TP to contact OR cell on first completed mission

[jordan_yen]

I'm really trying to utilize all the variety of contacts in the city, but it's sucks hard when they send you on stupid introduction missions and they're at the bleeding ass end of the map. I had that skyway contact all at the top and she sent me to Jim Tremblor and then Bloody Bay Liasion. Then I got someone in IP and figured I'd give it a go, but she's at the far south and sent me to Striga and NOW siren's call. It's the worst!

Just like mission TP, could we get some kind of contact TP? It would be really helpful for interesting travel possibilities too.

[Joshex]

the original paragon devs were adverse to this idea, they feared that it'd essentially have players ignore large swaths of the game, miss events and exploration badges and clique into groups of players who don't know anything about the gameworld and essentially treat atlas park as a queueing zone for outside content, then having these same players complain and leave online reviews saying how much the game lacks content compared to their favourite MOBA.

in the end we did get [Mission Transporter] temporary power which is the hypothetical inverse of what you suggest, but it came with a long recharge.

I can see a similar thing being done here, and not limited to the first mission. remember some missions cannot be handed in by cell, "you should talk to this contact in person" such as when handing in items or discussing sensitive info.

However, there is "The Contact finder" and you can usually TP-to-contact through that, but it doesn't include all contacts especially some legacy contacts are excluded.

but for other contacts I could see a 120 minute recharge temp power [TP to contact] which will complete when you have a set mission (red icon in navigation) or a mission that was recently set and completed and has yet to be handed in.

it needs to be a set mission otherwise the game wont be able to determine which mission's contact you need to go to, and would fail.

zones/areas with TP suppression will need to cause it to fail.

It'll also need to fail if your contact is not in a place you can reach due to alignment or other conditions. that way you can't be a hero, complete a L20 hero contact mission, turn off XP and switch to villain and select a completed hero contact mission and TP to contact. Other conditions would be where the contact is dead/in-jail/kidnapped or a cellphone-only-contact.

rather than just granting everyone a permanent temp power, I suggest having them drop as recipies, craftable temp powers with +1 use per craft upto like 30 uses. tradeable/sellable. maybe common or uncommon, and available in places like AE for like 120 tickets, or at merit vendors for like 2 merits.

[Redlynne]

I'm really trying to utilize all the variety of contacts in the city, but it's sucks hard when they send you on stupid introduction missions and they're at the bleeding ass end of the map.

Most of the zones in Paragon City were crafted pre-2004.
Most of the zones in the Rogue Isles were crafted pre-2007.

For reference, the first iPhones went on sale at the end of July, 2007 ... kicking off the cell phone/pocket computer internet terminal world that we live in today. Before the iPhone, it was quite common for people to NOT HAVE portable phones (let alone ones with computer-like features).

So all of the breadcrumb missions and introductions to new contacts were done in an era that was before the portable telecommunications+internet world that we've come to take for granted that has been built out since then. That's why so much of the legacy content feels like a throwback to an earlier era ... because it is.

Originally, you didn't get cell phone access to contacts until reaching the 3rd stage of their reputation meters. Once the iPhone revolutionized portable communications, the Devs revised that parameter such that contacts would give you their phone numbers upon reaching the 2nd stage of their reputation meters that you can see in the contact window listing them all.

Additionally, you couldn't take any Pool powers (at all) until Level 6 ... and Travel Powers (Fly, Superleap, Superspeed, Teleport) were unavailable until Level 14 (when almost EVERYONE took their first travel power!).

There were even 2 separate tram lines at the PTA (green and yellow) and they didn't link up to one another, so if you needed to switch tram lines you either had to run N/S through Steel Canyon or Skyway City in order to reach the "other" tram line.

The design intention was to make PCs move through the world, block by city block, zone by zone, in order to impart a sense of Size and Scale to the environment. The longer it takes a character to travel through the world, the "bigger" the world is (go figure...).

When you can just click a button and "skip" the world COMPLETELY to reach your destination ... the world becomes VERY VERY SMALL.

Kind of like how AE Babies™ who level from 1-50 at AE in Atlas can believe that there are no other zones besides Atlas, because they've never needed to leave Atlas at all before "beating the game" by getting to Level 50 in 1 day. They "didn't go anywhere" to the game world is "tiny" for them.



What you're suggesting with a TP to Contact power is to enable and reward the mentality that Instant Gratification Isn't Fast Enough. That's because the less you need to "travel" in game, the "smaller" the world you experience while playing the game becomes (see: never leave the AE building because there's nowhere else you need to go).

You're basically devaluing immersion in favor of convenience so as to satisfy impatience.
To put it politely, that's a Bad Deal™ for the overall health of an online game that wants to foster a sense of community and camaraderie. Skipping past the intervening distance via direct teleport to destination also means never having any chance encounters along the way ... which happens a lot more often as a server increases in population (because there's more people playing concurrently). There's no navigation knowledge/skill required, you just click a power and BAMPF! ... you're there.

That kind of fast travel tends to undermine the "health" of a server's community in a lot subtle and incremental ways, partly by leaving so much of its available territory VACANT most of the time, engendering a feeling of contempt for any space you have to actually travel through (not to mention the hassles of doing so). You then promote a feeling of entitlement in your Players, such that they shouldn't HAVE TO move through the game world at all ... at which point immersion collapses and you might as well be just staying in the lobby of AE all the time, never leaving the building (let alone the zone).

[Joshex]

I'm really trying to utilize all the variety of contacts in the city, but it's sucks hard when they send you on stupid introduction missions and they're at the bleeding ass end of the map.

Most of the zones in Paragon City were crafted pre-2004.
Most of the zones in the Rogue Isles were crafted pre-2007.

For reference, the first iPhones went on sale at the end of July, 2007 ... kicking off the cell phone/pocket computer internet terminal world that we live in today. Before the iPhone, it was quite common for people to NOT HAVE portable phones (let alone ones with computer-like features).

So all of the breadcrumb missions and introductions to new contacts were done in an era that was before the portable telecommunications+internet world that we've come to take for granted that has been built out since then. That's why so much of the legacy content feels like a throwback to an earlier era ... because it is.

Originally, you didn't get cell phone access to contacts until reaching the 3rd stage of their reputation meters. Once the iPhone revolutionized portable communications, the Devs revised that parameter such that contacts would give you their phone numbers upon reaching the 2nd stage of their reputation meters that you can see in the contact window listing them all.

Additionally, you couldn't take any Pool powers (at all) until Level 6 ... and Travel Powers (Fly, Superleap, Superspeed, Teleport) were unavailable until Level 14 (when almost EVERYONE took their first travel power!).

There were even 2 separate tram lines at the PTA (green and yellow) and they didn't link up to one another, so if you needed to switch tram lines you either had to run N/S through Steel Canyon or Skyway City in order to reach the "other" tram line.

The design intention was to make PCs move through the world, block by city block, zone by zone, in order to impart a sense of Size and Scale to the environment. The longer it takes a character to travel through the world, the "bigger" the world is (go figure...).

When you can just click a button and "skip" the world COMPLETELY to reach your destination ... the world becomes VERY VERY SMALL.

Kind of like how AE Babies™ who level from 1-50 at AE in Atlas can believe that there are no other zones besides Atlas, because they've never needed to leave Atlas at all before "beating the game" by getting to Level 50 in 1 day. They "didn't go anywhere" to the game world is "tiny" for them.



What you're suggesting with a TP to Contact power is to enable and reward the mentality that Instant Gratification Isn't Fast Enough. That's because the less you need to "travel" in game, the "smaller" the world you experience while playing the game becomes (see: never leave the AE building because there's nowhere else you need to go).

You're basically devaluing immersion in favor of convenience so as to satisfy impatience.
To put it politely, that's a Bad Deal™ for the overall health of an online game that wants to foster a sense of community and camaraderie. Skipping past the intervening distance via direct teleport to destination also means never having any chance encounters along the way ... which happens a lot more often as a server increases in population (because there's more people playing concurrently). There's no navigation knowledge/skill required, you just click a power and BAMPF! ... you're there.

That kind of fast travel tends to undermine the "health" of a server's community in a lot subtle and incremental ways, partly by leaving so much of its available territory VACANT most of the time, engendering a feeling of contempt for any space you have to actually travel through (not to mention the hassles of doing so). You then promote a feeling of entitlement in your Players, such that they shouldn't HAVE TO move through the game world at all ... at which point immersion collapses and you might as well be just staying in the lobby of AE all the time, never leaving the building (let alone the zone).

hmm, perhaps a 120 minute recharge is not enough. mission transporter is 120 minutes because it's roughly double the average mission complete time at mid levels. but TP to contact is only ever needed once or twice an arc. some arcs take a good week at casual playspeeds. perhaps the TP to contact power should be much rarer and have a whole week long recharge.

max 2 uses
a rare [orange con] temp power recipe drop.
168 hour recharge
recipe drops at level 35+
craftable at any level.
npc shop value: 400,000 inf

or do it like the mission auto-complete: 2 per week max "this power is available twice per week" that way it's available for TFs/SFs, but I still think it should be a rare recipe.


Why do I stick with the recipe idea? because it'll force players to leave atlas and at least go to a uni somewhere and learn crafting. no one can craft it for you. we should also give it some fairly hard to find salvage which potentially runs out from time to time. I remember back a few years ago some low level arcane salvage was always sold out due to how common it was for other things. this forced me to sit around taking down CoT to get runebound armor. "and that one mission in the midnighter arc said all their gear TPs away shortly after they are defeated. pff! they still drop stuff like everyone else"

why 400k inf in npc shops for it? it's 4 times as valuable as white con recipes at Lv 50, this is to make it even rarer to find it's way on the market, as people are liklier to sell it to shop. that or the listing price on WW will be millions each.

Rare will require one or 2 rare salvage to craft, meaning 2 to 8 million to buy the salvage. this is to make it not cheap.

so these are Ideas. it's nice to have to use once in a while, but shouldn't be a crutch..