I7 Release Notes

Massive set of release notes this time, not surprisingly. My commentary (on highly abridged notes):

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Combined (CoH and CoV)
Known Issues
2. Recluse’s Victory signature heroes and villains give debt when they defeat characters. This has been acting to discourage characters under level 50 from fighting them. The debt will be removed in a future patch, and the Temporal Point reward for defeating them will be increased. Good to know.
4. Mastermind pets are not keeping names when defeated and re-summoned. Eek!
New PvP Zone – Recluse’s Victory
* A new high level PvP zone set in an alternate version of Atlas Park and open to players of Level 40+. I do have an interest in this, actually. We’ll have to see.
* Alternative ‘sally port’ exits are available in both Hero and Villain bases, to help alleviate front door camping. Each base has two doors near the temporal portal on the ground floor – in the Hero base they appear as manholes, in the Villain base they appear as sewer entrances. These are connected to 5 doors inside the zone, which will be randomly chosen each time a door is used. The outside doors are not guarded, so players use them their own risk. Clever idea. We’ll see how well it works.
PvP Zones
* In PvP zones, if a character is revived at the Hospital, they will respawn with 1 hit point and 1 endurance. This is to enforce a short delay on all characters before they can get back into battle. Not much of an issue to me, but … well, it seems annoying.
Powers – Players
* Modified PvE critter accuracy. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless if they have higher accuracy. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. Previously, a more accurate critter could circumvent much of your defense, but this will no longer happen. Yay! SR/FF characters of the world, rejoice! Heck, even tanks will welcome this.
o More accurate critters may have a greater chance at the extreme low end of the To Hit scale than previously due to this change. For instance, an Archvillain’s To Hit could previously be reduced (with enough Debuffs) to 5%, but will now have a 7.5% minimum. Interesting, though not that much a biggie.
* If a character is at 100% health, they cannot be reduced to 0 HP by a single application of damage. (For example, if an uninjured character with 1000 Hit Points was hit by a Blazing Bolt for 1500 Damage, the character would be dropped to 1 HP. As soon as the DoT portion of the Blazing Bolt ticked (a second later), the character would drop to 0 and be defeated. If the character was down even 1 Hit Point below maximum when the Blazing Bolt hit them, they would immediately be dropped to 0 and be defeated.) I understand the point of this, but, as the examples note, the actual application of it doesn’t seem to help that much. We’ll see.
* All powers which have an Endurance Drain component will now drain a percentage of a PvE target’s Endurance, rather than a set number of Endurance Points. This fixes the issues created when enemies’ Endurance Pools were increased. Yay.
* Origin Specific powers will no longer be lost after level 10. Characters who already lost these powers (or who never had these powers) will be granted these powers. People without ranged attacks will be happy about this.
* All Temporary Powers will now show duration or charges in their info. Ah! Great Quality-of-Life thing.
* Powers that put you into a self-contained state (Rest, Phase Shift, PFF, Invisibility, etc) now display “Only Affecting Self” in the mez state text below the buff bar. Nice.
* Stealth and Phase Shift Powers will suppress (for self buffs or toggles) or cancel (for external buffs) when a player interacts with Interactive Objects, such as Plaques or Mission Objective Objects. Suppression of this type has a duration of 10 seconds. This makes a great deal of sense, even if it makes stealthing missions a lot harder.
* The Claws Power sets for both Scrappers and Stalkers have new animations for the powers Swipe and Strike. The animation for Slash has been replaced with the old Strike animation in order to better match the activation, recharge and damage values. Yay!
* Reduced End costs on Claws high level powers. Yay! I might have to rebuild ol’ Selene again.
* Fiery Aura/Healing Flames activation time reduced. Yay!
* Energy and Ranged Defense will now apply to Pool/Teleportation/Teleport Foe.
* Negative Energy and Ranged Defense will now apply to Warshade/Starless Step.
* Resistance Inspirations (the Sturdy Line) now offer 100% resistance to Teleport. This will not prevent a player from teleporting themselves, it only applies to Teleport Foe, Wormhole and related powers. These are evidently all PvP-driven. Yay.
* Confuse has had the delay after animation removed. Yay!
* Modified sprint fx to only play while running. Not Flying. Not swimming. Not jumping. Just running on the ground. Big yay!
Powers – Critters
* Arch Villains/Heroes and Giant Monsters have been significantly boosted. They should now require more people in order for them to be defeated, especially at higher levels. That should be … interesting.
* AVs/Heroes and Giant Monsters now ignore threat level damage multipliers for different Archetypes. They are still affected by Taunt as before. Not sure I follow this, but, okay.
Bases
* Several new Storage items are available that allow you to store various items in your base:
o Inspiration Receptacle: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Inspirations that they may not be using, but other members can use to greater benefit. A permission set in the SG Permissions allows a character to withdraw Inspirations from the Receptacle.
o Enhancement Container: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Enhancements in the Supergroup’s base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Enhancements from the Container.
o Salvage Bin: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store salvage in the Supergroup’s base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Salvage (and just ‘see’ it from the base’s worktables as well).
We’ll have to see about this. I’m not sure it’s going to be all that useful, except for the Salvage Bin. Well, I can see dropping off Enhancements while back at the base after dying mid-mission.
* SG Logo Items: Numerous items can now be placed in your base that will display your Super Group’s logo, including banners, stands, floor plates and more. Oooooh.
Tasks
* Changed the parameters for when an AV/Hero will spawn in a mission:
Reputation/Notoriety Level 1: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 6 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 2: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 5 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 3: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 4 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 4: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 3 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 5: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 1 or greater.
* AV/Heroes will spawn at Elite Boss level if it is below the threshold needed to spawn them.
Good to know, and, especially with the new, nastier AVs, good to be able to go for.
Tailor
* Players with combined City of Heroes and City of Villains accounts now have access to all costume pieces (Hero and Villain) for their characters. YAY!
* New costume pieces added.
* Several costume pieces revamped and updated.
* Fixed many geometry and clipping issues with various costume pieces And, again, all with the YAY!
Badges
* Added many new badges to the game, Villains now have access to their very own Accolade badges as well, with equivalent powers to the Hero Accolades.
* Defeat Badges now require that you or your team do 10% or more damage to the entity to receive credit for the badge. (The former system required that you deal 25% or more damage to get credit). This is good, especially with the nastier AVs.
* All exploration badges now give a small amount of XP when you find them (based on your level). Excellent!
* Troll Task Force badge is now given out for spending time in The Hollows. Yay!
Graphics
* Changed the way the texture quality slider is interpreted:
o Very High: all textures at full resolution.
o High: texture dimensions capped at 256×256.
o Medium: texture dimensions capped at 128×128, all textures reduced by one mip level.
o Low: texture dimensions capped at 128×128, all textures reduced by two mip levels.
o Texture quality is now treated the same in CoH and CoV.
* Added new lower Shader Detail options to disable bumpmaps.
* Added new “recommended low-end” or “performance” option on the Graphics Quality slider that should set graphics detail levels to approximately CoH-launch values. All sounds good, especially that you can ratchet things back down if the newer graphics give you fits.
* The camera has been changed to be smoother and avoid ‘popping’ for small items – for example, a light pole between yourself and the camera should not jerk the camera forward now. Yay.
Quality of Life
* Several new options have been added to the display of Buff/Debuff icons in the Status Window (beneath the HP/END/XP bars), the Group Window and the Pet Window. The options for the different windows can be accessed either by right-clicking on an icon in the appropriate window, or from the ‘General’ tab of the in-game Options:
o Hide Auto Powers: The icons for ‘automatic’ powers (those that are always on) can be set to be displayed as usual or hidden.
o Disable Blinking: Set whether the icons for powers that are near the end of their duration should start blinking or not.
o Icon Stacking: Icons for multiple versions of the same power can be set to stack on top of other, to display a single icon with a number showing how many versions of the power are affecting you, or not to stack. All sound good. I think I saw the Icon Stacking working last night.
* In combat, attacks avoided due to Defense powers will now show text messages such as “Avoid!” or “Eluded!” instead of simple “Miss!” This sounds like it could be distracting, but I think it’s a good thing. But shouldn’t be in the same tense?
* A ‘Do Not Allow Invites’ option has been added to the Looking For Group flags. YAY!
* There is a new window that allows the searching of Global Chat channels. To access this window, right click the chat window and select “Channel Search”. You can search for channels with a certain name, the most active channels, or all channels you are a member of. From this window you can also set the channel description and MOTD. Not thrilling, but decent.
* Several new emotes have been added to the game. And they look like a hoot.
* If you receive a tell while AFK, an automatic reply will be sent to the tell sender with your AFK message. Excellent!
City of Heroes
Powers – Players
* Illusion Control/Deceive has had the long pause after cast removed. YAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!
City Zones
* Spawns updated and adjusted in several city zones. Street encounters in lower level zones have more variety. Spiffy!
* Fixed delay when you click on helicopter pilot to zone from Kings Row to Warburg and back or Bloody Bay to Skyway and back. This seemed to already be working last night — much faster to zone (and a nice “please, feel free to board now” gesture from the pilot, too).
Badges
* The Task Force Commander badge is a new Accolade added for Heroes. For … leading TFs, I assume. Good. Not my cuppa, but a nice recognition for leadership. Heck, I wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of similar badge for time spent as team leader (boosted for team sizes).
Graphics
* Updated and improved many textures and visual effects throughout the game. I look forward to, ah, seeing it. Though I’m glad I’ll be able to ratchet stuff down again.
City of Villains
Mayhem Missions
* Mayhem missions allow villains to enter a large instanced outdoor mission map and create chaos. The eventual goal is to rob a bank – but there are lots of other things going on, too. Mayhem missions are set up for single players and teams. Extra mission time is awarded for destroying property and defeating police. Side missions that appear within the mission map award more extra time and other rewards. Nice.
* The old Heists (Bank and Casino) are now available as normal Newspaper missions. So are they not Heists any more?
Powers – Players
* Mastermind Bodyguards: You can set any Mastermind pet to Bodyguard by selecting the Defensive Stance and the Follow Orders. Your pets must be within Supremacy range for this function to work.
* Bodyguard Damage Mitigation: When set to Bodyguard mode, the Mastermind and his pets share damage from any attack that the Mastermind takes damage from. Each pet takes one ‘share’ of the damage, and the Mastermind himself takes two ‘shares’. This is in addition to any damage that the pets themselves might incur from Area attacks. Coolness.
* Decreased the recharge time for Mastermind Minion Henchmen summon powers.
* Increased the recharge time for Mastermind Boss Henchmen summon powers.
* Dramatically decreased the recharge time for Mastermind Second Tier Upgrade powers. All sounds good. The current delays had been madenning.
* Visual f/x for Brute Invulnerability powers changed. They are now darker and more villainous. Heh. That makes sense. Look forward to seeing how that works with Mr. Ravenous.
Overall, esp. on the CoH side, nothing dramatic, but lots of nice polishing. Spiffy!