Group Fly Suggestions

[icesphere]

I have noticed during TFs or Raids when one person brings with them Group Fly (for their pets typically) it causes a lot of folks to be upset they are being affected by the group fly. Now I know very well on Null the Gull and how he can turn it off for you, but people seem bothered having to remember to do this on each new character, especially those who have strong alt-itis and run into a "out of sight, out of mind" issue. Typically in these scenarios it goes like this:

 

X: hey who has group fly on? Y: oh me, I use it for my pets.
X: well turn it off it's messing with my combat.
Y: no I need it for my pets.
X: turn it off you're ruining this for all of us.
Z: why not go to null the gull to turn off group fly?
X: i'm not leaving because one person decided to ruin the raid:

So for the sake of seeing this time and time again, I would like to make a few suggestions I think would help and others have suggested to try and remove these little outbursts from happening. 

 

1) I think it should be auto from the beginning to not affect you and only need to go to the gull to turn it in, because I never see or hear people saying "oh man I forgot to TURN ON Group Fly effects"

2) Make it a menu setting sort of like how you can enable/disable teleport prompts, but not sure if how the game is setup it can be adjusted by the menu.

Anywho, that was just something I wanted to throw out there as someone who experiences these things and sees these things from time to time.

[Rudra]

This has been discussed over and over and over and over and over and over and.... You get the idea. Do a search for "Group Fly" in the search bar and you will see.

[macskull]

The given reason for why it’s not as simple as being “opt-in” is that pets would no longer be affected by it. This seems a little silly to me since it’s very possible to rework how the power behaves in a way that pets would have the same state as the player. Like, hell, I don’t know, if you have opted in to Group Fly maybe you’re automatically granted an invisible AoE power that only affects your pets and only activates when you’re under the effects of Group Fly.

 

This really shouldn’t be hard, people.

[SaxyGuitar]

So I will double check tonight, because im not 100% sure. But group fly just gives fly to your pets. They don't need to be in it's radius. So another option is make it like afterburner. Where if you have fly on you toggle "pet fly power" and it gives fly to all your pets.

 

This doesn't fix all the problem, but it helps remove some of them. Because there are some fights where you become a petless mastermind with out it.

[Luminara]

[srmalloy]

41 minutes ago, SaxyGuitar said:

So I will double check tonight, because im not 100% sure. But group fly just gives fly to your pets. They don't need to be in it's radius. So another option is make it like afterburner. Where if you have fly on you toggle "pet fly power" and it gives fly to all your pets.

Group Fly gives flight to everyone in the power radius, whether they want it or not, unless you've gone to Null to disable the effects of Group Fly. That is what the hate and discontent is about. A character -- virtually always an MM; with the ready availability of time-limited flight powers from the S.T.A.R.T. vendor and other sources (like the Posi 2 TF), there's little need for a character to take it for the purpose of allowing the rest of their team to fly) -- takes Group Fly to enable them to bring their pets along with them while they're flying, and the fact that it spreads to their nearby teammates whether they want it or not is largely a "Nicht mein Zirkus, nicht meine Affen" situation, with the attitude of the person with Group Fly almost always being "Well, if you don't like it, go talk to Null and disable it", which can be perceived as making everyone else go out of their way to avoid inconveniencing them in the slightest.

 

I don't have a second account ready to hand to try it on the test server, and I've never been in a position to try it on the live servers, so I don't know if disabling the effect of Group Fly on you at Null the Gull also disables its effects on your pets; if your pets are not affected by your choice at Null, then this creates a clear uncontrollable negative effect from someone else using Group Fly. Is there anyone who can readily test this?

 

One option -- certainly not the only solution, and possibly not the best one -- is to tweak travel powers so that they automatically spread to your pets: for example, if you take Fly or Mystic Flight, your pets following you automatically get Fly; this would remove the need for Group Fly except to allow you to 'gift' Flight to your team, which as I describe above is rarely necessary. Another option is to break Group Fly into two powers in the Flight pool -- 'Team Fly', which works exactly as Group Fly does now, and 'Pet Fly', which only affects the character's own pets; this would retain the distinction between taking the Flight pool to get Fly and the pet flight, and taking the Sorcery pool for Mystic Flight and Translocation, but not getting the group/pet flight choices, and allow MMs to pick a power that lets their pets fly with them, without forcing the power choice on others..

[Rudra]

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/search/?q="Group Fly"&quick=1&type=forums_topic&updated_after=any&sortby=relevancy&search_in=titles

 

[twospirited]

1 hour ago, icesphere said:

turn it in,

i think turn it on, but yes, absolutely agree. this includes for players pets too. to not be affected by group travel or incarnate travel powers that affect groups. nothing like missing a teleport because you're set to click accept, and your pets are pulled away mid-fight with aggroed mobs, right?

[lemming]

Ugh, and with the seed of Hami, the flight power you get from beating one of them, gets disabled if you disable group fly.

 

So, pretty much, until I get the Seed done (because Mark & Recall), I don't disable until after that.  (We should get a Null in First Ward)

[Lunar Ronin]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's just through 2021.

[SaxyGuitar]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

if you take Fly or Mystic Flight, your pets following you automatically get Fly; this would remove the need for Group Fly

 

Sorry, this is what I was trying to say. Group fly does this already (It just has the downside of giving people in its range a slow fly). So why can't other travel powers do it. Group fly just gives fly to your pets. They a mile away from you, they now have fly on. I didn't turn Group fly on until my pets where already out of its range. But you can see in this photo they can fly. So why can't normal fly come with a toggle to give my pets fly. I don't want my bruiser flying all the time just when they need too.

Edited December 31, 2024 by SaxyGuitar

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, icesphere said:

a lot of folks to be upset they are being affected by the group fly.

 

 

I don't know if it is good or bad that you didn't bother to look up one of the never ending new threads about this and necroing it.

[kelika2]

Turning it into Grant Flight still sounds like the best option

[Glacier Peak]

Owing to it being New Years Eve, I thought I'd recap what (little) the Homecoming Team (City Council and Developers specifically) have publicly stated on the topic of Group Fly on the Homecoming Forums (I did NOT check Official Discord!) to help inform the Suggestion and Feedback forum goers in any future posts understand what their stance is. The forum search function can be fickle sometimes and is not very intuitive. So, looking back we find a total of... two posts.

 

Waaaaay back in 2021 when Homecoming did a big revamp on travel pool powers, @Arcanum posted beta patch notes on the Travel Power changes that were eventually implemented, but nothing of substance on the topic beyond beta patch notes. However, there was a fruitful indication from @Jimmy that was posted in response to recommendations from another poster about wanting to improve the interactions with Group Fly. Link to post and Quote below:

 

 

Other than that, the only other thing I could find was back in September of 2019, @Number Six wanted to try adding some buffer to the outer edge of Group Fly for friendlies to help with the either you're flying or you're falling dichotomy. I don't believe this was implemented. Eventually Inverse Repel (the topic of the linked thread was 'Negative Repel') debuted fantastically (love Axe Cyclone!):    Link to Post and Quote Below:

 

 

There just hasn't been much from either the Developers or the City Council on the stance of what to do with Group Fly. My search did not include posts from Game Masters (GMs) because most of what I found was @GM_GooglyMoogly warning some trolls and closing threads on the topic.

Edited December 31, 2024 by Glacier Peak

[Super Atom]

id settle for it being statesman fly fast honestly

 

 

zoom

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, twospirited said:

nothing like missing a teleport because you're set to click accept, and your pets are pulled away mid-fight with aggroed mobs, right?

This is a running peeve of mine, that your pets are automatically "accept teleports" regardless of how you are set; there have been a number of times where I've been playing one of my MMs on a team and been in the middle of a fight when one of my сволочь teammates uses ATT or the incarnate group teleport, and suddenly I find myself alone, хуй in hand, as my pets disappear.

[Rudra]

30 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

This is a running peeve of mine, that your pets are automatically "accept teleports" regardless of how you are set; there have been a number of times where I've been playing one of my MMs on a team and been in the middle of a fight when one of my сволочь teammates uses ATT or the incarnate group teleport, and suddenly I find myself alone, хуй in hand, as my pets disappear.

Pets cannot choose to accept anything. Players can. So pets must auto-accept. (Edit: Otherwise MMs won't be able to use Teleport Target to get their minions back to them.)(Edit again: Or their own AtT for that matter. And depending on how far away the AtT'ing or Incan'ing teammate is, your pets should immediately teleport back to you. Out of the times I've been on a team with my MMs and a teammate teleported my pets away from me? So far, my pets have always teleported back to me. [Or I was already with that teammate and the teleport didn't matter.])

 

Edited January 1 by Rudra

[Jacke]

I do feel similarly to @Luminara.  (Sure that's enough for this repeat topic?)

 

And @Lunar Ronin is quite correct, this topic keeps coming back again and again.

 

Because it's a pain that hasn't been dealt with.

 

The Null the Gull solution isn't adequate.  And I say that as someone who's not disabled others' Group Fly effects.  Yet I have a Toon spreadsheet and could carefully add it in to set on old Toons as well as add it to my new Toon sequence.

 

Just because I can fix this, doesn't mean it's easy for the entire playerbase.  Especially those who don't follow the forums and never have seen any of the many posts on this.  And haven't heard of Null the Gull nor his powers to disable Group Fly effects.

 

And it is a problem.  I was recently on a MSR on Everlasting and there was Group Fly going on in the Mothership Bowl.  Players with Toons that absolutely need to be on the ground must have been irritated.

 

There is a simple solution:  Make the Group Fly effects apply only to the Caster and their Pets.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=pool.flight.group_fly

 

It's at the lower left:

Entities Affected    Player Teammate (Alive), Self
Entities Autohit     Player Teammate (Alive), Self

 

Drop that "Player Teammate (Alive)" and do whatever needs to be done to the Power to make it affect the Caster's Pets (which may be including in Self, not sure).

 

That's the obvious fix in a game now overflowing with Fly temp powers that are NEVER disabled in any game content.  Which new Toons now get one automatically at low Level.

 

 

 

 

 

[srmalloy]

10 hours ago, Jacke said:

There is a simple solution:  Make the Group Fly effects apply only to the Caster and their Pets.

Even with the ready availability of flight temporary powers, there is a corner case where being able to spread flight to your team could be useful, which is why I suggested breaking Group Fly up into 'Pet Fly' -- Group Fly as you describe, only affecting your pets -- and 'Team Fly' (or, better, 'Grant Flight' to parallel the Stealth Pool's 'Grant Invisibility'), which affects teammates and is a cancelable power.

[Arcanum]

I don't touch powers personally because, quite frankly, it's consistently a "no-win" department.

However, I'll take this back to our devs and make sure the feedback gets heard!! As some others have mentioned, it's certainly not the first time hearing it. The holidays still have the team a bit scrambled/busy, and we're getting a few other priority items finalized, which I'm sure you'll be hearing about...
 

Spoiler

soon™️

 

Until then, feel free to keep brainstorming and I'll have the team review it for possibilities!

[macskull]

On 12/31/2024 at 5:00 PM, SaxyGuitar said:

So why can't other travel powers do it

The actual reason for this, as given by the powers dev team, is that allowing MM pets to inherit the player’s active travel powers would remove much of the reason to take Group Fly. This is, of course, completely ridiculous, since there’s already precedent for reworking travel power pools (remember when LRT was in the teleport pool?), so it really does seem like the message being sent is “we are okay with keeping this power the way it is even though it is a routine and repeated pain point and players have been proposing solutions for literal years.”

 

The “you can just turn it off at the Gull” defense is the same old tired response that’s been trotted out by players who continue to think they should be able to disrupt an entire team with a single power because they don’t have the self awareness to consider other people. Imagine if the response to the complaints of the original Sonic Resonance sounds causing headaches was “well, you can just replace a few sound files.”

[tidge]

2 hours ago, macskull said:

The “you can just turn it off at the Gull” defense is the same old tired response that’s been trotted out by players who continue to think they should be able to disrupt an entire team with a single power because they don’t have the self awareness to consider other people.

 

This is a bit of a stretch... I recognize that some folks express a LOT of distaste for being affected by Group Fly, or Speed Boost, or even certain power visuals/sounds... but Null actually gives the players who self-choose to be "disrupted" agency to not be disrupted (for Speed Boost, Group Fly).

 

At this point I can't say what is more "tired", is it the suggestion to use Null the Gull or the insistence that some subset of players shouldn't have to hear the suggestion?

[biostem]

I wonder how difficult it would be to make it so when you take group flight, you are actually granted 2 powers;  1 that acts like normal group flight, and one that only affects your pets...

[tidge]

I was thinking 'what if Group Fly granted an ally-targeting power that nullified Group Fly?' but I foresee issues with that which would make it more complicated than how Null currently works.

[SaxyGuitar]

I can understand the team wanting someone to take a power to give everything flying.

 

So what if when you take group fly, it came with a 2nd pop up window power like a lot of the travel powers do now. Then when you turn base group fly on it gives fly to just your pets like how it gives fly to your pets now. But when you toggled the 2nd power that only works when base group fly is on, it does the other part of group fly that gives all allies fly in its radius.

 

You make the base group fly cost all the End, then the pop up window 2nd toggle would cost nothing extra. Just give that a very good fly speed because it will not be effect by enhancements. I'd recommend Group Fly + EM speeds.

Edited Thursday at 03:54 AM by SaxyGuitar
Typos and adding some words to clarify