A pretty big patch (and one with a few troubles sticking, it seems).
A few highlights (RTWT):
General
- Early improvements to the Market. It’s now possible to search beyond the initial results, when there are potentially more items.
Anything that makes the Market a bit more interesting and better organized is a good thing.
User Interface and Chat
- Non-shareable missions can now be set to the Primary Mission.
Yes!
- When a Primary Mission is set, teammates who don’t have the mission will see the objectives in their mission tracker and will see the waypoints for that mission.
- When a Primary Mission is set, all teammates will only see the waypoints of the furthest-behind team member for that mission.
- You can now see the mission progress of your teammates next to their portraits. If a primary mission is set, this shows the primary mission. Otherwise, it shows the last mission that made progress on.
- Added arrows to expand/collapse team mission.
Some badly needed team interface improvements here.
- Clicking empty power slots opens the powers UI now ONLY when you are out of combat.
I didn’t know it did that before. I can see where that might have been, um alarming.
- Added special type-specific background icons for empty slots for all power and item types in main trays and builds UI to clarify what goes where.
- Added lightning bolt UI indicator for when you have points to spend at a Power House.
- Added target-of-target indicator to UI.
All good things.
- Chat – Long lines with multi-byte characters (such as ‘?’) will now wrap properly.
- Chat auto-complete now properly completes & replaces multi-word character names.
- Chat auto-complete for /tell now includes a list of recent /tell correspondents.
- Chat auto-complete is now annotated by color to indicate where player suggestions came from (e.g. team, friend, guild, local, chat, etc.). A textual annotation can also be turned on by going to Chat Settings – Options and checking on “Annotate Auto-Complete”.
- Using the same emote repeatedly will no longer spam chat text.
- Chat text will now replace $player with your name and $target with your target’s name. So you can e.g. ‘/bind y “emote point $$ local Attack $target!”‘.
Haven’t used Chat a lot, but, again, all good-sounding improvements.
Powers
- Martial Arts powers: Inexorable Tides: These power now gain bonus damage from the player’s Strength (up to +20%), the same as all other melee powers. As a reminder, this bonus is cumulative and not related to the bonus from your Characteristic Focuses.
Yay.
- A number of changes to pets have been made. All pets attempt to follow with 8’ of their owner. Read on for more changes.
- Combat Pets: Attack Mode: Critters attack the player’s target and will continue to do so until the target is dead. Then they will immediately target the player’s current target and use it as their own target and so on. If the player has no attack target the critter returns to the player. Players can cause the pets to switch targets at any time by pressing the attack button again. Targets for critters can only be set out to 150’ from the owner.
- Combat Pets: Assist Mode: If the player initiates combat, critters set their attack target to be the player’s target and attack. If the player (or critters) are attacked first, the critters use default aggro rules. Critters return to the player after combat has ended.
- Combat Pets: Passive Mode: Pets follow the player and never enter combat.
- Combat Pets: Stay Mode: Critters stop following the player and do not enter combat if the player does. If the critter takes damage it will enter combat. If this causes the critter to move more than 100’ from the spot it was told to stay, it will return to the spot after combat. Critters despawn if the player moves more than 200’ from the critter.
- Follow response time improved for pets. Pets also have collision with their owners.
- Fixed bug with Frenzy command for wolf pets that would cause them to not respond if one wolf dies.
- Fixed a case where a long range target could causes turrets in Assist mode to not fire.
- Healing Drones: Attack Mode: If player is targeting a friendly, that friendly will be used as the critter’s target. If targeting an enemy, the critter will use the enemy’s target as its own target. Drones will heal this target until they are over 90% health and then will return to the owner. Drones will not interrupt their healing to aid the player if their owner is damaged. Drones also do not switch targets if the enemy’s target changes. Pressing Attack again will update the target.
- Healing Drones: Assist Mode: Drones will heal the owner if below 90% health. If above 90%, drones will attempt to heal any allies within 50’ of the owner. If the owner moves outside of 50’, the drones will break off of their healing and follow the owner. If the owner drops below 90% health while healing an ally, the drones will switch to target their owner.
- Healing Drones: Passive Mode: Drones follow the player and do not heal.
- Healing Drones: Stay Mode: Critters remain stationary and attempt to heal any allies below 90% health within 12’ (the range of the healing beam), giving preference to their owner. Drones despawn if the owner moves over 200’ away from them.
Since Pet AI (esp. in Gadgets) has been a huge set of complaints, these should all help a lot.
Archery
- Quarry: Updated Quarry’s description to indicate that it does have ranks and what ranking it up does: “Increasing the rank of Quarry increases the amount that the Quarry buff reduces the energy cost of all of your powers by.”
Quarry’s a pretty cool power, and frequently used cross-framework.
Might
- Clobber: Sucker Punch: Can no longer interrupt Super Villains, Legendary Villains, or Cosmic Villains.
- Defensive Combo: The way this power applies the Defiance buff has been changed. It will no longer stack the Defiance buff, instead, it will apply 1 stack of Defiance if no stack currently exists, or refresh any number of existing applications of Defiance.
- Defensive Combo: Surge of Strength has been changed to function the same way, and now guarantees an application or refresh of Defiant on every swing.
I’ll leave Margie to tell me if this helps make Might more viable.
Unarmed
- Lightning Reflexes – Aura for Lightning Reflexes power can now have its color customized.
Excellent.
Missions/Environments
- Most mission rewards should now be equippable regardless of level so that if you can complete the mission you can equip the reward.
Excellent. I hate getting a whole bunch of mission awards … and find I can’t frelling use them. Rrg.
- Patrol Missions now drop items as loot rather than inserting them directly into your inventory.
Ugh. Anything that doesn’t directly add to inventory is a bad thing.
Millennium City
- “Jailbreak” – changed the ringleaders to run to a point when they spawn so that they are separated from one another. Also made the critters around the reward bag despawn when the mission is completed.
All good ideas.
There’s lots more. The CO Devs have been busy little beavers, which is a good thing.