incarnation of the infinite distance pet flight, they still cannot keep up, de-summoning, then respawning on the ground far below, attracting attention and requiring the summoner to constantly have to wait for flying summons to catch up.

 

That's my 2 farthings, thanks for all the hard work!

 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Barneysaurus

[America's Angel]

27 minutes ago, Barneysaurus said:

This would admittedly make the power a summoner/mastermind/pet niche power[...]

Everyone can access lore pets at 50.

 

So this would be useful for everyone! 

[Seldom]

6 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Everyone can access lore pets at 50.

 

So this would be useful for everyone! 

 True, but some of those actually come with flight. Not saying flying banished pantheon aren't awesome, I have them with my group flight demon summoner. There are also the patron pets as well. I'm just admitting that this would make "Flight aura" by default a purely pet travel power, an edge case compared to the likes of superspeed/superjump/etc. Would many take it? I don't have the numbers, but this would be a way to give the power a place in the game, while removing the (ironically) biggest failing it has: forcing other players to fly.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Barneysaurus

[Jacktar]

1 hour ago, Barneysaurus said:

 

I will say again what I said elsewhere: the pet part of this is a step in the right direction. Given that all travel pools are being adjusted, I think this is the perfect time to make this "right."

 

Observations: "Group Fly" is seen by many players as a 'Noob' power at best, and as a griefing/troll power at worst. In missions with friends I have to warn them when it is being turned on, in pick up groups its use is almost immediately greeted with at best polite requests to turn it off, at worst threats of being kicked for griefing.

 

The latter is not entirely wrong, as Group fly has several detriments:

1. Group fly has no 'opt in,' forcing players to play according to the power another user is running. The Null the gull 'Just say no to group flight' is in a specific zone, and has to be turned on beforehand. Few know about it, so it's far from being default.

2. This power actively disables/blocks any powers that require the caster to be grounded.

3. The availability of inf-sold jetpacks greatly diminishes any 'need' for a sharable flight power for team-mates.

4. Many players are used to a horizontal control, not being comfortable with maneuvering in flight during fights when a team member goes airborne.

 

There are, however, positives:

• This is the only way to grant summons flight.
• Flying summons can be kept out of aggro range much more easily
• Being able to fly summons and keep them out of aggro range help a lot when a summoner like a mastermind/controller would often have the dismiss/resummon later
• Being able to fly with summons in outdoor/multi-level maps can get them directly to a target with the summoner, avoiding 'run across the map/zig-zag around a hill/etc pathing problems running/jumping minions and summons often exhibit.
• For encounters like hamidon, this power is useful for players who did not get their jetpack, or their jetpack ran out

Note: Almost all of the above are summon/pet/minion based. The final point is a gap easily filled by player preparedness or learning after the fact in a single encounter, but it should be acknowledged.

 

Suggestion:

1. Rename 'Group fly' to: 'Flight aura' to make the new behavior apparent (see next points)
2. Default 'flight aura' to ONLY effect minions/summons/pets, and alter the text to call out that behavior
3. Have a per-character setting option set to 'off' by default that lets that character share their flight aura with other players. This would mean that to get the current 'group fly' behavior the player would have to knowingly both get the power, then go into the settings, and set a side-setting. The few times when they need to share with other players, they can do so, then disable it afterwards
4. Add in the character settings the null the gull 'disable group flight from affecting me' setting, so that in trolling circumstances they can 'opt out' but if there is a time they need it and it's offered, they don't have to go all the way to pocket D.
5. Consider making this new 'flight aura' boost affected pet flight speed AND max flight speed so that the pets affected pets can keep up with a full-flight summoner.

This would admittedly make the power a summoner/mastermind/pet niche power, but wanting flying pets without the downsides of aggravating teammates is a far more common use case than the current need for the power. The extra settings to share/disable receiving flight would allow those niche situations to let the players 'get back' the player-shared flight, as well as giving an easy way to opt out as well. The speed/max speed buff to pets would allow them to keep up with a flying summoner, as in the current incarnation of the infinite distance pet flight, they still cannot keep up, de-summoning, then respawning on the ground far below, attracting attention and requiring the summoner to constantly have to wait for flying summons to catch up.

 

That's my 2 farthings, thanks for all the hard work!

 

 

Hi, great post and having made at least two threads/posts of a similiar plea for changes to Group Fly I 100% endorse your suggestions. Just seems that they always fall on deaf ears and the worst power in the game stays just that. I assume the dev’s never use the thing so have no interest in it. Seems such a shame when even such small changes as setting the defaults would transform it.

Ah well, maybe one day........

[Jimmy]

@Barneysaurus I don't disagree with most of that, but it's outside the scope for Page 2. All our changes were primarily aimed at the core travel powers (or necessary because of those changes - such as EvMa), with a few low hanging fruit tweaks thrown in for other powers.

 

I've had similar thoughts about improving interaction with Group Fly. I'll see if I can figure something out for a future update.

[Seldom]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

@Barneysaurus I don't disagree with most of that, but it's outside the scope for Page 2. All our changes were primarily aimed at the core travel powers (or necessary because of those changes - such as EvMa), with a few low hanging fruit tweaks thrown in for other powers.

 

I've had similar thoughts about improving interaction with Group Fly. I'll see if I can figure something out for a future update.

While not as comprehensive, there MAY be a simpler alternative: in settings, next to 'accept teleport prompt' add an 'accept group flight' toggle that is OFF by default for all characters. This would have a similar result, so that all users would have to 'opt in' to it. This would save folks a trip to Null, be easy to toggle on/off given any situation, and would fix the heart of the most common complaints that somebody else is forcing their character to fly.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Barneysaurus

[QuiJon]

2 hours ago, Barneysaurus said:

While not as comprehensive, there MAY be a simpler alternative: in settings, next to 'accept teleport prompt' add an 'accept group flight' toggle that is OFF by default for all characters. This would have a similar result, so that all users would have to 'opt in' to it. This would save folks a trip to Null, be easy to toggle on/off given any situation, and would fix the heart of the most common complaints that somebody else is forcing their character to fly.

What if you made it a stance toggle at the tailor. You could actually just change costumes between wanting to get the effect or turn it off.

[UberGuy]

1 minute ago, QuiJon said:

What if you made it a stance toggle at the tailor. You could actually just change costumes between wanting to get the effect or turn it off.

 

I don't think that's a thing they can do. Your pose or costume can't control things powers can check.

[arthurh35353]

4 hours ago, Jimmy said:

I've had similar thoughts about improving interaction with Group Fly. I'll see if I can figure something out for a future update.

Well, since we have the tech with pop up sub powers, how about the pop up list actually have 0 cost toggles that allow you to turn off and on options for [team mates] [pets] [team mates pets]?

 

Make them little 🚫 signs in different flight colors? And if possible, it remembers to turn them on/off when you activate the main toggle.

 

(And later, when we have more time.)

Edited April 9, 2021 by arthurh35353

[Jimmy]

12 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

Well, since we have the tech with pop up sub powers, how about the pop up list actually have 0 cost toggles that allow you to turn off and on options for [team mates] [pets] [team mates pets]?

 

Make them little 🚫 signs in different flight colors? And if possible, it remembers to turn them on/off when you activate the main toggle.

 

(And later, when we have more time.)

Yeah that's pretty close to what I had in mind.