#Sooo is it just me, or do the portals kinda suck now?

45 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

humble solstice
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Just thought I'd pose this one to the class.

This could 1000% just be a knowledge/skill issue, but I feel like the current spread of portals is ... well, sparse. It definitely feels like they've been drastically nerfed, and when I do find one a lot of times I just wind up in someone's crosshairs (or worse, inside of a distortion). I don't really mind blipping into potential danger so much (that's just the way of the Radius, after all) but strictly in terms of getting from A to B I used to be able to zip all around the zone and it made repeat trips out doing missions at later security levels waaaaaay less tedious than it is now with all the cross-country I'm having to do.

All that said, I've just finished my first run and have definitely not spent a ton of time exploring every little corner of the Radius (yet), so again, this could be on me. People who have had more time to comb the zone, do you still find this to be the case? Are they just tucked away in places I probably haven't found yet (EXPLORE MORE, EXPLORER!), or does general traversal just take a hell of a lot longer now? 🤔

hidden granite
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There are definitely less portals than there used to be. There are few key portals to get around easier, but thing is, the portals are simi random. Best I can tell, a portal will take to one of three places in a general area. Without giving any spoilers this can be very helpful to get the entrance to the outskirts, for example. However, it could also put in the cross hairs of a mimic, if that part of the map has not been cleared yet, so there is an element of chance. This makes for better gameplay imo

tulip vortex
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I havent used portals once for my own convenience because i havent been able to find any

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the only ones i have are for missions

sharp shale
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I think I just dislike the fact that I can come across one and get sent back a mile or two where I just came from. Me thinking I found a shortcut actually increased my trip time because the bridge I just crossed is once again going to have to be crossed.

hidden granite
random harness
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Even with the mod that marks them on your map they aren't very useful now, definitely lacking if you take the time to find them and remember where they are

robust slate
# tulip vortex I havent used portals once for my own convenience because i havent been able to ...

There are some here and there for shortcuts. In the first map, the village has a portal along the dock behind the village that leads past that anomaly field. Its only really an anomaly field skip. Other than that, i cant remember where the one in the forest is, i think its up behind that area where artifacts are about in that floating construction area, whatever it is. And i havent seen any non mission related ones in the outskirts.

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Theres so little that its annoying, as someone who doesnt see the need to stock safe zones with tons of items, i haul all the stuff ill need for 10 missions in a row with one trip, and back. Its heavy but i find its more efficient and gives me and my friend more of a challenge, since we’re out in the field longer and have to ration occasionally.

fierce pollen
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My Mapping Monstrosity mod maps all the portals. Took me more than a day to redo that mod after release since they eliminated or moved so many portals. There are fewer now and some of them are random. Not as convenient for getting around as they used to be. Random portals are kinda useless as shortcuts. Also, the throwsond missions take you to temporary portals that are gone once the mission is over. I would have preferred they kept more portals, did not randomize the destinations, and used the throwsond missions as a way to discover them.

robust slate
humble solstice
# fierce pollen My Mapping Monstrosity mod maps all the portals. Took me more than a day to redo...

100% agreed. The only place that seems relatively unchanged on the portal front is the peninsula, but holy crap. Which is actually kind of asinine to me, as it's the smallest map but has the most interconnectivity out of any other one. 🤔 You'd think that the bigger maps would have even more reason to do that. Hell, make it to where you have to do some kind of mission to 'stabilize' portals with the throwsonde or something, give us something to work toward / unlock. I'd be 1000% fine with putting in the work to build a quasi-reliable fast travel network.

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We still need to venture to the parts in between them for running the missions anyway.

formal sparrow
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I don't think the comfort of travel has changed much.
In fact, I'm doubtful that it was ever comfortable through portals.

Although the number of portals in the forest has decreased, the river level has dropped, creating more routes. Therefore, I feel that travel has actually become more comfortable.

Now and then, you can return to your base from anywhere in Radius within 3 hours by making full use of portals.
The value of shelters remains low.

vapid oak
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I play on the maximum difficulty with every custom difficulty setting turned up to the most difficult. On top of that I play with ironman mode on. With these settings I find that I have to completely ignore portals because they're just going to get me killed. It's weird having a gameplay feature that has to be avoided as much as possible, and I doubt that's the intent.

Portals can teleport you in the middle of an area filled with enemies. It's not a great approach, but if you can manage to remain stealthy when arriving on the other end of the portal, it's doable.

Not knowing where a portal will take you is reason enough not to take one. You don't know if it will benefit you, and worst case scenario you end up further from where you want to be and die. You can of course save before entering a portal, and reload your save if you don't like where you end up, but you obviously can't do that in ironman mode. You can also simply take the risk and with time and effort find out where they go, but this is further complicated by random portals.

Random portals really are the nail in the coffin for me. Say you decide to use one to get closer to where you want to be. What if you die on the other end while on ironman mode? How are you going to get your stuff back? You can't simply trust the portal to get you back to where you died, it'll likely take you to another random location. What if you decide to use it anyway with a second set of gear, end up somewhere else, and die again? Now you have 2 different death locations with stuff to retrieve. By using portals on ironman mode, you likely end up making your situation much worse. On the flipside, you can decide to not use portals, kill everything in your path, and if you do die somewhere, the way there should be relatively clear.

So in conclusion, yes, portals suck now. I don't see a good reason to use them, and I see a lot of good reasons to avoid them.

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Ironman mode is already more difficult in Into the Radius 2 compared to Into the Radius 1 for various reasons. The bigger maps mean there is more distance to cross for corpse runs. Portals could solve this issue by providing shortcuts, but instead they make the situation even worse.

storm hedge
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Im not reading this whole thread, and I doubt the devs will either… So if someone else has said this already, my apologies…

I’d be all for having portals for shortcuts but have each portal with enemies around it so that each tide requires you to re-clear the shortcut paths. Consider it a reward for intentionally engaging in combat each tide. It will also cut down on the tedious cross country treks when the map has been cleared of enemies (except for mission spawns).

sharp shale
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At the very least just blip me in to somewhere nearbyish. Like a portal that takes me across the map

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So far they just teleport you a few meters out and into the epicenter of danger (if you hadn't prior cleaned out the destination)

humble solstice
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I am convinced now that some of them are just in there as a joke. Like there is one overlooking the train yard in the cooperative that just.... teleports you to a random spot in the train yard. That's it. That's all it does. In terms of traversal it saves you all of 45 seconds, assuming you already cleared the place. I remember the one that used to spawn adjacent to this one ported you to the northwest shelter.

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I spent a bit of time thinking about the intent behind them in their current iteration from a design standpoint and I think if I recontextualize them in terms of them being a random thing in the Radius being random and treating them like any other anomaly on first approach - a potential hazard - they are actually fine.

Just like with any other thing it is left up to us to decide what is safe and what isn't, and science'ing that out is just an inherent danger of being an explorer in the zone. It's up to us to figure out what is stable portal and what is not, and weigh the risks of venturing into the unknown when we step through.

....all that said there is still a looot fewer of them now and I wish that would be expanded upon, even if they can tend to be unreliable.

random harness
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They were supposed to be a reward for exploration, finding entrances and exits and remembering them

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But with the reduced amount and randomness that's gone

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Plus no way to mark them on maps they can be safely ignored

formal sparrow
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The developers probably don't want door portals to serve as convenient shortcuts.

While they can be useful in certain situations, the current state of the system makes sense if they consider anomalies to be fundamentally mysterious and dangerous.

Depending on the mission, you could be teleported into a distortion zone, which would be truly dangerous.

formal sparrow
# humble solstice I am convinced now that some of them are just in there as a joke. Like there is ...

The new door portal placements include more portals that teleport players from one end of an outpost to the other or to its center.
These portals seem designed more for combat than movement, specifically for conquering outposts.
They allow you to shake off enemy pursuit and instantly get behind them.
Although I don't play multiplayer, I think it could be useful for teleporting teammates and executing pincer attacks.

remote thorn
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I found myself only really using portals when I've cleared a map. They also can just send you somewhere you don't want to go. So I generally avoid them

oblique cloak
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lost my second good deathless run to a portal, both good runs died to this church lol

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this portal can be very useful, as long as you aren't an idiot

remote thorn
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random portals defo was not the move

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no body was complaining during the beta

vapid oak
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I found a way to find out where a portal leads before going through. It's probably not intended this way, but you can throw a piece of mission equipment into a portal, and then check your tablet for the question mark to see where it ended up.

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The fact that you can throw objects through portals opens up a bunch of things to test that I haven't tried yet. I wonder if you can throw a grenade through a portal and have it explode on the other side. Might be a good way to clear enemies or hear where the portal ends up. I wonder if projectiles go through as well. Could you shoot a flare through a portal and have it light up the other end? I'll do some testing when I next play.

This does make me think that it would be a good idea to add some sort of player equipment to the game that helps figure out where portals go and/or check if the destination is safe. Those mission probes exist, but what if they were equipment you could buy? You could have a dedicated icon on the tablet for them. What if they also had a camera or something?

oblique cloak
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prime grenade use

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If you toss a grenade into the portal it'll land way up in the sky in the approximate area it leads to

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Would be nice if it would teleport it to right where you'd land, that way it'd kill anything in the immediate vicinity of the other side, at the cost of stealth

humble solstice
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I am also curious as to what triggers the exit. Like if it just randomly picks one when you go through. I remember playing with the abyss island portals in 0.13 and 0.14, reloading the save and going through again, and ending up in different spots. I wanna take a closer look at it though. It would actually be REALLY cool if it sent you one place on even minutes and another place at odd minutes, or something like that.

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Having a specific trigger like that would also be extremely rewarding to the observant explorer.

remote thorn
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There's nothing to indicate where it'll take you so why would they make it that way

humble solstice
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Depends on the intent behind the mechanic I suppose. Everything in the Radius follows its own logic, so it's not unfathomable that it could work off of some kind of system. Or given the unstable nature of the portals it could just be truly random, sure. There's only one thing we can do to figure out which is the case.

Science! 🧑‍🔬

random harness
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Pretty much all of them simply act as barriers

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Little difference between being what they are and a wall

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Everything to simply walk around it with no interaction