Disable SG base passcode access in PvP zones

[MetaVileTerror]

Mild tangent:  The reason /AH doesn't work in Bases is because the server load would become too massive.  Each time the command is used, it loads the /entire/ Auction database in to the map instance.  In public zones, this isn't as much an issue, since multiple people can use it there.  But if everyone could tuck away in to their private base and use the Auction feature there, then suddenly each player would be adding a load to the servers which is normally distributed among multiple players at once.

 

At least, that's how it was explained to me.

[KingofMonkeys]

Cool. But reducing the recharge and or animation time of the base tp doesn't seem unreasonable either.

Edited August 26, 2019 by KingofMonkeys

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Not a bad suggestion at all - or just disable it from working in PvP zones.

And in mission instances, if there's a way to distinguish a mission instance from an SG base instance. Doing that kills virtually all of the ability to use it in missions as an 'escape button' for Master runs. Or even add it to the list of things that fall under Movement Suppression, so that you can't use it if you're in combat.

[ShardWarrior]

18 hours ago, srmalloy said:

And in mission instances, if there's a way to distinguish a mission instance from an SG base instance. Doing that kills virtually all of the ability to use it in missions as an 'escape button' for Master runs. Or even add it to the list of things that fall under Movement Suppression, so that you can't use it if you're in combat.

The existing version is interruptible, so that would cover not being able to use it in combat. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 8/26/2019 at 10:56 AM, Leandro said:

Nobody's getting "punished" for using the command while it's unlocked, but it is not going to stay unlocked forever. All the arguments above keep pretending that this isn't a GM-only command that accidentally got exposed; if /mapmove was accidentally made available to all players tomorrow, the arguments on both sides would be the exact same, and the end result would not change: it's a GM-only command, not meant for player use; it being available to players is not intended and will be fixed eventually.

 

Mind you, just locking away the command everywhere is easy and could have been done already. However, I recognize that using it to hop inbetween bases once you're in one doesn't hurt anything, and that the existing Base Teleporter powers have very long recharge and seem to be affected by an isssue that makes them interrupt easily. This requires time from the powers dev (who's busy finishing the Snipes/Assault changes) and the code dev (who's busy fixing problems with the 64-bit migration). It's not a priority. Enjoy it while it lasts.

No one is pretending it wasnt orignally a GM command. However this is not live, and the HC team has already made numerous changes based around QoL such as the option to double our experience gain, Adding a very unbalalnced set like Bio armor that clearly was not fine tuned enough yet to be balanced against existing sets. The introduction of the sentinal aka mage tank AT that basically obsoletes the peace bringer entirely.  The It wasnt in live or wasnt meant for players because its meant just for GMs is honestly not much of an argument in my book. Its an appeal to authority position which sure you guys have the authority but that doesnt make you actually right nor actually offer a really good counter to the many reasons this is a good QoL feature for a great many players.

 

The majority of base builders making great use of the expanded base features you all have worked so hard to give us are Role Players. All of us Role players have by and large always found the black hole sewer entrance portal to bases so anti immersive as to be a reason to not bother with bases as a RP location. Had the live dev team had the sense to place them by helicopters or use a door point attached to some fancy SG base building it would of nullified a lot of the negative feeling of that old base portal access.

 

We are talking about a game world where everyone is teleported to hospital akin to star trek. Virtually everyone agrees the base tp vet power is laughable at best and an insult to the player base at the worst. Heck why doesnt long range teleport include an option to teleport to bases as well? Why not give sorceries msytic flight an additional portal to base option alongside the teleport almost no one bothers with?

 

We are in a world of living gods, Of tech that can rival said gods. The first thing anyone sane would do with that tech is have a teleport system to access their bases of operation quickly in emergency situations.

 

PVP isnt enough of an draw to the general population to justify taking it away, shaving a few min off of travel times is a positive not a exploit. Go ahead and take it away and see how the base builders network and activity drops like a stone in the sea.

 

I mean if your going to kill a great Role play and social tool just because it may well make more of us consider moving on to private servers etc, and certainly wont help your cause to be the rebirth server so to speak.

 

See the advantage of this accidental feature, see how it blends so perfectly with all the effort youve put into expanding SG bases, and the work of base builders and SGs to expand the game world that this feature makes essential. Because the load times to access bases or travel around multiple zones is not fun, the travel in general for many is not fun. I myself love flying so I dont mind at all flying from mish to mish and across zones. However because fly is my go to TP I am often late to the mish in many teams and miss out on XP and drops because no one wants to waste their precious game time not playing and I never ask any to wait for me to arrive to start the fun.

 

 This so called exploit improves the social dynamic of the game, it improves the sg base aspect of the game. Without it why even play on a server with others and many cool sg bases its a pita to go visit and enjoy. Taking it away undermines one of the main bits of work you all have done with the expanded SG bases. MY SG base builder buddy has been making thematic entrances for our bases to make traveling between them seem logical and immersive. Having to go back to whatever sewer hole in the city to then go to another base makes such attention to detail pointless.

[MunkiLord]

2 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

I mean if your going to kill a great Role play and social tool just because it may well make more of us consider moving on to private servers etc, and certainly wont help your cause to be the rebirth server so to speak.

I thought Rebirth was a different group? Why would the HC team want to be another group?

[Vayek2]

On 8/16/2019 at 11:47 AM, macskull said:

Title says it all, mostly, but... one of the I25 changes that got snuck in kind of under the radar is a slash command to access an SG base via passcode. This command is awesome but can be easily abused in a PvP zone. There's already precedent for making certain powers disabled in a PvP environment (Ouroboros Portal) and for slash commands as well (/ah).

everything gets abused in PVP, why cry about this and try to get it nerfed for the rest of us? 

 

PVPer that complain about other people abusing things is what causes game wide nerfs. Thanks from the rest of us.

[justicebeliever]

5 minutes ago, Vayek2 said:

everything gets abused in PVP, why cry about this and try to get it nerfed for the rest of us? 

 

PVPer that complain about other people abusing things is what causes game wide nerfs. Thanks from the rest of us.

Disclaimer:  I have never been and don't plan to ever be a PvP

 

The OP didn't ruin this for anyone...This had been communicated all over the boards and the HC team seemed like they were aware of it already...

 

PvP is a part of the game, and they deserve as much as anybody to have working game mechanics...

 

And this isn't a nerf...This doesn't stop you from defeating bad guys any faster, or leveling any quicker, or getting influence any differently.

 

What's a shame is that once this was shared, it wasn't immediately locked down by the Dev's so we didn't get used to it...

 

To be transparent, I currently love and use the slash command several times a day, and I will be disappointed when it goes away...but I'm not going to blame anyone, and I don't think we should pretend that losing it going to fundamentally break the game in any way...

[Widower]

23 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I thought Rebirth was a different group? Why would the HC team want to be another group?

Hey, if you listen to the other groups, we want to be all the groups. :P

 

9 minutes ago, Vayek2 said:

everything gets abused in PVP, why cry about this and try to get it nerfed for the rest of us? 

 

PVPer that complain about other people abusing things is what causes game wide nerfs. Thanks from the rest of us.

We knew about this exploit before this thread was posted, and the person most vigorously advocating for its removal internally is actually a RPer. You should actually thank the PvPers, as otherwise you wouldn't have known about it in advance.

[justicebeliever]

2 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

I mean if your going to kill a great Role play and social tool just because it may well make more of us consider moving on to private servers etc, and certainly wont help your cause to be the rebirth server so to speak

I have seen amazing work by the HC players since this game has gone live with Bases, and sharing their bases, and running RP from their bases...Maybe you haven't seen the posts?  That was well before this macro was communicated on the forums...Role Play was doing fine before this was communicated and I have zero doubt that it will be fine after this changes...

 

Honestly, any discussion that has "if you don't do what I want, I'm going to take my toys and leave," doesn't come across as persuasive.  As you mentioned, HC has already bent over backwards to provide a better RP experience than we ever had on Live...

 

It sucks that we lose this, it's true, but it also sounds like we are going to get a better base teleporter as part of the process (which I am thankful for).  Having to use a teleporter (or even a base portal) is consistent with the game, even an Ouro portal doesn't TP instantly or recharge instantly...No mechanic in this game is anything like this passcode command (no cast, no cost, no impact to health/end, no recharge time), so if anything, to be consistent for role play in the game universe it should operate like most of the game mechanics...

 

Again, it sucks, no reason to say otherwise, and frankly, it should have been removed a long time ago before we all got used to it, because that makes it suck more...But it doesn't make HC un-friendly to RP...

 

Bentley - I have you ignored, so feel free to respond in any way you like, I won't read it...I only responded here because I saw you quoted earlier...but I was triggered that this would "kill Role Play"

[Obsidius]

On 8/24/2019 at 12:08 AM, Robotech_Master said:

You know, the LFG queue teleporter can get you out of PVP zones, too...

 

(I've heard that devs have said the enter base from passcode command wasn't actually intended to be used by players, and it will sooner or later be disabled for everybody except GMs.)

Makes sense. I think that Leo enabled this to easily pop between bases and probably forgot to patch it up.

 

I'll be sad to see it gone, but restricting it to GMs would fix this PvP issue nicely. Plus, it will make other teleporter powers (Ouro, base TP, ATT, Mission TP, etc.) more relevant again.

 

Edit: I see that GMs have confirmed this after catching up on more of the thread, so 👍

Edited August 28, 2019 by Obsidius

[ShardWarrior]

4 minutes ago, Obsidius said:

Plus, it will make other teleporter powers (Ouro, base TP, ATT, Mission TP, etc.) more relevant again.

I can only speak for myself here, but even with the slash command available those other powers are still very relevant.  They are actually superior in certain circumstances.

[ShardWarrior]

26 minutes ago, justicebeliever said:

PvP is a part of the game, and they deserve as much as anybody to have working game mechanics...

^ Agreed.  I don't care for PvP either, however I certainly won't begrudge anyone who does enjoy it.  No doubt using this in PvP situations to escape defeat is an issue.

[macskull]

Wow, this thread kind of blew up when I wasn't paying attention. I'm a little disappointed most of the replies (looking at you @Bentley Berkeley) didn't read the second half of the thread title and completely missed that I was advocating for disabling the command in PvP environments only. I understand it's all irrelevant now, but when I made the OP almost two weeks ago I don't think it was widely known that this was supposed to be a GM-only command and assumed it was something that was intentionally available to everyone.

 

I'll close with my normal "PvP ruins everything" plug - in the entire history of this game there has only ever been one - one - power or mechanic that's received a PvE nerf solely for PvP reasons, and the players who insist that PvP should not exist in this game because they don't like it are more toxic than the PvPers they hate (alternatively, why not remove all badges from the game, because badgers are such a small subset of the playerbase that having the badges is just a waste of resources).

Edited August 28, 2019 by macskull

[M3z]

5 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

No one is pretending it wasnt orignally a GM command. However this is not live, and the HC team has already made numerous changes based around QoL such as the option to double our experience gain, Adding a very unbalalnced set like Bio armor that clearly was not fine tuned enough yet to be balanced against existing sets. The introduction of the sentinal aka mage tank AT that basically obsoletes the peace bringer entirely.  The It wasnt in live or wasnt meant for players because its meant just for GMs is honestly not much of an argument in my book. Its an appeal to authority position which sure you guys have the authority but that doesnt make you actually right nor actually offer a really good counter to the many reasons this is a good QoL feature for a great many players.

 

The majority of base builders making great use of the expanded base features you all have worked so hard to give us are Role Players. All of us Role players have by and large always found the black hole sewer entrance portal to bases so anti immersive as to be a reason to not bother with bases as a RP location. Had the live dev team had the sense to place them by helicopters or use a door point attached to some fancy SG base building it would of nullified a lot of the negative feeling of that old base portal access.

 

We are talking about a game world where everyone is teleported to hospital akin to star trek. Virtually everyone agrees the base tp vet power is laughable at best and an insult to the player base at the worst. Heck why doesnt long range teleport include an option to teleport to bases as well? Why not give sorceries msytic flight an additional portal to base option alongside the teleport almost no one bothers with?

 

We are in a world of living gods, Of tech that can rival said gods. The first thing anyone sane would do with that tech is have a teleport system to access their bases of operation quickly in emergency situations.

 

PVP isnt enough of an draw to the general population to justify taking it away, shaving a few min off of travel times is a positive not a exploit. Go ahead and take it away and see how the base builders network and activity drops like a stone in the sea.

 

I mean if your going to kill a great Role play and social tool just because it may well make more of us consider moving on to private servers etc, and certainly wont help your cause to be the rebirth server so to speak.

 

See the advantage of this accidental feature, see how it blends so perfectly with all the effort youve put into expanding SG bases, and the work of base builders and SGs to expand the game world that this feature makes essential. Because the load times to access bases or travel around multiple zones is not fun, the travel in general for many is not fun. I myself love flying so I dont mind at all flying from mish to mish and across zones. However because fly is my go to TP I am often late to the mish in many teams and miss out on XP and drops because no one wants to waste their precious game time not playing and I never ask any to wait for me to arrive to start the fun.

 

 This so called exploit improves the social dynamic of the game, it improves the sg base aspect of the game. Without it why even play on a server with others and many cool sg bases its a pita to go visit and enjoy. Taking it away undermines one of the main bits of work you all have done with the expanded SG bases. MY SG base builder buddy has been making thematic entrances for our bases to make traveling between them seem logical and immersive. Having to go back to whatever sewer hole in the city to then go to another base makes such attention to detail pointless.

just stop

[Waypoint]

I'm for this suggestion. Like the GMs have said, it's an exploit. 

 

If someone is following you (to give you buffs/heals/whatever) and the eight other people attempting to kill you, and then you decide to hit the macro to instantly vanish, that's being a pretty shitty individual. You're teaching the person following you two things: not to heal/buff you and that as soon as those 8 people lose one target, they'll go after the next person... which will be them.

 

And if you are all about the PvE life (of which I'm both), get a better build or get some more inspirations if you're afraid of dying and using a cheap exploit.

 

On 8/26/2019 at 12:15 PM, Bentley Berkeley said:

However if I am jumped by a group, Im in a fair bit of trouble. That alone is bad pvp design.

No, it isn't. It isn't griefing or ganking at all. You most likely (knowingly) went into a PvP zone, most likely without using the search function to see if people are actually in the zone or not. If you did the search function and saw people in there, why bother going in? Just wait it out. I know most of the PvP zones except for Recluse's Victory are often dead. 

[HeroReborn]

6 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

I mean if your going to kill a great Role play and social tool just because it may well make more of us consider moving on to private servers etc, and certainly wont help your cause to be the rebirth server so to speak.

 

Taking your bat and ball somewhere else shouldn't be a threat the devs will care about.

 

I also doubt you'd find any other private server that would allow for the GM command being used by everyone. Homecoming with it's free prestige and base building is still going to serve you better than an I24 server which has the old live structures for base building.

 

[Megajoule]

Heck, if all you and your mates want to do is stand around in bases and chat, you don't even need your own server; Paragon Chat is thataway...

[Tahliah]

On 8/26/2019 at 12:56 PM, Leandro said:

Nobody's getting "punished" for using the command while it's unlocked, but it is not going to stay unlocked forever. All the arguments above keep pretending that this isn't a GM-only command that accidentally got exposed; if /mapmove was accidentally made available to all players tomorrow, the arguments on both sides would be the exact same, and the end result would not change: it's a GM-only command, not meant for player use; it being available to players is not intended and will be fixed eventually.

 

Mind you, just locking away the command everywhere is easy and could have been done already. However, I recognize that using it to hop inbetween bases once you're in one doesn't hurt anything, and that the existing Base Teleporter powers have very long recharge and seem to be affected by an isssue that makes them interrupt easily. This requires time from the powers dev (who's busy finishing the Snipes/Assault changes) and the code dev (who's busy fixing problems with the 64-bit migration). It's not a priority. Enjoy it while it lasts.

 

This makes perfect sense to me, and I am SO HAPPY at the implication that the existing Base TP powers will be tweaked (hopefully to address the downtime, if not the interrupt too much since it's necessary to have some interrupt on it to avoid people using it to avoid dying in missions--personally, I'd kick anyone on my team who did that, but I haven't seen it happen yet. I don't PVP, so can't speak to that.). 

 

In the meantime, I'll definitely enjoy it while it lasts!  I have some of my favorite forum sgs on macro, too, so I'll be loving my easy visits to them while I can, too.  Remembering all those base codes is not something my brain does well, so maybe I'll make a handy list of my absolute faves (or just keep the macros for easy reference at the base portals on the map).  Sorry, thinking out loud here. 

 

tl;dr:  Thanks for not immediately disabling it, Leandro!  And especially thanks for working on fixes for the existing Base TP powers, which don't seem like they need a downtime at all (we all have access to all the porters for our base now, so there's no unfair advantage to the "big" sgs like back on live. Unless I'm missing something?)

[SlimPickens]

What a shame that one of the best QoL features on the homecoming server turns out to be an exploit.

 

I can see the issue with players abusing it in pvp or MO runs which is not intended (or cool) but from a daily convenience and making the game even more enjoyable to play standpoint, its a really great feature, and hopefully the solution can involve a compromise of keeping the good, and removing the bad aspects of using it.

[Giovanni Valia]

I know this thread is getting a bit old (last post in Sept.). However, I would like to know what the current plans are for base pass-codes in PvP zones. As someone who does PvP on Indomitable occasionally, I can say that there are MANY people who abuse the base pass-code tp to escape death. For me and many others who do PvP it is disheartening that this exploit has still not been fixed. The PvP experience is really diminished when people can easily cheat at anytime.

 

 

[VileTerror]

Judging by history repeating itself; we won't know anything until something is posted to Pineapple.

[Matsiyan]

It would be great to still have the ability to macro the TP-to-base power with a base code rather than having to type in the base code every time, even with interupt time and cooldown. It is a real boon to socializing with other bases.

[Matsiyan]

Earlier there was a lot of discussion about PVP. I don't enjoy PVP but I agree that there is no reason to make it any worse for the small PVP community. But I was intrigued by the idea of using the PVP zones for PVE. Would it be possible to create "Echo:" zones with/without the PVP flag so that PVP could continue in one and PVE could be used/built up in the other? 

[srmalloy]

On 1/25/2020 at 10:55 AM, Giovanni Valia said:

As someone who does PvP on Indomitable occasionally, I can say that there are MANY people who abuse the base pass-code tp to escape death. For me and many others who do PvP it is disheartening that this exploit has still not been fixed. The PvP experience is really diminished when people can easily cheat at anytime.

To contribute to the necro-ing of the thread, I still think that the easiest long-term solution to the enterbasefrompasscode issue is to hook it into the same check that drives movement suppression -- when the game decides that you're in combat, the enterbasefrompasscode function is suppressed. This would allow its use everywhere in the game until the character attacks or is attacked; once combat starts, you're stuck, thereby preventing them from using it to skip out on an imminent defeat. If you can zip far enough away for the in-combat check to expire, then you can use it again, but you have to get away first.