let's remove -acc from group fly?
Could someone refresh my memory as to why we needed -Acc in Group Fly?
I was hoping to use it on my Bots MM, as it would look cool to sweep in, raining pewpewpew lasery death down upon my foes.....so long as they hit.
I've changed the title to make this thread more appealing to the masses.
This power is not, nor was it ever a good idea. Fly doesn't need some poor excuse of a Group version of itself along with it. Teleport? Maybe, since it'll be nice and unique, but not Fly. Fly could use... Say... A PBAoE knockdown.

I have seen three kinds of characters take Group Fly. In ascending order of number of players I've seen with it:
#3: Masterminds who want to be able to reliably get their henchmen to high or out-of-the-way locations, or want to see their robots' foot-jets.
#2: Newbies who didn't know it had a -acc penalty.
#1: Griefers. There aren't a lot of ways to grief in CoH, but dang if people aren't giving it their best shot.
I'm a fourth category.
I've got Group Fly on three characters and planned for more (counting one PB with Energy Flight).
I dual box a lot, and set up my group of characters so that those on one account have either Recall Friend, Group Fly or Kinetics, ie have some means of ferrying the characters on the other account around.
The characters on Account 2 dont always have travel powers because they always have a partner who can get help them out.
If I'm teaming with anyone else I make well sure its out of my tray before we enter a mission.
I would heartily second the original suggestion and extend it.
- Lose the accuracy penalty.
- Normalise everyone's fly speeds within the bubble to be the same based only on enhancements slotted by the owner of Group Fly.
This would change it from broken to one of those cool flavour powers you could grab for concept, situational utility or just fun.
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I've changed the title to make this thread more appealing to the masses.
This power is not, nor was it ever a good idea. Fly doesn't need some poor excuse of a Group version of itself along with it. Teleport? Maybe, since it'll be nice and unique, but not Fly. Fly could use... Say... A PBAoE knockdown.
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Um, no.
YOU may not have found a use for it, but others certainly have - from "fluff" (lowbie tours of places) and "taxi" services where there are no taxibots to MMs hauling their pets around (so they don't start dying as they lag behind and pick fights with stuff.)
I wouldn't argue with having a means to refuse it - since when *poorly* used it can interfere (I yelled at an SG mate a few times for having it on a MM... and catching my stalker in the "bubble" while I was trying to AS a boss, thus interrupting me, or making it impossible for other characters to use "must be on the ground to activate" type powers) but "remove?" No, thanks.
(And for the OP, to me the -acc makes sense, really - you're being moved around *not* under your own power. Trying to compensate for that? -acc penalty.)
Group fly never had the potential to be the coolest power in the game, nor will it ever have that. Even aside from the to-hit penalty, the power is slow, people are prone to falling out of it, it has a VERY large radius and a VERY long duration, making getting out of it difficult, and it lifts you off the ground, meaning any powers that require you to be on the ground become instantly unusable. Like, say, half of Stone Melee, or Stone Armour, or even Earth Control, a couple of powers in Super Strength and so on.
I wouldn't go as far as to say "Remove it!" but something ought to be done to make it suck less as a general concept before we start balancing it on power numbers.
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Steps to make GFly not suck [censored]:
1) Make the people affected by GFly move at the same speed as the caster
2) Increase the range (dramatically)
3) Add an accept prompt (after all, some powers don't work when you're in the air)
4) Alternatively, make it a single target/PBAoE buff, rather than a toggle
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
A large-scale declinable buff actually sounds like a good solution to the problem. No moving in and out of range, no falling behind, and you only have to refuse it once. It might take away from the flavour of the power, but I'd take that over being uprooted and not being able to use... Well, Rooted
As for speed, I believe the problem was that "customers" of Group Flight are affected only by the fly speed buff provided by the power (and what buffs they may have, themselves) whereas the "host" of Group Flight is affected by the buff from the power AND whatever other fly speed buffs he may have which do NOT filter down through Group Flight into the rest of the people, so the host is often faster than his customers and leaves them behind. For instance, if the Group Flight Host activates his GvE Jump Pack, he'll fly way ahead of his customers and they will drop out of the sky.
How that can be solved, I'm not really sure.
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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How that can be solved, I'm not really sure.
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Powerwise, they may be able to mark it "unable to be buffed."
Use-wise, the Group Fly user activates the power, and has someone else lead the group wherever they're going, with everyone keeping the leader on follow.
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Could someone refresh my memory as to why we needed -Acc in Group Fly?
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Originally, both fly and group fly have -acc. I think the idea is that both powers are intended for traveling only. And maybe the ability to fight in the air with such agility is not a fair fight.
Later, the dev found that players don't like the -acc penalty. So, they changed the penalty from -acc to suppressed movement for fly(there was also an issue with player "jousting" using superspeed at that time). So, if a player don't like to change between hover and fly, but don't mind the endurance usage and a few seconds of suppressed movement, the player can fly all the time. I guess few people use group fly in combat, so the power is kept as it is.
I'm not asking for the devs to devote a lot to this, let's just remove the -acc penalty and we can worry about the rest later. Even if it's only useful to pet classes while solo'ing that's pretty good.
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I'm a fourth category.
I've got Group Fly on three characters and planned for more (counting one PB with Energy Flight).
I dual box a lot, and set up my group of characters so that those on one account have either Recall Friend, Group Fly or Kinetics, ie have some means of ferrying the characters on the other account around.
The characters on Account 2 dont always have travel powers because they always have a partner who can get help them out.
If I'm teaming with anyone else I make well sure its out of my tray before we enter a mission.
I would heartily second the original suggestion and extend it.
- Lose the accuracy penalty.
- Normalise everyone's fly speeds within the bubble to be the same based only on enhancements slotted by the owner of Group Fly.
This would change it from broken to one of those cool flavour powers you could grab for concept, situational utility or just fun.
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I'm in a fifth category; I take it for concept. One of the toons that I have it on is a 10 year old girl who woke up one morning having memories that weren't hers; remembering a thousand summers of adventure, a pirate captain with a hook that hates her, and the knowledge of how to use a golden sword and dagger that appeared on her nightstand. She took the name Pan's Legacy because she doesn't know how she gained his powers of flight and his memories, but she now carries his legacy to never grow up and always have fun. She's a master of flight, both heavily slotting Hover to perma-hover in combat, flying itself, and Group Fly.
I'm also using the Kheldian versions on my Human-only Peacebringer. He's also a master of flying, so he's taking each and every fly power they get. His sister is a Warshade who's a master of porting, so she naturally took every teleport-like power WS's get.
I sit in my zen of not being able to do anything right while simultaniously not being able to do anything wrong. Om. -CuppaJo
It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
Could have potentially been one of the coolest powers in the game, completely shunned due to this kind of silly side effect.
I say time to get rid of it!