I8 in Test

And … the patch notes [With commentary]

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Issue 8: To Protect and Serve

Pocket D Changes

• Arena Kiosks: These Kiosks will allow Heroes and Villains to fight against each other more easily if they want to settle personal issues. [Ho-hum]

• In front of the bars are two arena officials, an “Arena Information Operator”, who will provide information on how to use the kiosks; and a “Games Information Operator”, who will provide detailed information on each of the game types of the arena.

• Rikti Monkey Fight Club: Due to a combination of the Family cutting in to the RMFC profits in Sharkhead, and an offer from DJ Zero to expand their enterprise, Joe Young and Cornelius have moved their “entertainment concern” on up to the Pocket D. They have set up a new “Lounge” on the hero side of the club. “It’s a lot classier than the old place”, says Joe Young.

• It’s loud in Pocket D! Local chat in Pocket D will only be heard by players within 50ft of each other now. [Heh.]

Powers

• Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Gadgets secondary for players.

• Various ‘Build Up’ and ‘Aim’ powers now have a new look. [Interesting.]

• Alternate flying poses. Fly and Hover (and temporary powers that duplicate their effects) have new poses. Your character will transition into an alternate pose after flying forward for a few seconds. Also implemented a banking animation for flying forward while strafing left or right. [Sweet.]

• Increased the base flight speed of Hover by 10%. [A trivial change, IMO, but what the hell.]

• Added a slight delay to the usage of Team Teleport. This should alleviate the issue of Teammates randomly being left behind after a Teleport.

• Soul Storm is now escapable. There is still a bit of delay after you escape before you can move or attack again, but it’s much less of an ‘I win’ power.

• Rikti ambushers will once again show teleportation FX.

• The Helmet enhancement (Mutation/Magic Range) was giving twice the bonus of other Range DOs. It has been reduced to match.

• Rebalanced some of the high end Longbow critters to make them less frustrating.

• Fixed some animation issues with the Jump Jet Pack power granted from the Good vs. Evil Edition.

Titles

• Players may now change their title at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45. These title changes do not stack (if you do not use the one you get at level 25 when you reach level 35, you only have the level 35 change, and lose the level 25 one). At 50, players may change their title without restriction. Talk to any trainer to change your title in this manner. [This makes so much sense. Now … when can we change names?]

Tailor

• New costume pieces are available at the Tailor and at Character Generation:

• Male/Huge/Female

(Head – Detail 1)

Galactic Glasses

Government Glasses

Blast Goggles up

(Head – Ears) [Oh … my …]

Floppy

Bunny

Cat

Rat

Teddy

Wildcat

• Female

(Upper Body – Chest – Tops with Skin)
Angelic

Assassin

Excess

Savage

Tanker

(Lower body – Legs – Bottoms with Skin)

Angelic

Assassin

Excess

Savage

CITY OF HEROES

Faultline Redux

Faultline officials recently provided funding for reconstruction and work was underway in the first neighborhood, when major disaster struck. Due to strange seismic activity on the moon, tidal anomalies caused the Overbrook Dam to rupture flooding the zone. Additional crews have been called in to assess the Dam and shore up the rest of the zone, however, they are continually thwarted by the recent arrival of new villain groups to the area and one group, in particular, that no one expected: Arachnos. It appears
Arachnos has been poking around supergroup base wreckage in Faultline for some time, searching for technology that will further Lord Recluse’s nefarious plans. Paragon Officials have called in small detachments of the Paragon Police Department and Freedom Corps, but are also asking heroes to come forward and protect the new city. [Nice. And I just toured the area for the first time tonight, so my timing is perfect. I do wonder if the plaques and stuff down-below will be raised up.]

Features of the “new” Faultline:

• Transition from Trial Zone to a City Zone (with Overbrook Dam as a Hazard area)

• Level range has been adjusted to 15 – 25 [I believe was 11-20 or something.]

• Missions have been added (see Jim Temblor in New Overbrook at the Memorial statue in the park as your initial contact)

• New Villain groups added: Arachnos, Freakshow, The Lost, Sky Raiders…and something lurking in the water.

• More plaques and badges

• Entrance to Pocket D [Thus saving you the looooooong trip across Skyway.]

• Stores, Trainer (Mirror Spirit), and a hospital have been added to Faultline

Police Band Missions

• PPD Contacts have been added to all City Zones except for Atlas Park and Galaxy City. They will be added to a Hero’s contact list as soon as they enter a zone. These contacts will direct characters to missions aiding the PPD in fighting crime in Paragon City.

• Once you talk to a PPD Contact, your contact list will have a “Police Band Tuner” added to the top of the list. Clicking this will bring up an assortment of crimes-in-progress.

• You will fight level-appropriate Villain Groups in random maps and random mission objectives. Once you have outlevelled a zone, however, you will no longer be able to get Police Band missions in that zone.

• In addition to normal missions, the PPD will give out Safeguard Missions. You get Safeguard missions after performing three to five Police Band missions. [Nice. The equivalent of Newspaper mishes.]

Safeguard Missions

• Safeguard missions allow the Hero player to enter a large outdoor mission map and defend the city from invading villains. The goal is to defeat the Villain behind the attack, preventing a bank robbery, but there are lots of other things going on, too. Safeguard missions are set up for single players and teams.

• When you enter the instance, the bank is immediately being robbed. Don’t delay in getting to the bank, or the crooks could get away with the cash, failing the mission.

• A 15 minute timer starts once the bank heist has been stopped and the mission is completed. At this point you can use the given time to secure the map, and explore and fight for additional badges and rewards. This allows the players to end the mission quickly, or hunt for additional XP and rewards if they choose.

• There are several goals and multiple side missions that can be unlocked and played once the bank robbery has been thwarted. Completing any section of goals or each side mission rewards the players with a special bonus (such as extra XP, temp powers, or unique salvage) and will add some time back to the counter. The more they complete the longer they have to try and complete more goals, so the better they do the higher their rewards. [These sound really nice.]

[So … with the addition of Newspaper and Mayhem missions … when do we get shared mission credit?!]

Giant Monster Spawns Increased

• The following Giant Monster Spawns have had their frequency increased; [Ho-hum]

o Kraken – Perez Park

o Babbage – Boomtown

o Jack in Irons (non-scripted, individual) – Croatoa

o Eochai (non-scripted, individual) – Croatoa

o Adamastor – Dark Astoria [Margie insists she sees this guy all the time.]

o Jurassik – Crey’s Folly

Powers

• Controllers Fossilize power will now properly have ‘critical hold’ effects versus critters. This is a bug fix — this aspect of the power already existed, but was set to always fail.

• Fixed the Short Help text on Stone Cages to properly reflect the powers usage.

Game

• Trains will now stay at station longer, there will be shorter times between trains and the doors of the trains will be clickable while the train is in the station. [Hu-freakin-zzah! Best fix in the whole frelling issue!!!]

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Many Darkness powers have a new look attached.

• Removed Double Stacked ‘Super Jump’ from Ninja Mastermind Pets.

• Added slightly increased running speed to all Mastermind pets.

• Updated the power description on Thermal Radiation.

• Arachnos Night Widow Bosses have had their Defense values slightly reduced.

• The Arachnos Arch Villain Nocturne has been rebalanced.

• Dominators will now build Domination faster depending on the size of the Team they are grouped with. Each member of the team (aside from the Dominator himself) increases the speed of Domination gain by approximately 16%. Note that this bonus does NOT apply to the existing bonus Assault powers gain in PvP. The maximum bonus to Domination will happen in a full 8 person group.

• Base Domination gain increased by 50% (to 3 points per attack up from 2 points per attack.)