Noticed a Forum entry (now no longer up) complaining about the Hasten effect (and, peripherally) the Superspeed effect. Hasten wreathes your hands (up to the elbows in a burning yellow glow. Superspeed gives you a bright flashy area all around your feet — and, of course, as a trail when you run.
The Superspeed effect can be a little irksome — but Hasten is one of those that’s bugged me practically since I started the game. If it would have any good I would have added the following:
I’ll toss in my vote to significantly tone down the Hasten effect (hey, if you want flaming hands, take an Energy power, a Fire power, or an Aura). Superspeed is a bit annoying, too, but while it makes no sense that your feet/running would be glowing at only 90mph, it’s at least a canonical sign of, well, superspeed.
The problems/differences are:
1. Superspeed is a toggle. If I want to appear without Superspeed’s aura, I turn it off. If I want to appear without Hasten obscuring my hands and arms, I have to wait a minute or two (and be sure I turn off the auto-fire).
2. Superspeed is a power. Hasten is a character mechanic enhancement, like Focus and Build-Up, only with less justification for the effect. People take it, mostly, not because they think glowing hands fit their concept, but because their build will be helped by faster recovery. So obtrusive an effect for an enhancement used by people of all Origins and ATs and Builds makes little sense.
(Of course, I find the dust kickup from Sprint and the trailing dustfall from Combat Jump to be mildly annoying, esp. when flying or standing still, so I may be oversensitive.)
(I’ll also note that it makes more sense for Hasten to be a whole-body thing, since the recharge effect works on kicks, mental powers, pretty much everything, not just swiftness of hands.)
I am not a Dev, nor do I want to be one on TV, but it seems to me that this effect could be toned down quite a bit without a lot of development effort. Ironically, its ubitiquity means it much less likely that’s going to happen, since it would affect the appearance of so many players.
That said, if we could get a toned-down “Custom Hasten” similar to the “Custom Sprints,” I would be very happy.
The impression given from the replies form BAB and his forum supporters was (a) it’s not broke, so it ain’t gonna be fixed; (b) if it ever does get fixed, it will be with powers customization; so (c) it’s not likely to get fixed any time soon.
Which may all be true, but it’s still an annoyingly bad choice of effect for most characters, and I wish it was different.