Travel Booster Pack

Would anyone be interested in a Booster Pack made specifically with travel powers in mind?

Flight:

Energy/Elemental Wings: only appear when Fly or Hover are activated. They will have both an activation and deactivation animation as well as normal flight animations. They will be color tintable.

Fledgling Flier: Not very confident or good at it. Flails around in the air a lot, little dips and lifts and occassional spins. Flight speed is not affected by any of this, but you won't look too pretty using it. Think Greatest America Hero.

Ride 'Em Cowboy: various things to fly upon. Rather than flying yourself, you can stand on a flying carpet, ride a broom, etc. Nothing too taxing graphically... so no pegasus... object also vanishes upon flight/hover being toggled off.

Super Jump:

Spring into Action: giant cartoon springs out of the bottoms of your shoes or a nuclear powered pogo stick come to mind for this. All items hidden when Super Jump not toggled. Not available for Combat Jump.

Impact Craters: Temporary impact craters appear wherever you land while using Super Jump (not combat jump). These craters are graphical overlays only and do not actually affect the environment. They disappear after a very short period of time.

Follow the Bouncing Hero: Since we have trail auras with the new Steampunk pack, how about trail auras for travel powers? Super Jump causes character to leave a trail of color, smoke, energy, etc behind them in an arc from their jumping. The trail fades approximately 1 1/2 arcs behind. And we would definitely have to have Rainbow as one of the options with this one.

Super Speed:

Stanley Cup Hopeful: Instead of running the speedster moves like a speed skater. For effect the emote creates a "sheet" of energy, ice, tintable flooring under the character as they go to make it look as though they are creating a frictionless plane beneath them. The plane disappears soon after the player passes.

That's Cheating!: Rocket powered roller skates, hover skates, skateboards, etc. Same animation as the speed skating one above but with apparatus on their feet.

Along for the Ride: While the player moves at super speed and is tethered to the ground, they're not actually running. Energy surrounds their feet, or some small robotic/magical effect does all the work. The character simply stands there, arms crossed and relaxed, as they zoom along at above the posted speed limit.

Teleport:

Incoming Wormhole: Mechanical or Magical ring hovering in midair around the character is what moves them. (For visual reference think miniature StarGate) The ring appears first then the character when arriving. The character vanishes first then ring when departing.

Scotty We Need to Discuss Your Aim: Instead of a bampf cloud of smoke you disappear/reappear in a sparkling shimmer with neat soft sound pitches.

Little Help From My Friends: Creatures aid in your transport. Imps cluster on your shoulders, tentacles emerge from some hideous pocket dimension, microbots latch on, etc. They grab you and yank you through a series of dimensional rifts towards your final destination.

In addition to the emotes there would likely be a few travel-inspired costume pieces including but not limited to High Tech Footwear, Animated Footwear, "I <3 Paragon" tourist t-shirts, Bermuda shirts and shorts, etc.

Finally, (and here I admit I'm pushing it a little), the booster pack would give you a second option for each of the travel sets' final tier power. You still have to spend a power slot on it but it gives you another option with which to play.

Flight: Afterburner - Toggling on Afterburner while Fly is toggled will effectively double your flight speed at the cost of both maneuverability and endurance. The endurance cost of Afterburner is high and can not be lowered via enhancements. Once toggled the character will be unable to turn while flying. They fly in a straight line at high speeds until they either turn Afterburner off, hit an object (building, war wall, etc) which toggles the power off or run out of endurance. This power takes a long time to recharge between uses.

Super Jump: Ground Pound - While in mid air using either Super Jump or Combat Jump, the player can click Ground Pound which completely halts all further forward progress and plummets the character to the ground directly beneath them. Impact crater graphics appear. Enemies take five times the damage the character takes from falling in PBAoE pattern with a high chance of stunning enemies. Ground Pound has a moderate recharge time (similar to other PBAoE stun powers)

Super Speed: Dash and Lash - Target opponent within melee range. Character runs around and around target with rope, wrapping them up quite snuggly. Hold attack with no damage. If the ropes around the enemy are too much of a challenge graphically then same move but the victim is left dizzy and stunned from the spinning until they can recover.

Teleport: Beacon Teleport - This is a two part teleport power. Let's say the player arrives in Skyway City via train and needs to go get a distant badge. At the train depot they click Beacon Teleport which activates an animation similar to placing a mine and can leave the same sort of mine graphic as the Devices power. The player goes off and collects their badge then keys Beacon Teleport again. This time the power simply brings them back to the location of the first click. The beacon is destroyed by this process. Very long recharge time. The Beacon Teleport will work across zones and in any way the Mission Teleporter power would work. The beacon will be lost if the character logs out and can not be used by a dead/defeated character.

Would anyone buy a pack like this?

Interesting, I'd have the Teleport beacon as a toggle tbh, upon detoggling you zap back to the target beacon's /loc. (Would recommend zone limited range tho.)

I don't have a problem with something like this as long as it only supplements or adds stylistic features to existing travel powers you have already selected through leveling up.

I would have a problem if this allowed users to buy travel powers that granted them an unfair advantage over players who did not buy the booster pack. (Which if I'm reading this correctly, it does not.) I'm still not sure whether Ninja Run for example falls into this latter category.

me likes.

beacon: I would restrict this to in-zone only. once you leave the zone your beacon power resets.

+1 on the toggle idea too, as long as being stunned etc doesnt accidentally knock off the toggle and zap you back And as long as being defeated doesnt count as the toggle being tripped. How would that work with rez? would the beacon still be there? Would the power still be toggled on? Is the beacon only cleared when you go to a hospital?

Sj: Ground Pound. not sure about this. Fly (or hover) up, switch to SJ (or CJ) and hit ground pound. You can drop a toon to 1HP from a high enough point. thats a *lot* of damage to multiply by 5 and apply as an AoE.

Graphics for crater could use the Ground stomp spiderweb effect ?

I'd also like to see alternate animations for the skates etc so multiple origins could benefit from them and stay "in character". A magic baseed toon on rocket skates would be funny but not very consistent imho

beacon: click and it enables a second power icon that stays ready until activated.

that would get around the toggle issue but probably would help with defeat/rez concerns unless there was a "bit" set to say which one was active that only cleared when clicked or go to hospital/base is clicked or the zone is left.

I have no idea how many of these ideas are possible, but I like nearly all of them.

The Teleport Beacon would be tough tech-wise to implement, I think. In any case, I think it should be zone-restricted, lest it be slapped with a recharge on part with Mission Teleporter. An alternative to this idea that might be easier to implement is a "Join Teammate" type power, which would work as a reverse "Recall Friend": you would teleport to a teammate's location on the same map. Doesn't do much good solo, but just another idea to throw out there.

LOVE the Afterburner idea, except I am inclined to give it a timer, kind of like a phase power. So you can have it toggled as long as you wish, even while stationary, but it only gives you a set amount of super-speed-flight time, after which you return to regular flight speed for another set amount of time. After the down time, if the power is still toggled, your speed will be boosted again. I agree, the endurance cost should be draining. Then tag (say) a 1-minute recharge on it (ignoring enhancements), to keep it from being abused.

As for the rest of the variations on the travel powers, how would you make these happen? Would they all act like fly poses where, once you are in forward motion, you activate an emote by some means which starts you ice skating or rainbow jumping, etc.? Or would this be like Prestige Power sprints, where you have multiple powers, all of which affect the player the same way, but have different visual effects?

The only objection I would have would be to travel power customisation in a booster pack when, by right, they should be free first and THEN new versions added as themed boosters.

That is all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

/e signed.

I would have my credit card out for this so fast, my wallet might catch fire.

I'd be all for a travel customization pack.

I wouldn't complain about free but that would probably mean it would be unlockable [which is apparently our only other option these days] via some stupidly high-grind merit or trial requirements nonsense, so yeah I'd pay for it.

The only real problem I think you'd run into would be with the Teleport customizations. You've got some really cool ideas there, but could they be animated fast enough to keep a TP-chain going without looking stupid? I'm not sure, but I have enough faith in the art dept to say, probably.

And I do WANT my elemental wings

I love the idea, I would add a bit to it though. I have always wanted higher teirs of travel powers. They would require that the toons have the appropriate travel power first to work with of course.

Map Travel: Grants the toon the ability to open the map, click on a spot on the map not covered by the fog of war, and instantly run/jump/fly/teleport there.

Zone Travel: Grants the toon the ability to, with only one one screen transition, run/jump/fly/teleport to any zone known to that toon.

I had always figured it would be a better vet reward, but as part of a travel themed booster pack it would serve just as well, if not even better!

It would be nice if there were actually more options for movement and power travels!

I support this idea, having wanted energy/fire/ice/whatever wings since they put wings in the game.

Only thing I'd point out, though - the afterburner power would do precisely nothing. Flight as it is already hits the speed cap without any enhancements at all. (Go ingame and check this, if you don't believe me) So the power would have to suspend the cap while it's on, or it'd be useless. That or they could simply make the cap higher.

On a similar subject I would point out a similar (in intention, anyway) power that already exists - the peacebringer's Quantum Flight. It's more or less what you suggested, a flight power that goes way faster than ordinary flight. Or would, if it didn't also run into the same issue with the flight speed cap I mentioned above. Checking it in Mids, the uncapped speed of it is 171 mph, or around three times the current flight cap. But since it obeys the cap, it goes no faster than normal flight. Which is kind of stupid, in my opinion.