Returning TP Foe to the game as a craftable temp power.

[BasiliskXVIII]

After getting an enemy stuck in geometry shortly after having been forced to complete another mission for the same reason it would be nice to have some method to deal with the occasional idiot getting stuck in walls blocking a "defeat all" mission in a way that doesn't require a full power pick. Since Teleport foe and friend have been merged into simply "Teleport Target", having just the "foe" side of the power craftable feels sufficiently weak enough to not render its pool power equivalent obsolete.

[Glacier Peak]

22 minutes ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

it would be nice to have some method to deal with the occasional idiot getting stuck in walls

Support ticket to GM works. 

[Psyonico]

Also, TP For was combined with Recall Friend to create Teleport Target, so it still exists in game.

[Rudra]

24 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

47 minutes ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

it would be nice to have some method to deal with the occasional idiot getting stuck in walls

Support ticket to GM works. 

So does just exiting the mission and re-entering most times.

[TygerDarkstorm]

3 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Also, TP For was combined with Recall Friend to create Teleport Target, so it still exists in game.

They acknowledged that; they're asking for a version that doesn't require a power pick, even though there are methods in game that can handle this.

[BasiliskXVIII]

3 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Support ticket to GM works. 

It works, but GMs are limited, and I'd just as soon not have to bother them if I don't need to. Having a temp power to be able to fix it yourself if you have troubles getting ahold of a GM or are just impatient just feels to me like it's the perfect excuse. And, frankly, TP Foe is exactly the kind of weird situational power that having a dozen charges of it handy, even just for gameplay, is just about right

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

It works, but GMs are limited, and I'd just as soon not have to bother them if I don't need to. Having a temp power to be able to fix it yourself if you have troubles getting ahold of a GM or are just impatient just feels to me like it's the perfect excuse. And, frankly, TP Foe is exactly the kind of weird situational power that having a dozen charges of it handy, even just for gameplay, is just about right

There are other methods of getting mobs out of the walls:

1) Wait out of their attack radius but in their aggro range for them to manage to jump out to attack you.

2) Exit the mission, wait a moment, then re-enter the mission. They will usually be shifted out of the wall.

3) Continue on the mission and double back for them. Sometimes they get free while you're doing the rest of the mission.

 

Or you can see about defeating them even while they are in the wall:

1) If you have location AoEs, then you can just defeat them while they are in the wall.

2) You can also use regular ranged attacks depending on how they are situated in the wall. You just have to move around until you find a spot where you can attack them.

3) If you have pets, they can sometimes manage to attack the target while it is in the wall. Then just let the pets destroy the target.

 

Or invest in the Teleport Target power and just yank them out.

[lemming]

Often when a mob gets stuck in the wall, you can just go outside of aggro range and they'll come back out.

[Greycat]

Eh, I've had several instances where they just get and stay stuck.

 

I don't think I'd see a temp power - especially with a use limit - as being OP or really replacing the pool power, given it'd be single-enemy-only.

[BasiliskXVIII]

2 minutes ago, Rudra said:

There are other methods of getting mobs out of the walls:

1) Wait out of their attack radius but in their aggro range for them to manage to jump out to attack you.

2) Exit the mission, wait a moment, then re-enter the mission. They will usually be shifted out of the wall.

3) Continue on the mission and double back for them. Sometimes they get free while you're doing the rest of the mission.

 

Or you can see about defeating them even while they are in the wall:

1) If you have location AoEs, then you can just defeat them while they are in the wall.

2) You can also use regular ranged attacks depending on how they are situated in the wall. You just have to move around until you find a spot where you can attack them.

3) If you have pets, they can sometimes manage to attack the target while it is in the wall. Then just let the pets destroy the target.

 

Or invest in the Teleport Target power and just yank them out.

 

So, what if we just assumed the premise of my suggestion is "TP Foe would be a good addition to the craftable powers list" and ignored the specific circumstances which caused this particular incident?
 

Even if I'm the only person in the world for whom stuck mobs occasionally don't free themselves, expanding the craftable powers to include useful abilities that are situational seems like the ideal use case for them, and there's plenty of reasons why you might want to occasionally have access to the TP Foe ability. The fact that it can also be used to unstick an enemy is a nice extra on that. I'd open it up to just being a temp power version of Teleport Target, but to me that feels like it would overshadow the pool power.

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

 

So, what if we just assumed the premise of my suggestion is "TP Foe would be a good addition to the craftable powers list" and ignored the specific circumstances which caused this particular incident?
 

Even if I'm the only person in the world for whom stuck mobs occasionally don't free themselves, expanding the craftable powers to include useful abilities that are situational seems like the ideal use case for them, and there's plenty of reasons why you might want to occasionally have access to the TP Foe ability. The fact that it can also be used to unstick an enemy is a nice extra on that. I'd open it up to just being a temp power version of Teleport Target, but to me that feels like it would overshadow the pool power.

If the devs agree with you, then they agree with you and it will happen. For me personally though? I'm tired of requests for powers to be added as temps, craftable or purchasable doesn't matter, because the requester does not want to devote a power pick to it. We have those power picks to be taken and used. If you want the power, I firmly believe you should take the power rather than ask for a means of getting it without having to take the power.

 

Your words:

10 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

in a way that doesn't require a full power pick.

 

Your request is not a utility request. Your request is not a quality of life request. Your request is "let me have a power without having to choose it as one of my character's powers".

 

So again, if the devs agree with you? They'll do it. However, I am opposed to it.

 

Edit: Something you could have asked for, though I don't know how feasible it is, would be to see if there was a way to buff mobs so they have an easier time getting free of walls and other map geometries, or if it would be possible for them to teleport to the nearest open space on the map if they are stuck in the wall or other map geometry for more than 20 seconds. Like maybe a power version of the /stuck command that mobs can use when they get stuck.

 

Edited November 28 by Rudra

[Greycat]

10 hours ago, Rudra said:

Your request is not a utility request. Your request is not a quality of life request.

 

... isn't that exactly what it is? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't go selecting powers because something MIGHT happen .001% of the time (face it, we fight a lot of mobs, that's still a rather good size number 😄.) The power suggested itself is limited to enemy mobs, and to be palatable it would likely have very few charges. And if it keeps me from having to restart a map I've been on for 20 minutes (and frequently when I play, it seems the GMs are asleep) ... I'd call that adding to quality of life.

 

I mean, other than your "buff enemies," the other alternative would actually be something similar to the player "stuck" command - a "/mobstuck" that would nudge a mob some small amount towards, say, a spawn point or the map's generated "NPC pathing." Limited use, say twice every 10 minutes, and also sends in a report for the devs saying "this mob was stuck on this map, their LOC was this" for them to do a quick check to see if there were any geometry holes or something that need fixing. (Plus it would work on bosses.)

 

Unlike a lot of other requests, this really doesn't buff the player at all or make general play any easier, and as a temp power could be easily limited. I see it more as agency for putting a - maybe not super common, but not exactly rare - issue's resolution into the player's hand, if they want.

[lemming]

I wouldn't mind a version of Teleport Target being similar to Assemble the Team etc... with a similar cooldown.  I don't see it happening anytime soon though if ever

[OEM61]

55 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

... isn't that exactly what it is? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't go selecting powers because something MIGHT happen .001% of the time (face it, we fight a lot of mobs, that's still a rather good size number 😄.) The power suggested itself is limited to enemy mobs, and to be palatable it would likely have very few charges. And if it keeps me from having to restart a map I've been on for 20 minutes (and frequently when I play, it seems the GMs are asleep) ... I'd call that adding to quality of life.

It is and it isn't.

It is a QoL improvement as long as its one and only use is to pull enemies out of geometry.
But it's more than that.  This same thing could be used to pull that bigbad from that clear spot over there to this clear spot over here. 

How many people dip into the teleport pool just for teleport target?  I suspect that it is not an insignificant number.

Every stuck enemy that I have noticed (and it hasn't been many) was fixed by exiting and re-entering.  People can submit a ticket and go on about clearing out the rest of the "defeat all" map while they wait.  If it is not a defeat all map then it only matters if it affects the specific target of the mission and that has to be an exceedingly tiny percentage of instances. 
And while they wait the enemy may free themselves by the time they come back anyway.

So how much does it cost, either to buy or to make?  How many charges/how long does it last?
That's what it comes to.  Because no matter what limited QoL issue it can be used for, it will be an end-around to getting a much more useful power without spending a pick.
 

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

 

... isn't that exactly what it is? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't go selecting powers because something MIGHT happen .001% of the time (face it, we fight a lot of mobs, that's still a rather good size number 😄.) The power suggested itself is limited to enemy mobs, and to be palatable it would likely have very few charges. And if it keeps me from having to restart a map I've been on for 20 minutes (and frequently when I play, it seems the GMs are asleep) ... I'd call that adding to quality of life.

 

I mean, other than your "buff enemies," the other alternative would actually be something similar to the player "stuck" command - a "/mobstuck" that would nudge a mob some small amount towards, say, a spawn point or the map's generated "NPC pathing." Limited use, say twice every 10 minutes, and also sends in a report for the devs saying "this mob was stuck on this map, their LOC was this" for them to do a quick check to see if there were any geometry holes or something that need fixing. (Plus it would work on bosses.)

 

Unlike a lot of other requests, this really doesn't buff the player at all or make general play any easier, and as a temp power could be easily limited. I see it more as agency for putting a - maybe not super common, but not exactly rare - issue's resolution into the player's hand, if they want.

@OEM61 summed it up very nicely. I would also like to point out how quickly the author was willing to drop the "we need this for stuck mobs on our defeat alls" in favor of just having access to Teleport Foe in general without having to take Teleport Target.

 

12 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

So, what if we just assumed the premise of my suggestion is "TP Foe would be a good addition to the craftable powers list" and ignored the specific circumstances which caused this particular incident?

This tells me it isn't about stuck mobs, that stuck mobs are just a convenient smokescreen.

 

Going back to stuck mobs, there are ample methods of dealing with them. In addition to the ones I already listed, a player can reach out to their friends and request any of them that are available and have Teleport Target lend them a hand to yank the target out of the wall. A player can have a second account with a character that has Teleport Target that they add in long enough to yank the target back out. A player can step outside of their mission and ask in the Help channel, Broadcast, or other suitable channel if there is someone who has Teleport Target that is willing to enter their mission, yank the target free, and then quit so they can resume. I would be willing to swap to one of my characters with the power to help, leave, and then swap back to the character I was playing. And I like to think I'm not unique in that. And if the player is on a full team? Then see if someone on the team can swap to a character that has Teleport Target, yank the mob, and then swap back. On a TF/SF? Use any of the already mentioned fixes including calling a GM.

 

Edit: And for foes that resist teleporting, it wouldn't help yank them out of the wall anyway.

 

Edited November 28 by Rudra

[lemming]

54 minutes ago, OEM61 said:

How many people dip into the teleport pool just for teleport target?  I suspect that it is not an insignificant number.

Unless I have a build that uses up my pool choices, I figure out a way to bring it in.   It's just a very handy tool.

[Psyonico]

45 minutes ago, Rudra said:

And for foes that resist teleporting, it wouldn't help yank them out of the wall anyway.

 

I should add that Teleport Target only works on minions and underlings, so *if* this temp power was made, would it have to be stronger than Teleport Target in case LTs and Bosses get stuck in a wall? And wouldn't that make it even more likely that people would use it for something other than just getting mobs unstuck?

[Rudra]

5 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

53 minutes ago, Rudra said:

And for foes that resist teleporting, it wouldn't help yank them out of the wall anyway.

 

I should add that Teleport Target only works on minions and underlings, so *if* this temp power was made, would it have to be stronger than Teleport Target in case LTs and Bosses get stuck in a wall? And wouldn't that make it even more likely that people would use it for something other than just getting mobs unstuck?

Teleport Target works against lieutenants too, but not against all lieutenant mobs. Like the Rikti ignore Teleport Target all the time. So yes, if the temp power were to be able to affect any stuck mob, it would be stronger than the pool power, even without the Recall Friend portion. Especially since it would need to be able to teleport Monster and AV class mobs for when they get stuck in the geometry in instance maps since we can fight enemies all the way up to Monster tier in our missions. And since there is no way to limit the power's use to just stuck mobs, that would mean players will take this temp power and be yanking Monsters on the zone maps to anywhere on the map they want them.

 

However, if it was made as Teleport Target with the Recall Friend portion stripped out, then it would not be any stronger than Teleport Target, and would not get all stuck mobs free. So you would still be left with using one of the existing fixes/workarounds to deal with the situation anyway.

[BasiliskXVIII]

8 minutes ago, Rudra said:

@OEM61 summed it up very nicely. I would also like to point out how quickly the author was willing to drop the "we need this for stuck mobs on our defeat alls" in favor of just having access to Teleport Foe in general without having to take Teleport Target.

 

This tells me it isn't about stuck mobs, that stuck mobs are just a convenient smokescreen.

 

Going back to stuck mobs, there are ample methods of dealing with them. In addition to the ones I already listed, a player can reach out to their friends and request any of them that are available and have Teleport Target lend them a hand to yank the target out of the wall. A player can have a second account with a character that has Teleport Target that they add in long enough to yank the target back out. A player can step outside of their mission and ask in the Help channel, Broadcast, or other suitable channel if there is someone who has Teleport Target that is willing to enter their mission, yank the target free, and then quit so they can resume. I would be willing to swap to one of my characters with the power to help, leave, and then swap back to the character I was playing. And I like to think I'm not unique in that. And if the player is on a full team? Then see if someone on the team can swap to a character that has Teleport Target, yank the mob, and then swap back. On a TF/SF? Use any of the already mentioned fixes including calling a GM.

 

Edit: And for foes that resist teleporting, it wouldn't help yank them out of the wall anyway.

 

No, pivoting tactics is just because certain people like to show up and turn suggestion threads from "I do/don't like this suggestion because..." into, "the problem you are having is invalid because...". And frankly I don't really care how valid you think my issue is. The solutions you present are present, true, but they are a long walk on a hot day, and could be made simpler while also introducing something that I think would be a useful and fun expansion of the crafted power system while keeping in scope.

 

Thus far, the only argument that I've seen you make against the actual suggestion itself is that you don't like suggestions that encroach temp powers onto existing pool and power sets. Ok, fine. That's personal preference, and it's valid, but it's not exactly constructive feedback to the suggestion as posted.

 

50 minutes ago, OEM61 said:

How many people dip into the teleport pool just for teleport target?  I suspect that it is not an insignificant number.

 

This is probably a question we actually can answer. Given that Teleport Target used to be Teleport Friend and Teleport Foe before being (rightly) merged into one, there probably is data somewhere of how many players had taken Teleport Foe. My anecdotal evidence is that back when I was playing on live, If you had Teleport and picked up TP Foe over TP Friend, you were either using a build for PVP (which eventually fell out of favour when TP Foe gained its immunity phase against players) or you were a weirdo. However, Flurry has also traditionally been a maligned pool pick, and even it wasn't so unpopular as to need to be paired with a different power to make it worthwhile. 

 

Yes, it does mean you'll be able to TP bosses away. But you can plink bosses with the envenomed dagger and pull them too, that's hardly broken. As someone who did take TP foe on my stalker thinking it would be a great tool for mitigating aggro, it wasn't nearly as good as I'd hoped, and if this is intended to be the main use case of it, the sucker who tries is probably going to lament the lack of accuracy slotting. And if it is a regular part of your strategy, then you're probably going to want to pick up the power anyways just to have the version that lets you teleport allies and slot it.

 

36 minutes ago, OEM61 said:

Every stuck enemy that I have noticed (and it hasn't been many) was fixed by exiting and re-entering.  People can submit a ticket and go on about clearing out the rest of the "defeat all" map while they wait.  If it is not a defeat all map then it only matters if it affects the specific target of the mission and that has to be an exceedingly tiny percentage of instances. 
And while they wait the enemy may free themselves by the time they come back anyway.

 

You say it doesn't happen. I had it happen yesterday to me, twice. Exiting and re-entering did not resolve the issue, neither did waiting for 15-20 minutes, running around and taunting the guy in the wall and trying to bait him out, or to find that one magical spot that would let me shoot him. Both the brown and the purple caves have a lot of really janky geometry, and yes, I probably will have to pick up TP Target on my stormy because, honestly, I don't think it's possible to close all the cracks that mobs fall into there, though I'm still holding out hope that when I finally get Tornado it will give me enough versatility

 

1 hour ago, OEM61 said:

So how much does it cost, either to buy or to make?  How many charges/how long does it last?
That's what it comes to.  Because no matter what limited QoL issue it can be used for, it will be an end-around to getting a much more useful power without spending a pick.

 

I was thinking 5 charges, a rare recipe. Limited enough that having the power ready for every spawn would be impractical, and missing with it would hurt but wouldn't also totally waste it.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

My anecdotal evidence is that back when I was playing on live, If you had Teleport and picked up TP Foe over TP Friend, you were either using a build for PVP (which eventually fell out of favour when TP Foe gained its immunity phase against players) or you were a weirdo.

This is a very biased presentation. I often took Teleport Foe back on Live. And I always did it with an eye to yanking specific targets out of a crowded space to me where I could deal with the target alone. And seeing as how that novel idea was told to me by multiple people in the game, it wasn't just 'weirdos' taking Teleport Foe without taking Recall Friend.

 

2 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

Yes, it does mean you'll be able to TP bosses away. But you can plink bosses with the envenomed dagger and pull them too, that's hardly broken.

Envenomed Dagger has a range of 80 feet. Which is also combat range for the mobs. The Teleport Foe component of Teleport Target has a range of 200 feet. So as long as you maintain the targeting box, you can yank targets from well beyond aggro radius. (Edit: And you can do fun things like teleport enemies to you at elevators, take the elevator back to a different floor, re-teleport the target to you again, and have nothing else follow because they won't use elevators. And after a little bit, the mobs that may have pursued to the elevators or portal will go back to where they started, and it is safe to return to the previous area and do that again. Or target a foe, run back through some halls to another room where the mobs will give up pursuit trying to reach, and teleport the target to you to ensure isolation. Something direct attacks like Envenomed Dagger can't do.)

 

Edited November 28 by Rudra
Edited again to correct "Target" to "Foe".

[Snarky]

On 11/27/2024 at 2:34 PM, BasiliskXVIII said:

After getting an enemy stuck in geometry shortly after having been forced to complete another mission for the same reason it would be nice to have some method to deal with the occasional idiot getting stuck in walls blocking a "defeat all" mission in a way that doesn't require a full power pick. Since Teleport foe and friend have been merged into simply "Teleport Target", having just the "foe" side of the power craftable feels sufficiently weak enough to not render its pool power equivalent obsolete.

do you not need to be able to target the creature to TP it?  and isnt that the problem with it being in the wall in the first place?

[Greycat]

7 hours ago, OEM61 said:

It is and it isn't.

It is a QoL improvement as long as its one and only use is to pull enemies out of geometry.
But it's more than that.  This same thing could be used to pull that bigbad from that clear spot over there to this clear spot over here. 

How many people dip into the teleport pool just for teleport target?  I suspect that it is not an insignificant number.

Every stuck enemy that I have noticed (and it hasn't been many) was fixed by exiting and re-entering.  People can submit a ticket and go on about clearing out the rest of the "defeat all" map while they wait.  If it is not a defeat all map then it only matters if it affects the specific target of the mission and that has to be an exceedingly tiny percentage of instances. 
And while they wait the enemy may free themselves by the time they come back anyway.

So how much does it cost, either to buy or to make?  How many charges/how long does it last?
That's what it comes to.  Because no matter what limited QoL issue it can be used for, it will be an end-around to getting a much more useful power without spending a pick.
 

 

OK, a few things.

 

First, and this probably limits the usefulness, the bigger the big-bad, the less likely they are to be affected by teleport.

 

Second, this isn't the same as teleport target. I *guarantee* people dip into the pool for that... because they like running (for instance) empaths or something else that needs to rez people as well, or just like being a taxibot type character. So, it's not a completely fair comparison. And I'd put money down that people pick it up for the "Recall a friend" by orders of magnitude over "Recall a single enemy." My Warshades use it for that, sure - but that's also not a pool power pick, and Khelds have dedicated (single) enemies that it's very useful to do that to.

 

And I've had plenty of times where exiting and reentering did not unstick a target. Or, for that matter, waiting. Is it better? Sure. And submitting a ticket... as I've said, depending on when you play, that can be fast, or it can be pretty much unanswered in a reasonable time (which I am *not* saying as a dig on our GMing team, but - they're not paid to have someone on staff 24/7 to handle this stuff, so response time can be wildly variable.)

 

Cost, charges and recharges can all be adjusted however the dev team might feel is useful for this. Given it's "Get a single stuck enemy out of the wall," as low as ten charges with a 10, 20 or even 30 minute recharge between them would not be amiss if "abuse" (and I'm using that word *really* loosely) is a concern. And it still would be lacking the ability to recall a single friendly target.  (Not to mention the other bits in the power pool, like combat teleport or fold space.)

 

I just ... don't buy the "it's just a shortcut" argument given the limits of both the specific power requested and the fact it'd be an expiring (by use or time) temporary power, which also (if it's a copy of the old power, as requested) has limited accuracy as well as rank effectiveness (I don't think I ever had the original TP Foe pull a boss, and even some LTs were hit and miss.) It's certainly not something you could (say) pull a patron away from the others on a MLTF with.

[TygerDarkstorm]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

do you not need to be able to target the creature to TP it?  and isnt that the problem with it being in the wall in the first place?

In my experience, you can usually target the stuck mob, you just can't always attack them.

[Greycat]

7 hours ago, Rudra said:

Going back to stuck mobs, there are ample methods of dealing with them. In addition to the ones I already listed, a player can reach out to their friends and request any of them that are available and have Teleport Target lend them a hand to yank the target out of the wall. A player can have a second account with a character that has Teleport Target that they add in long enough to yank the target back out. A player can step outside of their mission and ask in the Help channel, Broadcast, or other suitable channel if there is someone who has Teleport Target that is willing to enter their mission, yank the target free, and then quit so they can resume. I would be willing to swap to one of my characters with the power to help, leave, and then swap back to the character I was playing. And I like to think I'm not unique in that. And if the player is on a full team? Then see if someone on the team can swap to a character that has Teleport Target, yank the mob, and then swap back. On a TF/SF? Use any of the already mentioned fixes including calling a GM.

 

And they could go in and learn coding and volunteer as a dev and program a way around it, too...

 

Sorry, Rudra, you're starting to take some of these to kind of silly lengths. Go make a second account so you have someone with TP Target? Hell, I have three accounts, thanks to RPing, and I wouldn't always have that option. The help channel has the same issues as a GM - you have to hope there's enough population there that someone *has* that option, and is willing to use it.

 

You and I have both seen plenty of "I just want more power" requests. I generally am wary and iffy of them as well. I just don't see this as being anywhere near as "power creep"-y given the power's already limited use (I'd be more against it if it were a temp Teleport Target instead of just TP Foe) and the fact the temp versions can be "tuned" if needed with number of charges, recall, etc. (plus, of course, their lack of ability to be enhanced with range, acc, etc. after being picked up, unlike the pool power.)

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

do you not need to be able to target the creature to TP it?  and isnt that the problem with it being in the wall in the first place?

 

 

Nope. You can typically still target the mob. You just can't *attack* it. Though sometimes it can attack you freely for whatever reason - yet another reason I'm not convinced having this as a temp power would be a bad thing.