Badge Powers to Help Complete Broken Missions

[Andreah]

I've been mulling this over a long time. At first I thought a special power pool to help with completing missions could be created called "Mission Utility", but I never really liked that.

 

However, just now, while watching one of our excellent HC Twitch streamers (https://www.twitch.tv/tabletoprich), we discussed team lead badges, and it occurred to me that a great way to award powers to help complete "broken" missions would be to attach them to those team leadership badges like Advisor, Guide, Paragon, Role Model, Epitome, and Paradigm (or their villainous counterparts).

 

What sort of powers? Things like...

 

1. Showing all enemy location triangles 
2. Revealing all Glowie locations
3. Auto-click One remaining Glowie
4. Auto-defeat one last remaining enemy (who might be in a wall)
5. Revealing entire mission map for all team members
6. Free charge to Assemble The Team while inside a mission map
7. Force team-member to exit out of mission map without booting them from team

• Others?

 

I imagine some of these would be really helpful and have the side benefit of slightly reducing the number of support calls to the GM's from broken missions. These powers would have to be on reasonable cool-downs or be limited to one use per mission map, as well as be limited to team leader use only.

 

What do you all think? 

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, Andreah said:

Showing all enemy location triangles 

This is a huge advantage, not an utility for broken missions. I sincerely doubt you will ever see this.

 

2 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Revealing all Glowie locations

Also something I am willing to bet you will never see. Part of the game play is finding the baddies and the glowies. This is another huge advantage you are asking for, not an utility for broken missions. What is the point of asking players to find the glowies if they just have to click a button and voila, there they all are, no need to encounter enemy spawns you don't want to?

 

4 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Auto-click One remaining Glowie

I am against this. For most missions, the last glowie gets posted on the map, so all you have to do is go click it. For the ones that don't? Have the devs expand the last glowie mechanic to those as well.

 

5 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Auto-defeat one last remaining enemy (who might be in a wall)

While I agree that spawns that are placed where they can't be reached is something that needs to be fixed, this will not be limited to just spawns that can't be reached. So on those grounds, I oppose this as well. (Many spawns that you find in a wall will either remove themselves from the wall after a while or will be removed from the wall if you exit and then re-enter the map anyway.)

 

7 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Revealing entire mission map for all team members

The Reveal power is available from the START vendor for a measly 10,000 inf'. The other players can buy their own and use it.

 

9 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Free charge to Assemble The Team while inside a mission map

You can already get Assemble the Team for free from the START vendor as a reward for leading teams for 12 hours.

 

10 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Force team-member to exit out of mission map without booting them from team

This should just be made available to team leaders when not on a mission map anyway.

[lemming]

I have some reservations as Rudra.

 

I'd say that they should not be available until a certain percentage of the map is done or some other threshold.

1. Enemies locations:  If it's a kill all, then sure.
2. All Glowies if all mobs defeated first.
3. Port to Glowie location instead.  (Maybe they'll learn where some of the harder to find ones are?)
4. Have it perform /stuck on the enemy.  (Maybe not just one and an error message if no mobs are stuck)
5. Reveal is cheap (and sometimes I don't want it revealed if I'm making sure to check everywhere)
6. Not sure
7. This would be good just for everyone

 

Not sure on all of it.  Certainly useful, but short circuiting some might lead to more speed running than even now.

[Greycat]

5 hours ago, Andreah said:

1. Revealing entire mission map for all team members

 

 

I would enact violence on anyone who used this.

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

I would enact violence on anyone who used this.

That's why I included it. :D

[weemanjoe]

Got to say I don’t massively get the pushback on these suggestions. Yes, the first two should definitely not be usable while part of a group but if they both had a one or two day recharge what advantage would that give a solo player that’s any bigger than sitting in a farm for an hour or two?
 

I have a lot of nostalgia for the office and warehouse maps and am more than happy to hunt for glowies any time I’m inside but I don’t think anyone has nostalgia for having to find 6 crates in The Hell Forge, a map already filled with non glowie crates. I know the dread I feel when I realise a mission has just spawned me into that map with the multi story car park. Those were bad missions in 2005 and they’re bad now. I think giving players the ability to make missions like that play like missions rather than pixel hunting chores, even if it’s only once every couple days would be a really nice quality of life addition. If people love those missions they don’t have to use the powers. 
 

That’s a bit off topic though, I think 3/4/7 are really reasonable asks, with lengthy cooldowns though. 

[Rudra]

8 hours ago, weemanjoe said:

I have a lot of nostalgia for the office and warehouse maps and am more than happy to hunt for glowies any time I’m inside but I don’t think anyone has nostalgia for having to find 6 crates in The Hell Forge, a map already filled with non glowie crates. I know the dread I feel when I realise a mission has just spawned me into that map with the multi story car park. Those were bad missions in 2005 and they’re bad now. I think giving players the ability to make missions like that play like missions rather than pixel hunting chores, even if it’s only once every couple days would be a really nice quality of life addition. If people love those missions they don’t have to use the powers. 

Then you make a request to have the Hell Forge missions less nightmarish. There is already a Hell Forge mission where all the objectives are pre-marked on the map for you, ask to have the other (or other 2?) Hell Forge missions follow suit or make the objectives on that map more noticeable. Yes, I hate going through the Hell Forge map too, but I've gotten to the point where I have a pretty good awareness of where most of the glowie spawn points are on it and can just go grab them without much fuss any more. So maps like the Hell Forge can be learned just like every other map as well. However, it is for the vast majority of maps, not unique nightmares like the Hell Forge, that I have issues with the proposal. You can't just look at an outlier example and go 'great idea' without considering the rest of what we play through.

[Ukase]

On 9/26/2024 at 4:35 PM, Rudra said:

You can already get Assemble the Team for free from the START vendor as a reward for leading teams for 12 hours.

Whatchu talkin' bout, Willis? 
ATT costs 1 million from the P2W (name changed to START vendor for reasons which escape me). 

In what world can you get this for free after leading teams for 12 hours? 

[Hedgefund]

The HC world.

 

I assume you have some familiarity with HC Wiki.  That shows

 

 

See

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/S.T.A.R.T.

 

Paragon badge

[Ukase]

Back on retail, there used to be an add-on called Blinkie Finder or some such, that used Demo Record to reveal where the glowies were, as well as the names of NPCs in the rooms ahead - like Void Stalkers, back when they were practically insta-death for a kheldian.  

To date, I still haven't been able to find a copy of this. 

 

On 9/26/2024 at 4:24 PM, Andreah said:

What sort of powers? Things like...

 

1. Showing all enemy location triangles 
2. Revealing all Glowie locations
3. Auto-click One remaining Glowie
4. Auto-defeat one last remaining enemy (who might be in a wall)
5. Revealing entire mission map for all team members
6. Free charge to Assemble The Team while inside a mission map
7. Force team-member to exit out of mission map without booting them from team

• Others?

I don't see any of these as "advantages", because NPCs are not competing with us for more xp/inf/loot/rewards. They're just pixels. 

We can do a Steel Canyon safeguard or mayhem mission for a free ATT if we like. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't just buy this as soon as they're able to anyway. Nobody has any excuse to not be able to afford these things, with all the guide on making inf available. Zero Excuses. 

The thing about the Auto-Defeat of the last remaining enemy - if it's me, I'd use that on each AV/EB in Maria Jenkin's arc just to speed things along. (unless it became clear I don't get credit for those defeats, and in that case, I'm sure there'd be cases to do something similar to get out of the hassle, like Nosferatu or Fake Nemesis, or Protean. 

 

I'm not sure how a leader would choose an npc stuck in a wall to auto-defeat, if they cannot target the npc. As useful as the ability would be, I'm not clear on how that would be used. 

Now - as the the idea of a "leader accolade" - that I like. It's long been my position that leaders should get something for their troubles. 
One useful thing might be to grab people from other zones; a special type of ATT to be used before a TF or team mission were selected. Grabbing that wayward lowby from Atlas to the mission in Striga, as an example. 

A team-rez power, regardless of teammates location on the map. (like a 2 hour recharge or something) 
 

 

Now, if we really want to annoy badgers, like myself, this new accolade could only be earned by leading full teams, and not retroactively earned. It would seriously piss me off to have to lead on my badger for 24 hours or whatever it would be. Might be worth doing it just for that. As it stands now, I can make a new character, and at level 1 have it invite one of my alts and they can both sit in my base and earn the current leadership badges. 
 

[Ukase]

11 minutes ago, Hedgefund said:

The HC world.

 

I assume you have some familiarity with HC Wiki.  That shows

 

 

See

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/S.T.A.R.T.

 

Paragon badge

So, when I read Rudra's post, the first place I looked was Paragon badge, the very page your link would lead me to. Nothing there said this would be free. 

And while the START page mentions this, I've never, ever seen this option at p2w/Start. Now, that could be because I've already bought it at level 1 in most cases. But I am seriously wondering when this became a thing. Granted, it's only 1M. I am now going to revoke the one I paid for and then see how it's reacquired with a character that has the badge. 

And now that I see this, I really call into question the judgement behind this lame implementation. What level 1 is going to have this badge, unless they use the same hack I would? And what kind of player is going to wait until they get this badge organically before they get ATT? 

I don't think I'm playing the same game as the rest of you sometimes. 

Edited September 30 by Ukase

[Andreah]

4 minutes ago, Ukase said:

The thing about the Auto-Defeat of the last remaining enemy - if it's me, I'd use that on each AV/EB in Maria Jenkin's arc just to speed things along. (unless it became clear I don't get credit for those defeats, and in that case, I'm sure there'd be cases to do something similar to get out of the hassle, like Nosferatu or Fake Nemesis, or Protean. 

 

Good point. It would have to apply only to NPCs in defeat-all missions who are only key to the defeat-all criterion. The intent is to be able to get rid of a last mob who might be stuck in geometry or who is otherwise unfindable.

[Andreah]

2 minutes ago, Ukase said:

And while the START page mentions this, I've never, ever seen this option at p2w/Start. Now, that could be because I've already bought it at level 1 in most cases. But I am seriously wondering when this became a thing. Granted, it's only 1M. I am now going to revoke the one I paid for and then see how it's reacquired with a character that has the badge. 

... I was just about to go try that myself! Go ahead :)

[Andreah]

My list of potential powers isn't the best, I admit. I think it would be cool if each successive badge offered another useful power.

 

Ideally, the powers should be useful but not overpowered. They should be related to making teams and missions run more smoothly, even more efficiently, but not being overpowered. I wouldn't mind if they duplicate other powers (like ATT) if they offer an extra charge or an instant recharge of it, and so on.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

And while the START page mentions this, I've never, ever seen this option at p2w/Start. Now, that could be because I've already bought it at level 1 in most cases. But I am seriously wondering when this became a thing. Granted, it's only 1M. I am now going to revoke the one I paid for and then see how it's reacquired with a character that has the badge.

Just tried that on Beta and yep, it works.  Did Revoke with my badger, and was able to rebuy for free. 

Also transfered a lvl 2 char, did /badgegrant P_Mentor_12Hour, then talked to the p2w and got ATT for free

 

Learn things every day.    I doubt I'll change my method, since it is just 1m and it's just handy.   I do tend to wait until I can just get Return to Battle for free since I have plenty of Restores in my email.   Portable Workbench is such a pain to get the free one that it's worth 10m, even though I rarely get it.  (Plenty of locations with them...)

[Ukase]

42 minutes ago, lemming said:

Just tried that on Beta and yep, it works.  Did Revoke with my badger, and was able to rebuy for free. 

Also transfered a lvl 2 char, did /badgegrant P_Mentor_12Hour, then talked to the p2w and got ATT for free

 

Learn things every day.    I doubt I'll change my method, since it is just 1m and it's just handy.   I do tend to wait until I can just get Return to Battle for free since I have plenty of Restores in my email.   Portable Workbench is such a pain to get the free one that it's worth 10m, even though I rarely get it.  (Plenty of locations with them...)

This is another insanely odd way to award such a power for free. It only takes 3 suicides at level 50, but I don't even know that you can get this at level 1 because there's no debt before level 10. 

Why are these powers only available when you'd most likely have already purchased them? 

Someone has just created some arbitrary markers to award these for free, and it makes zero sense to me. 

It makes more sense for these little free methods to not exist than for them to be exist after these arbitrary metrics. 

[lemming]

Multiple ways to get temp powers doesn't bug me and having these available via purchase is a nice shortcut.  Pretty sure in most cases, the "free" method was the only way to get them, or paying real money.

[Gerswin]

Love all of these options. I would add something to deal with stuck escortable NPCs as well.

 

The force everyone on tf out of map without kicking would be the best.

 

I am not sure how it would be coded, but a power that caused all ambush mobs to start pathing again would be great.  Nothing worse than someone using incan after an ambush spawns and having dozens of lost mobs spread out over a 5 level map or something.

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

So, when I read Rudra's post, the first place I looked was Paragon badge, the very page your link would lead me to. Nothing there said this would be free. 

I would figure that since I did not give a badge name but did give where and how it could be gotten, you would start there.

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

And while the START page mentions this, I've never, ever seen this option at p2w/Start. Now, that could be because I've already bought it at level 1 in most cases.

I have gotten t this way multiple times. And yes, if you already have it, START will neither refund what you already paid or give it to you again for free.

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

But I am seriously wondering when this became a thing.

That would be back on Live when it became a thing. (Edit: While there was no P2W on Live, I think you bought ATT from the Paragon Market. Hard to remember. However, if you had the 12-hour team lead badge, it was free from the market.)

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

And what kind of player is going to wait until they get this badge organically before they get ATT? 

Players like me. I don't often bother taking ATT until late in the game anyway. I'm usually solo. And early level missions don't really scream "Grab everyone with you and get them here NAOW!!!!" to me.

 

 

Edited September 30 by Rudra