For I24: Make Taking Group Fly and Team TP Workable Please!


Aggelakis

 

Posted

Short story: Remove or reduce the prerequisites for Group Fly and Team TP so that they can be taken together and thus 'fix' each other's bugs.

The Problem: Both Group Fly and Team TP lose their passengers when used individually. Even after attempts for fix Team TP years ago (which didn't work) and the attempt two years ago to make Group Fly work by speeding up the fly speed of the passengers (which didn't work because of pathing issues); both powers still are buggy to the point of uselessness for travel powers. (I'll admit they have some usefulness in a mission... but that's very limited, and their original intent was supposed to be travel powers, not combat.)

The Fix
: Use them together! When Group Fly is running and you use Team TP, the passengers don't drop like rocks precisely because of Group Fly preventing that. And since you're not flying, then pathing isn't an issue causing passengers to lag out of the flight bubble.

The Difficulty of The Fix: Right now, to use both Group Fly and Team Teleport, a player has to take six powers because both have prerequisites of two powers from their pools. Also, with Group Fly, having either Hover or Fly is a bit redundant. That's a huge burden to bear just to get around bugged powers which can probably never be truly fixed.

Fixing the Difficulty of the The Fix: The probable cause for not removing their prerequisites is the longstanding tradition of prerequisites being... well, just *being.* Actually, the game-design decision to make power pools have tiers that you have to climb -- just like the Primary and Secondary power sets -- is a decision whose worth is debatable... and increasingly disposable now that Fly and Teleport have been shedding their prerequisites and those and other powers have had their level prerequisites lowered. This is a step in the right direction and should be applied to Group Fly and Team TP in the same way it was applied to Fly and TP.

The other perceived reluctance to loosen the prerequisites is the fear of giving away powerful Tier 4 powers! And to that, I show you Exhibit A: Whirlwind. Many Tier 4 Pool Powers are as underwhelming as some are overwhelming. It's not very balanced... which is an indictment of bad power design. Besides, Group Fly and Team Teleport have been nearly pre-gimped because of the supposed benefit of "everyone on the team can fly/tp!!!!!1!1". First, the powers aren't that beneficial when your teammates scream for you to shut it off and Null the Gull has to be introduced so that people can avoid such *Great Power!* And second, the powers are gimped because they use up much, much more Endurance than Fly and TP. And they're also slower/shorter-ranged. So, they're already self-gimped.

In Summary: And so, to fix two powers that can't be fixed Dev-side and are needlessly burdensome to fix Player-side with all those prerequisites, the solution is to do away with the prerequisites so that players can easily fix the issue by taking both powers together. Since this is the Fix All the Bugs Issue and the Power Pools Issue... now's the time to make it happen!

Please!


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Posted

I don't, frankly, see how tying two pool powers from totally different pools together will help. Group Fly has other issues, and Team TP... well, as a *combat* group teleport instead of a "travel power," it works fine. People learn to stick together so everyone can melt the next group at once.

What I want out of Team Teleport is a little wider radius, if anything. Group Fly, for how I use it, is fairly useless. Having a slightly wider radius (and having people arrive in the same order/relative location as where you left) would be fine.


 

Posted

Much 'easier' solution; have each power grant it's own power.

To clarify; make Group Fly a click that auto-casts on pets and gives Players a pop-up asking them if they want to be granted flight. This, like shield buffs, would be cancel-able to prevent unnecessary hassle for people who had Null always accept it or needed to use a ground-only power. Bingo. No more having to have stupid cohesion, everyone gets the benefit. Heck, it'd be even more useful in stuff like Hamidon (if anyone still runs that...)

Team Teleport would, ideally, grant everyone effected in the radius a temporary teleport power. Like how the 'flying disk' Frisbee power 'gives' the other player a power, only this one has infinite uses on a timer instead.

Sounds like much less hassle to me.


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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
Like how the 'flying disk' Frisbee power 'gives' the other player a power, only this one has infinite uses on a timer instead.
That may solve the issues that teams have actually, have the power popup in the temp power tray, so the default is nothing happens but if you want to use it click on it. That's even better than having a prompt window popup in the middle of the screen imo.

No need to change the powers and no need to put a timer up, people will know that these are temporary powers.


 

Posted

I wish they would change Group TP into Summon Teammates (i.e. Assemble the team) with a much lower (as in 3-5 min.) recharge.

Group Fly just needs to be a click like Inertial reduction. Anyone who gets hit with it, gets two minutes of Flight.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
I wish they would change Group TP into Summon Teammates (i.e. Assemble the team) with a much lower (as in 3-5 min.) recharge.
That would utterly gut most of the use it has, IMHO. It'd be an immediate respec out for the characters I have that use it.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
I don't, frankly, see how tying two pool powers from totally different pools together will help. Group Fly has other issues, and Team TP... well, as a *combat* group teleport instead of a "travel power," it works fine.
This solution is intended mainly for pet-class toons, though it would work for teammates. I have taken both together for my MM and it works perfectly well together... like taking Hover with TP for an individual. Unfortunately, I respecked out of it because the build became too tight to include the 4 other pool powers I was forced to take.


As for changing how they work: Cottage rule. Also, as we've seen, Power Pools don't have to limited to 4 powers, and consequently, don't have to be limited to 5. Suggestions of how to *change* the two powers can be dealt with by adding a new power to the pool.

As for buffing Group Fly or Team TP... sure. Their penalties for being "top tier" (he said, using the quotes sarcastically) are already too onerous. Not only does one have to take four other powers for this bug-fixing synergy, but then one has to slot both heavily for EndRedux and Team TP for Range.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
That would utterly gut most of the use it has, IMHO. It'd be an immediate respec out for the characters I have that use it.
Serious question, I know that the internet doesn't always properly convey tone, so I want you to know that I am genuinely curious.
Do you purposefully take powers/powersets that are weaker or have minimal uses?


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
As for changing how they work: Cottage rule.
Changing Group TP into a lower recharge Assemble the Team is not a Cottage Rule violation. Both before and after the power teleports your team. This would be much less of a stretch than Energize was.

While I think there's a place for powers that are situational or of marginal use, sometimes a power is just so poorly accepted by the playerbase that replacing it with something better is appropriate. As for the possibility of there being 6 powers in the pool, yes conceptually that's correct, but in practice that creates the expectation that every pool will have six powers.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
Serious question, I know that the internet doesn't always properly convey tone, so I want you to know that I am genuinely curious.
Do you purposefully take powers/powersets that are weaker or have minimal uses?
Excuse me?

I take the powersets and/or pool powers I find use for. I don't care about numbers or how popular they are.

Team Teleport, for instance, I'll use to drag a bunch of melee MM pets directly into battle (instead of having some decide to throw pebbles at the enemy, others run in,) or - well, for instance, some friends and I set up an all electric Sapper team. I use Team TP for us all to get there at once, all hit Short Circuit (which, en masse, makes for a lot of twitching...) etc.

Changing it to Assemble the Team completely eliminates those uses.

I, personally, don't care if you see it as "weaker" or find its use, for yourself, "minimal." Then again, I'm not playing a spreadsheet.

Also:
Quote:
Changing Group TP into a lower recharge Assemble the Team is not a Cottage Rule violation. Both before and after the power teleports your team. This would be much less of a stretch than Energize was.
you'd be wrong with this. Adding to Energize is far less of a stretch. If what you were proposing was done to conserve power (which is what turned into Energize,) you'd be granting someone *else* an endurance discount. Much less useful, I think you'd agree.

The problem is that the *means* of use is vastly different - yes, the power does related things, but the way you propose utterly eliminates the usefulness it has *now* for something we can get via a (or several) temp powers.


 

Posted

Group Fly was useful for PA droppers in old Hami (and yes, people do still run hamis, Justice has at least 3 weekly Hamis). I like the idea of making it like inertial reduction, a click and everyone gets two minutes of fly, barring that, I would like the fly bubble to a little more recognizable, maybe not as transparent? I guess we can do something like with I24 though.

Never had Team TP, I always thought it was like assemble the team.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
I, personally, don't care if you see it as "weaker" or find its use, for yourself, "minimal." Then again, I'm not playing a spreadsheet.
Again, I tried to present this in the most non-confrontational way I knew. It wasn't personal. But seriously Bill, you consistently seem to take powers that are regarded as not being very strong or particularly useful.

Of course, that's your choice. I was just wondering if you intentionally did so. I do actually sometimes take powers and powersets that are not the strongest. I do it on purpose. Lastly, you don't have to 'play a spreadsheet' to just plain understand that the game rewards killing lots of enemies quickly. I genuinely think that's a shame. I wish the game would find way to reward players for using powers like Team Teleport.

On that power. Sure, one AT (MMs) can find some use for the power. But it's not controversial to say that Team Teleport isn't well liked and not particularly useful to most characters. Heck, this whole thread is about changing it. Personally, if they could just add Assemble the team to the Teleport pool, great. But if it came to a choice, I don't think the Cottage Rule (which is followed too dogmatically IMO) should prevent the change from a power with objectively minimal uses from being changed. To many sets and powers are locked into mechanics that don't reflect the game that is actually played.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Profit View Post
Never had Team TP, I always thought it was like assemble the team.
It would find its way into a great many more builds if it were.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Profit
Never had Team TP, I always thought it was like assemble the team.
It would find its way into a great many more builds if it were.
You know what would be neat? If the team window could have a 'Select All' button and powers changed based on that. This would change Recall Friend into Recall Team when that button was selected.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
Again, I tried to present this in the most non-confrontational way I knew. It wasn't personal. But seriously Bill, you consistently seem to take powers that are regarded as not being very strong or particularly useful.
Then again, I think most of the forumites tend to be so wound up over "ZOMG I must have98723490328742 DPS and capped this and blah blah blah" that they miss the whole *game* part.

And then I see some of those same people complaining about how such and such is "unsoloable" or "too weak" - or, for instance "can't take down trapdoor" on their oh so uber IO builds... and I've done so fairly easily on SOs.


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Lastly, you don't have to 'play a spreadsheet' to just plain understand that the game rewards killing lots of enemies quickly.
And that's blindness on your part, to be blunt. *A* reward is geting a bunch of XP for killing enemies quickly. Does it really matter how fast I kill them or how many I kill? No. About the only time it does is on a timed kill-all mission... and then they dont' care if I'm running on x8 or x1.

Some of the reward, quite frankly, is getting costume parts unlocked. Or seeing how a certain storyarc goes. For me, part of the "reward" is seeing how differently content feels between different sets.

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I genuinely think that's a shame. I wish the game would find way to reward players for using powers like Team Teleport.
Why should the game provide what sounds like, by your definition, a numeric (XP/etc.) reward for using the power? I've found uses for the power. I don't care if other people are too blinded by whatever to even consider it.

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On that power. Sure, one AT (MMs) can find some use for the power. But it's not controversial to say that Team Teleport isn't well liked and not particularly useful to most characters.
Not useful? Say, trio of Scrapper, Brute and Kin, team TP into enemies, kin has power siphon/fulcrum shift queued, everyone shows up at once and is immediately buffed, damage-wise. Looks like more ATs potentially benefitting to me.

How many PBAOE powers are there? Holds, debuffs, stuns, enemy-targeted buffs? How useful would it be for them to be applied *on arrival* instead of everyone chasing over one after the other.

How would that not be "particularly useful" to more than just MMs?

Quote:
But if it came to a choice, I don't think the Cottage Rule (which is followed too dogmatically IMO) should prevent the change from a power with objectively minimal uses from being changed.
Do you remember the last time they tried just "changing the powers that arent' used much?" I don't know if you were paying attention to it at that point - when they were going to swap powers out of the PPPs. They were going to do things like (say) take my Dom's ranged AOE blast away and give me a (much less useful, but "powerful") copy of PFF.

The dev team was nearly lynched. You'll note this is the first time we had pools expanded to five powers....

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To many sets and powers are locked into mechanics that don't reflect the game that is actually played.
And this isn't one of them. You'd be making, with the "Just make it ATT" change, a useful power into an utterly useless one - why would anyone waste a power pick on it when they can get temp/vet/store powers that work the same way? (Basically, like phase shift - why, other than possibly an IO mule, take it when you get the same thing via Etherial Shift or the temp power from Warburg - two or three minutes patrolling and you have it.)


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
You know what would be neat? If the team window could have a 'Select All' button and powers changed based on that. This would change Recall Friend into Recall Team when that button was selected.
That, IMHO, would be a more acceptable way to accomplish adding ATT to the set - scale the END up to however many are TP'd, perhaps.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
Then again, I think most of the forumites tend to be so wound up over "ZOMG I must have98723490328742 DPS and capped this and blah blah blah" that they miss the whole *game* part.
Sorry, but that's just insulting someone because they disagree with you. I don't care about my personal DPS nor have I ever bothered to try and figure it out. I do care if I can complete missions, level my characters and complete the games challenges.

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And then I see some of those same people complaining about how such and such is "unsoloable" or "too weak" - or, for instance "can't take down trapdoor" on their oh so uber IO builds... and I've done so fairly easily on SOs.
You didn't see me say that considering that I spent most of Issue 19s beta proving that any combination could complete that arc on SOs.

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And that's blindness on your part, to be blunt. *A* reward is geting a bunch of XP for killing enemies quickly. Does it really matter how fast I kill them or how many I kill? No. About the only time it does is on a timed kill-all mission... and then they dont' care if I'm running on x8 or x1.
Then the basis for a great many buffs falls out. The main reasons for many of the positive changes is that the affected AT or powerset didn't earn rewards at the same rate as other ATs or powersets. Of course, the things you're talking about are rewards, but it's almost irrelevant to a balance discussion to say, "well anyone can do it." When it takes one combination 20 times as long as another one, that's a problem any way you slice it.

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Why should the game provide what sounds like, by your definition, a numeric (XP/etc.) reward for using the power? I've found uses for the power. I don't care if other people are too blinded by whatever to even consider it.
Well, then I disagree. No need to have hard feeling about it. We disagree on a lot of things.

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Not useful? Say, trio of Scrapper, Brute and Kin, team TP into enemies, kin has power siphon/fulcrum shift queued, everyone shows up at once and is immediately buffed, damage-wise. Looks like more ATs potentially benefitting to me.
They can run up and do the same thing? They really need to take three powers in the Teleport pool for that? OK.

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How many PBAOE powers are there? Holds, debuffs, stuns, enemy-targeted buffs? How useful would it be for them to be applied *on arrival* instead of everyone chasing over one after the other.
This isn't WoW. Our combat speeds are such in this game that gap closing is trivial. We don't need Team Teleport to do it. You're reaching.

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Do you remember the last time they tried just "changing the powers that arent' used much?" I don't know if you were paying attention to it at that point - when they were going to swap powers out of the PPPs. They were going to do things like (say) take my Dom's ranged AOE blast away and give me a (much less useful, but "powerful") copy of PFF.
Who's complaining about the ST taunt in Presence going away? Anyone? If they changed Team Teleport to an Assemble the Team clone and there was an outcry, I would agree with you. I doubt it would happen though.

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And this isn't one of them. You'd be making, with the "Just make it ATT" change, a useful power into an utterly useless one - why would anyone waste a power pick on it when they can get temp/vet/store powers that work the same way? (Basically, like phase shift - why, other than possibly an IO mule, take it when you get the same thing via Etherial Shift or the temp power from Warburg - two or three minutes patrolling and you have it.)
Are you really saying that something that people paid RL money for to get is 'utterly useless'. Yeah OK. That's not even worth arguing against.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
You know what would be neat? If the team window could have a 'Select All' button and powers changed based on that. This would change Recall Friend into Recall Team when that button was selected.
That would be neat.

Then we could still remove Team Teleport and put something else useful in its place!


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
When it takes one combination 20 times as long as another one, that's a problem any way you slice it.
So, say, my Earth/FF 'troller basically needs to be deleted because it's "a problem" it takes longer to complete a mission than a scrapper? No. Or longer than a Fire/Kin? No. It's a different playstyle. Period.

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This isn't WoW. Our combat speeds are such in this game that gap closing is trivial. We don't need Team Teleport to do it. You're reaching.
And you're dismissing out of hand. I don't care if you think "combat speeds make it trivial." I've run groups with that mechanic at its core. I'm not "reaching." I'm talking about one of *my* real, in-game uses.

But hey, feel free to completely ignore that because you don't like it. *shrug* Won't be the first time. (See also knockback - "It's completely useless!" "No, not to me, I use it this way, this way, this way, and just knockdown wouldn't help as much." "You're wrong, it's never useful!")

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Are you really saying that something that people paid RL money for to get is 'utterly useless'. Yeah OK. That's not even worth arguing against.
Please re-read the quote, because you have it wrong.


 

Posted

Can't you have Team Teleport do both?

IIRC, Assemble The Team still uses a targeting reticule, it's just a very short range one.

Make both parties happy and convert Team Teleport into ATT with the longer targeting range (and much, much shorter recharge). Now the power pulls all your allies on the map to your target location (provided they accept the prompt). It can still be used to jump into a fight, as Bill wants, and can also be used to summon your full team to you, as EG wants.


Or is there something else I missed?


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Posted

Group Fly stinks in its current state and is useless.

I stopped complaining about it and stopped trying to get it fixed.

Now you want both fixed ???!!!!

You are insane.

They don't fix old stuff that only a minimal amount of players use. What they do instead is drown that old stuff under new stuff hoping you forget about it. Sort of drinking a bottle of booze to drown your sorrows. They just keep supplying the booze ( aka new stuff ) in hopes you forget.

It works for a bit then you sober up and you ask about it again, just in time to get another bottle placed in front of you.

Just forget about her and move on. You can remember her the way things used to be back in the days. But those days are long gone. Take that new fly power and be happy.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by plainguy View Post
Group Fly stinks in its current state and is useless.

I stopped complaining about it and stopped trying to get it fixed.

Now you want both fixed ???!!!!

You are insane.

They don't fix old stuff that only a minimal amount of players use.
Actually, that is false.

The Devs have, on several occasions attempted to fix Group Fly and Team TP. The problem is that the fixes didn't work.

The speed of those affected by Group Fly was enhanced so they wouldn't drop out. However, the mechanics of following and pathing caused lag in following was then discovered to be the real culprit. Changing *that* would involve serious rewriting of deep gaming code.

The problem with Team TP is the lag that some players have with their computer or network. Just like some people take a lot longer to go through a door in the game, it takes some longer to appear where they're teleported to... which means they miss the next Team TP and drop out. Or even if they TP fast enough, the short duration Hover doesn't apply to them correctly and they drop. The Devs can't just program away network latency.

So, they did try, but came up against barriers that would require an excessive amount of time to fix... if it indeed could ever be fixed.

However, taking both powers together tends to make up for the bugs the other has.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
And that's blindness on your part, to be blunt. *A* reward is geting a bunch of XP for killing enemies quickly. Does it really matter how fast I kill them or how many I kill? No.
Actually that's EXACTLY what matters for any rewards-driven player...which is most gamers.

Time is the only meaningful currency in this type of game.
Characters that complete objectives quickly & efficiently are 'better' than ones that can't. The same logic applies to individual powers- ones that enable efficiency are popular, ones that don't aren't.

And I say this as someone with more than my share of oddball non-optimized alts that I enjoy playing.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
I do care if I can complete missions, level my characters and complete the games challenges.
Out of curiosity, what can you complete with ATT but can't complete with Team TP?

Nothing?

Then why are you arguing about it?


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