Is it time to reimagine the Flight Pool?

[FDR's Think Tank]

22 hours ago, Biff Pow said:

 

A Flight with a Group Fly secondary power would be leadership related just because it's team-based. Only someone specifically wanting to work with a group (or their pets) would take it.

 

(And I don't mean "move" the Flight power, just add a new one to the Leadership Pool. Not sure what to call it, but the Group Fly power could be called 'Formation' or something.)

 

Why not "Formation" share travel powers with Pets and Allies when "not in combat"?

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, FDR's Think Tank said:

 

Why not "Formation" share travel powers with Pets and Allies when "not in combat"?

MM pets already have a version of Super Jump. They just don't use it unless there are no other paths to get to the MM/target. Teleport already has its Team Teleport and Fly already has its Group Fly. And as for running? When the MM gets too far away from the pets, they automatically teleport to the MM. So the proposed "Formation" doesn't help. (And still has no place in the Leadership pool.)

 

(Edit: Pet ability to follow the Controller/Dominator/Mastermind is still really bad; they still lag behind even if they have equal run speed, so that still needs to be addressed. However, that is a separate issue from this discussion.)

 

Edited September 21 by Rudra

[shortguy on indom]

5 hours ago, FDR's Think Tank said:

 

Why not "Formation" share travel powers with Pets and Allies when "not in combat"?

• +1

[shortguy on indom]

On 9/20/2024 at 2:51 AM, Biff Pow said:

(And I don't mean "move" the Flight power, just add a new one to the Leadership Pool. Not sure what to call it, but the Group Fly power could be called 'Formation' or something.)

• +1

[FDR's Think Tank]

6 hours ago, Rudra said:

MM pets already have a version of Super Jump. They just don't use it unless there are no other paths to get to the MM/target. Teleport already has its Team Teleport and Fly already has its Group Fly. And as for running? When the MM gets too far away from the pets, they automatically teleport to the MM. So the proposed "Formation" doesn't help. (And still has no place in the Leadership pool.)

 

(Edit: Pet ability to follow the Controller/Dominator/Mastermind is still really bad; they still lag behind even if they have equal run speed, so that still needs to be addressed. However, that is a separate issue from this discussion.)

 

 

 

That may be, but what if I want my pets to have Super Speed? You're just callously leaving that power out, as if Group Fly isn't a spit in the face of everyone who wants to use the Mastermind Archtype as a method of having "speed clones" of their character in game.... Which will be all that much more important when they finally let us customize our minions!

 

The Pathing code for NPCs was more acceptable when City of Heroes first came out. I suppose they might want to look at doing an overhaul of it.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, FDR's Think Tank said:

That may be, but what if I want my pets to have Super Speed?

 

Kinetics > Speed Boost.

[Rudra]

4 hours ago, FDR's Think Tank said:

, as if Group Fly isn't a spit in the face of everyone who wants to use the Mastermind Archtype as a method of having "speed clones" of their character in game....

How is Group Fly a spit in the face of anyone that wants to use their MM as a method of having speed clones? If you don't want to use Speed Boost like @Luminara pointed out, then request a Group Run power or similar. It will likely run into the same problems Group Fly is dealing with in that a lot of players don't want to be speed boosted, but just like with Group Fly, Null already provides a means of dealing with that.

 

(Edit: Though again, as I already stated, even if your pets have equal speed to your character, they still fail to keep up. And also considering how frantically pets run away during fights because of enemy effect patches, I can only imagine how much worse that will be with speed boosted pets....)

 

Edited September 21 by Rudra

[Hyperstrike]

4 minutes ago, Rudra said:

How is Group Fly a spit in the face of anyone that wants to use their MM as a method of having speed clones? If you don't want to use Speed Boost like @Luminara pointed out, then request a Group Run power or similar. It will likely run into the same problems Group Fly is dealing with in that a lot of players don't want to be speed boosted, but just like with Group Fly, Null already provides a means of dealing with that.

 

(Edit: Though again, as I already stated, even if your pets have equal speed to your character, they still fail to keep up. And also considering how frantically pets run away during fights because of enemy effect patches, I can only imagine how much worse that will be with speed boosted pets....)

 

Solution is easy.
Pull a spit hood over their head first!

[megaericzero]

5 hours ago, FDR's Think Tank said:

Which will be all that much more important when they finally let us customize our minions!

The word "when" is a bold choice here.

Edited September 21 by megaericzero

[Jacke]

On 9/20/2024 at 9:02 PM, tidge said:

My only complaint with the Flight pool is that it has 4 toggles that must be on (not counting Afterburner) to maximize its use, and each must be toggles individually. I wish Evasive Maneuvers was an auto power.

 

The only thought I had for changing the Flight Pool is to combine Hover and Fly (and do the same for the equivalent Peacemaker Powers).  If possible, make it have a lower End/s cost if the Toon isn't moving.

 

I've always liked Air Superiority.  I've got one Toon with the Flight Pool, an Inv/SS Tanker, who takes Air Superiority and Fly.  I'd like that attack to be improved (along with the other Pool attacks).

 

But for the remaining 3 Powers from the Pool....  How about @Communistpenguin's idea of Pet Fly, but as a separate Power?  Beyond that...?

[tidge]

6 minutes ago, Jacke said:

But for the remaining 3 Powers from the Pool....  How about @Communistpenguin's idea of Pet Fly, but as a separate Power?  Beyond that...?

 

I wrote something like this the last time the Flight pool was discussed: Flight is somewhat slow, and lacks control, because if it were faster, or offered control, it would be the de facto best choice for travel.... for everything except for a very small number of maps. There is also a legacy-think consideration about "hover-blasting" that I don't feel like discussing.

 

Knowing that the devs don't want a single Flying power to do everything, we are basically stuck with (1) The zone travel and (2) the low-end control. Group Fly is fine, despite how triggering it appears to be for some... it's got to be a toggle because of the triggering effects. Air Superiority is fine. The 5th power which improves speed AND gives control is fine, but not as a fourth/fifth toggle. It's simply too much UI overhead for whoever wants to leverage the OTHER travel powers from the same set. I find it simply crazy that a flier using a powerset like traps has to toggle off at least three other powers, and then probably has a fourth travel power from the same set still turned on.

[srmalloy]

On 9/20/2024 at 10:43 PM, FDR's Think Tank said:

Why not "Formation" share travel powers with Pets and Allies when "not in combat"?

While the proviso 'when not in combat' appeals to me because of specialized situations like the AFK Robotics MMs at the 'murder motel' in PI turning on Group Fly and leaving their henchmen on Aggressive hovering in the courtyard generating lag and attacking anything that comes within their detection range, I don't think that it solves the problem, because there are 'legitimate' (putting it in quotes because I know that there will be Robotics MMs who will yell about how leaving their bots hovering to attack autonomously while they go AFK is a legitimate tactic) situations where you would want to have your henchmen flying with you. It's an interesting idea, but I think it needs more work. Automatically giving an MM's henchmen the same movement speed as the MM, and the same travel power as the MM, addresses the problem differently -- pathing is still going to leave the henchmen lagging behind in complex environments, but it gives them the capability to keep up and cluster around the MM without involving an additional power that also reaches out and affects other people around them. Is it a good solution? No. Is it workable? I think so, but I don't know enough about the internals of the henchmen's movement code to know how automatically giving them a full travel power will affect everything else.

[Luminara]

15 hours ago, Jacke said:

combine Hover and Fly

 

If they did that, they'd have to do it for Combat Jumping/Super Jump, and Combat Teleport and Teleport, and then they'd have to create something to combine with Super Speed (no, they're not going to make it a package deal with Hasten), and Infiltration would require the same treatment.  So you're essentially asking for all of the travel pools to be redesigned.  Can't do one and skip the rest, they learned that lesson with Sorcery.

 

And there aren't enough words to express just how much I'd loathe having Super Jump forced onto all of my characters (i think i have 2, maybe 3 without Combat Jumping, out of 50ish).  But I'd damn well try to express my dissatisfaction to a degree which I felt was sufficient, and I guarantee that it would be extremely unpleasant to read.  The day I log in and discover that my characters are Super Jumping because I have Combat Jumping toggled on, I'm burning this fucking place down.

[tidge]

Hover and Fly as separate powers makes a LOT of sense to me, and since Fly is available at level 4 and not behind a gate, it strikes me as a perfectly reasonable circumstance to have them be separate powers.

 

Cards on the table: I think I've only had two characters that I bothered to use Null the Gull to change my default so that Group Fly doesn't affect them. In both cases there was something specifically about their power choices for those characters that made the character play inferior. Otherwise? Group Fly sometime surprises me, but I am NEVER offended by it. It isn't exactly fair for me to believe this, but because I am literally never bothered by being affected by Group Fly, except possibly for personal character choices, I believe that the folks who demand that the power be changed are probably because they are always offended by Group Fly... and the game makes it pretty easy for those self-selected folks to address their personal peeve. On characters of mine that can't fly, I kinda like being able to have them float off the ground!

 

Even though I like Group Fly for a variety of reasons (including: it can mule useful pieces!), there ARE subtle issues with it for the ur-case of Mastermind usage. It mostly works as intended, but I worry that the various suggestions to change it ("in any way possible, just so that *I* never have to be subject to Group Fly again!") would actually make it worse for MMs. The subtle problem I am referring to is that de-toggling Group Fly can really "confuse" the henchmens' pathing AI such that sometime henchmen simply stand in place (wherever they are) and even giving direct commands to that henchman will NOT get the henchman to move. I mention this because the henchmen pathing AI is already subtle, and frankly I am amazed it works as well as it does.

 

I can see that some folks are trying to come up with ideas to help the brother MMs keep some utility of Group Fly, but I feel that it is desperation to avoid Null the Gull that is driving all other critical thinking about this.

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

If [the devs merged Hover and Fly], they'd have to do it for Combat Jumping/Super Jump, and Combat Teleport and Teleport, and then they'd have to create something to combine with Super Speed (no, they're not going to make it a package deal with Hasten), and Infiltration would require the same treatment.  So you're essentially asking for all of the travel pools to be redesigned.  Can't do one and skip the rest, they learned that lesson with Sorcery.

 

I disagree.  Mostly for Combat Jumping and Super Jump.  Just because a change is done to the Flight Pool doesn't mean the other Travel Pools have to get the same treatment.

 

Currently, there's a reason for the difference in all 3 cases.  But I think Hover and Fly are the most similar.  Hover has air control and defense, Fly has speed.  But unlike Combat Jumping and Combat Teleport, Hover has been used for a (slow) Travel Power.

 

But as @tidge and others have pointed out, it is kind of silly how the Flight Pool has gotten to the point where multiple toggles are running just to fly.  With side features, but basically just to fly.

[Lunar Ronin]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

I can see that some folks are trying to come up with ideas to help the brother MMs keep some utility of Group Fly, but I feel that it is desperation to avoid Null the Gull that is driving all other critical thinking about this.

 

Bingo.  I've been seeing nearly a month of people complaining, whining, filling up over a dozen pages of forum threads, attacking people that use Group Fly and insulting them... all because their problem was already solved years ago, but they won't take the two minutes to do it.

Edited September 22 by Lunar Ronin

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

Even though I like Group Fly for a variety of reasons (including: it can mule useful pieces!), there ARE subtle issues with it for the ur-case of Mastermind usage. It mostly works as intended, but I worry that the various suggestions to change it ("in any way possible, just so that *I* never have to be subject to Group Fly again!") would actually make it worse for MMs. The subtle problem I am referring to is that de-toggling Group Fly can really "confuse" the henchmens' pathing AI such that sometime henchmen simply stand in place (wherever they are) and even giving direct commands to that henchman will NOT get the henchman to move. I mention this because the henchmen pathing AI is already subtle, and frankly I am amazed it works as well as it does.

As a side note to the discussion, when this happens, you can usually correct it by going back to the pets, turning on Group Fly, flying to a new point near the ground, waiting for a few moments while as close to the ground as you can fly, and then turning off Group Fly. That usually fixes the pet's pathing, seemingly by giving them a new reference point to know where they are. It can also be avoided by getting as close to the ground at your destination, moving around a bit to get the pets as close to the ground as you can, and then turning off Group Fly. It is when the pets are still above a set distance from the ground and they lose access to your Group Fly that they get confused and then just stand there no matter what you try.

[tidge]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

As a side note to the discussion, when this happens, you can usually correct it by ...

 

Heh. My order of possible fixes is:

1. Toggle Group Fly back on, move.
2. Order henches to go to a nearby spot
3. [Assemble the Team]
4. Dismiss, resummon.

[Luminara]

30 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Just because a change is done to the Flight Pool doesn't mean the other Travel Pools have to get the same treatment.

 

Yes, it does.  Failing to address the other travel pools would be interpreted as favoritism or disregard by the multitude of players who use those other pools, especially after all of the travel powers were redesigned to be faster, and doubly so in light of powers like Flurry and Acrobatics being rendered all but pointless by IOs and Prestige attacks.  The HC team had to deal with a lot of flak over Force of Will and Experimentation being untouched when Sorcery was revamped, they're not going to make that mistake again.

 

You might be satisfied with one pool being adjusted, you might not complain if the others were left as-is, but you aren't the only person playing on the HC servers and the HC team has a definitive policy of trying to be as inclusive as humanly possible.  They aren't going to fuck over everyone who uses Leaping, Super Speed and Teleportation just so you can have something shiny in Flight.

 

25 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Currently, there's a reason for the difference in all 3 cases.  But I think Hover and Fly are the most similar.  Hover has air control and defense, Fly has speed.

 

Combat Jumping has air control and Defense, Super Jump has speed.  Combat Teleport is Teleport with a shorter range and faster animation time (that's actually a very important aspect of teleportation), so the situation is reversed, CT has speed and Teleport has range and hang time (to give people with slower reflexes time to select their next TP point).

 

Your assertion that CJ/SJ and CT/T lack the same kind of similarity that Hover/Fly share is balderdash.  Whatever point you imagined that would make, it didn't.

 

25 minutes ago, Jacke said:

But unlike Combat Jumping and Combat Teleport, Hover has been used for a (slow) Travel Power.

 

I used Hurdle and Combat Jumping as my only means of travel for 7 years.  I wasn't the only player who did that, just one of the most vocal proponents of it.  And I could easily make Combat Teleport an effective travel power in the game now, with all of the tricks and toys available.  Don't try to paint Hover as the only viable ghetto travel power, I know better.

 

1 hour ago, Jacke said:

it is kind of silly how the Flight Pool has gotten to the point where multiple toggles are running just to fly.  With side features, but basically just to fly.

 

And that's just bullshit.  Fly allows you to fly.  That's all you need.  Fly.  You don't need Hover to fly.  You don't need Evasive Maneuvers to fly.  You don't need either of them toggled on, or even taken, for Fly to work.  "Basically just to fly", Fly.  Group Fly is functionally identical in this respect.  You don't need anything else active to fly with it.  Choosing to keep Hover or Evasive Maneuvers active while flying is exactly that, a choice, not a requirement.  You're either deliberately drawing a false equivalency and praying that no-one's educated enough to recognize it, or you don't know what you're talking about.  In either case, you might want to stop before you dig that hole any deeper.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

Heh. My order of possible fixes is:

1. Toggle Group Fly back on, move.
2. Order henches to go to a nearby spot
3. [Assemble the Team]
4. Dismiss, resummon.

Same. (Though sometimes I just skip to 4.)

[tidge]

2 hours ago, Jacke said:

 it is kind of silly how the Flight Pool has gotten to the point where multiple toggles are running just to fly.  With side features, but basically just to fly.

 

37 minutes ago, Luminara said:

And that's just bullshit.  Fly allows you to fly.  That's all you need.  Fly.  You don't need Hover to fly.  You don't need Evasive Maneuvers to fly.  You don't need either of them toggled on, or even taken, for Fly to work.  "Basically just to fly", Fly.  Group Fly is functionally identical in this respect.  You don't need anything else active to fly with it.  Choosing to keep Hover or Evasive Maneuvers active while flying is exactly that, a choice, not a requirement.  You're either deliberately drawing a false equivalency and praying that no-one's educated enough to recognize it, or you don't know what you're talking about.  In either case, you might want to stop before you dig that hole any deeper.

 

I realize I'm chancing an "umm, actually" response, so I want to make it clear I'm NOT challenging the statement that "all you need to fly is Fly", because technically Fly could be replaced with Hover, or a temp power, or a teammate with Group Fly, or blah blah blah fishcakes.

 

The point about having to have multiple toggles on is about maximizing the utility basic travel power flying.  Flying with just Hover is painfully slow. Flying with just Fly is speedy, but greater endurance cost and no "flight control". Evasive Maneuvers is necessary power for on-demand boosting of flying speed, with some other effects that are roughly on the order what Combat Jumping provides (for a higher Endurance cost). Then there is the (current) Afterburner toggle for more zip (if Fly is toggled on).

 

Those three (and sometimes four) toggles are used if the player wants travel speed and control that is roughly equivalent to what a character using a different travel pool gets by simply lifting a finger from the keyboard. (I am aware that other travel powers may have their own weirdness vis-a-vis "control" or only offering JumpSpeed or RunSpeed but not both.) If the player has pets or henches that they also want to Fly (because they don't inherently Fly), then Group Fly gets toggled on as the fourth/fifth toggle.

 

My ask is that Evasive Maneuvers get turned into an Auto power. I'm ok if it has to become a "Level 20" pick. I'm ok if it loses even more immobilization protection relative to Combat Jumping. It simply strikes me as weird that in order to improve either Hover or Fly I need to have another toggle, especially when I look at the (pick only one) Origin pools that combine multiple types of travel options (albeit limited ones) with a single level 4 power pick. I've looked at other power pools for a similar sort of power that improves other, earlier powers from the same pool and the closest I can find is the non-toggle Field Medic from Medicine.

Edited September 22 by tidge
minor formatting

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

My ask is that Evasive Maneuvers get turned into an Auto power.

 

That was suggested when travel powers were being revamped.  It was denied.  They're not going to give us a Combat Jumping quality aerial control power, with bonus KB Resistance, 54.6% +Fly Speed, Fly Protection and the capability to mule an LotG: Defense/global +Recharge at no cost, no downside, no sacrifice.  Nor should they.  It would be grossly imbalanced, not only in and of itself, but in what it would mean for the other pools.

Your claim that we "have" to run three toggles to make Fly feel responsive is an application of self-imposed limitations or requirements, not a reflection of the game's limitations or requirements.  Yes, Hover lets you stop instantly, and yes, CJ or Evasive Maneuvers let you turn on a dime, but so do the keyboard and camera.  Powers with MovementControl and MovementFriction aren't mandatory to make flight responsive, they're shortcuts for pressing keys and moving the mouse.  Press S.  Turn the camera.  You don't have to run one or more of the other toggles to maintain control of your character during flight, you choose to.

 

I will concede that starting to move forward is sluggish without those mechanics, but we're not talking about having to inch along for several miles before reaching full speed, we're talking about one second to go from takeoff to zooooooooom, and that one second doesn't feel remotely as janky as Super Jump's initial lurch (which is much more noticeable... but not the reason i despise the power).  It's not a problem that it requires redesign of the Flight pool.  It's not even annoying enough for me to complain about, and I just complained about a buggy interaction between Swift and the Alpha slot level shift causing a tiny speed loss for a few seconds immediately after zoning.

 

Your assertion that Hover is painfully slow isn't without merit, but it also doesn't require Evasive Maneuvers to resolve.  Evasive Maneuvers does add a significant amount of Fly Speed to Hover (54.6%, (contrast that with Swift's 13.65% and Increase Flight Speed's 20%)), but it isn't the only options, it's just the most convenient, and by "convenient", I mean immediately accessible and not requiring any thought or planning.  I can build any character capable of Hovering as fast as a Sprinting character, using the same slotting/temp power tactics that I use for Run Speed, without Evasive Maneuvers and without compromising build integrity.  That's been possible since the day the Invention system was added.

You brought up endurance costs.  Fly is a travel power.  It's not a combat power.  Cryptic said that over and over again, so did Paragon and if you ask one of the HC team, they'll say the same thing.  Travel powers are for travel, combat mobility powers like Hover are for combat.  And in the previous paragraph, I made it clear that you can make Hover very fast without Evasive Maneuvers (i'm looking at a build in Mids right now that hits 45.16 mph.  56.3 mph with Accelerate Metabolism.  59.81 mph, capped at 58.64 mph, if i use Agility instead of Musculature).  Yes, it's possible to ignore the designed intent of turning off travel powers or not using unnecessary toggles.  That doesn't mean the game, or a pool, or a category of powers, or even a single power, should be exempted from that design, it means we, the players, are stepping outside of the design and we, the players, are responsible for solving the problems that we create for ourselves.  This is one of those problems.  So solve it.  You know how to use IOs, put that knowledge to work.

[Communistpenguin]

I just want to pew pew with my flying robots and not have people bitch at me. Id be happy with making group fly turned off by default and using null the gull to turn it on for players.

[srmalloy]

On 9/22/2024 at 9:52 AM, Lunar Ronin said:

all because their problem was already solved years ago, but they won't take the two minutes to do it.

Which is elitism in the other direction. The Group Fly proponents say "Well, you can just go to Null and turn off Group Fly on yourself", while the people complaining about it say "Why should I have to go out of my way to stop other people from imposing their power choices on me?" And while I can see both sides' arguments as having merit, with the simplest solution to make the 'make me unaffected by Group Fly' setting the default for new characters, my personal view is that Group Fly was originally intended as a way for a team member to extend a movement ability to their teammates who lacked it (à la  Grant Invisibility), and that its use by Masterminds was a "meh, it works well enough, we don't need to clean it up" decision by the Paragon Studios devs when City of Villains was being developed; no one thought about it being used 'selfishly' by Masterminds without considering their teammates, so no effort was put into working out some way for a Mastermind to spread their travel power to their henchmen without affecting anyone else.

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, srmalloy said:

And while I can see both sides' arguments as having merit, with the simplest solution to make the 'make me unaffected by Group Fly' setting the default for new characters

 

Yeah. I already tried to ask the DEVs for that, the reply was they couldn't do it.

Oh, and they can't add it into the options menu either ... and that's why it is stuck in Null the Gull.