***Dave Does the Game
The Winter Event is here! (Or it will be shortly.) Yay!
All the cool bennies aside, Margie’s been lurking around Father Time’s chalet on Test, and it’s gorgeous to behold (and fun to play in).
As for those cool bennies, any toon who logs in between 12/14 and 1/2 will get:
Tanker and Brute auto-taunts aren’t working — both auras and Gauntlet. Swell. Maybe we’ll hold off on playing Torchy/Hildy awhile until it’s fixed.
Or maybe it’s only working on minions, Which is still not all that good.
As a silver lining, they spotted that “Gauntlet from pool powers like Boxing or Air Superiority have, apparently, never worked.” Eek. That’s going to be fixed with the other problem.
The freespec on Virtue got messed up, so another one should be distributed as of this morning.
The devs also failed to let people know sufficiently (apparently — I assume there were complaints) about the I8.1 freespec that was just given out. Since freespecs don’t stack, some folks felt like they’d “lost” something (“I could have made change X on Monday and been able to do something else today”), so … yet another freespec will be coming out next week.
So now’s the time to try out that freespec you just got to see if that power you think will be the cat’s pajamas is really what you want to saddle yourself with.
New patch (what I called “8.1” the other day) is up on Live. Comments (mostly additional or different ones from when it went to Test).
Powers
Tasks
Bases
PvP
Chat
Veteran Rewards
Game
Badges
Tailor
CITY OF HEROES
Powers
Blaster Improvements:
These changes are all aimed towards addressing sets based on feedback from players. These changes also affect Defender and Corruptor versions of these powers where applicable.
Gauntlet and Aura Inherent Taunt Changes:
Controller Containment bonus is now identical when used on critters or players. When a damaging power is used on a character under the effects of a detrimental status effect, the damage caused will be twice the base damage. (Exception: Spectral wounds damage bonus remains lower, due to the nature of the power.)
Controller Ancilliary Powers:
The damage of these powers was made artificially high originally, to make them desirable. In general, the damage was set to be roughly equivalanet to that of a Blaster. When Containment was added later, this was not taken into account. As such, these powers all do roughly twice the desired damage under Containment conditions. This series of changes is aimed at bringing these powers closer to balance. [Hard to be too upset by this, except I thought their power levels were pretty sucky as-was.]
Powers – PvP specific:
Emotes
Tasks
Critters
City Zones
CITY OF VILLAINS
Powers
Badges
And this patch is bringing a freespec with it. Yay! Though some folks are reporting problems …
The Numina task force is currently bugged and uncompletable.
The Numina Task Force can not currently be completed. New sensors must be calibrated to properly gather information from the group of Vahzilok that now infest Frontline.
In case you habitually skip over the CoX splash screen …
The guy who Looks Like He Knows Something (on Test) gives the lowdown on the upcoming Auction stuff in CoX. Basically, you’ll be able to hold a secret auction (minimum hidden, bids hidden, but last 10 sold prices shown) for Salvage, Enhancements, Recipes, and Inspirations. There’s also a Listing Fee (10%) and a Transaction Fee (5%).
Oh, and there are badges for it, too.
As Lincoln put it, those who really like that sort of thing will probably find that the sort of thing they like.
I find it amazing that a game that has:
Plus, of course, the variations of powers, taken at different levels, plus all the power pools that are available (four extra plus an epic) over the 20-odd slots that each person gets. Plus enhancement choices. Plus play style and experience and tactics and native intelligence. Plus type of missions preferred and/or pursued. Plus luck. Plus variations between PvP and PvE. Plus …
I find it more than amazing, I find it nigh miraculous that the damned game has any semblance of balance, let alone such that people can bitch all day on the boards over how their one favorite power remains / has been / will be nerfed (or just be underpowered compared to someone else’s).
I mean, really, people. We’re talking variations in possibilities along the lines of “Which wavelength of blue do you think looks better on me, 4700 or 4012 Angstroms?”
Interesting notes from Castle on how the nuke powers work for blasters.
One thing to note about the ‘nuke’ powers is that they have multiple stages of damage. A bad series of die rolls could have a nuke doing only slightly more than a Snipe attack, albeit in an area of effect.
Nova is pretty typical for this. It has 4 damage components (in PvE):
– Smashing scale 1, 100% chance of activating
– Energy scale 2, 100% chance of activating
– Energy scale 1.75, 75% chance of activating
– Energy scale 1.75, 50% chance of activating.
Cool. I also believe this gets rolled separately for each mob in the target area, which helps explain the variation in results.
While Jaeger (my RSS reader) is able to get feeds from the Dev Post list without a specific RSS thang (by detecting link changes), for those who need actual honest-to-Statesman RSS, you can check out here.
Patch notes — both some Gamma Test fixes and some things they were talking about coming “real soon.”
OMBINED NOTES
Powers
• Fire Imps: Summoned Fire Imps level will now be 1 below that of their caster. For instance, if you are level 39 and cast Fire Imps, each Fire Imp will be level 38.
• Stalker and Scrapper versions of Impale have had their range reduced to 40 feet. This change is being made to bring the power more in line with Blast power sets’ short range, high damage attacks. [Boo from Araware!]
• Tanker and Brute Fiery Aura: Healing Flames: Recharge reduced to 40 seconds, healing scale increased to 2.5. [Huzzah for Hildy!]
• Reduced the duration of the rooted portion of the Burn animation and normalized the duration for Male, Female, and Huge models (the Female and Huge models were ~1.25 seconds longer before you could move or attack than the Male). [Huzzah for Hildy!]
• Burn graphical effects were changed slightly.
• Radiation Blast Aim was boosting the damage of Negative Energy powers twice, while not giving any benefit to Toxic damage attacks at all, due to a duplicated entry. Both issues are now fixed.
• Added secondary effects to Enervating Field and Radiation Infection to help identify the anchor. [Yay for Peep!]
• Minor tweaks to Radiation Control power graphical effects for performance related issues.
• Jump Kick will now only play a knockback/up animation when the target is actually affected by knockback/up.
• Nemesis Staff (Veteran Reward and Temp Power) will now have the correct delay for the sound and visual FX when it is drawn and fired. [Yay!]
• Broadsword, Claws and Katana powers which debuff Defense have had a visual effect added to the debuff. [Yay!]
• Temporary Powers with Flight will no longer permanently suppress Flight Speed if you have a toggle debuff on a target.
• Tweaked all versions of Photon Seekers so they should be more responsive.
• Corrected an issue that made extra enhancement slots in Sprint and Rest disappear after a respec. [Who the hell drops enh slots in rest or Sprint?]
Tasks
• Restored bonus awards to PvP missions. However, the bonus reward can only be given to a player once every 30 minutes. Otherwise, the player will receive a standard mission reward.
Bases
• Slightly reduced footprint for arcane teleporter base items: teleporters can now be placed side by side to maximum capacity of each teleporter room
• Corrected an issue with the Arcane Force Field. It should now grant Defense to those within its area of effect.
PvP
• All members of a team now share the timer for how long after defeating an enemy before they can gain reputation for defeating that same enemy again.
Chat
• Fixed bug that disconnected players from global chat when entering a new map, until an enemy was defeated on that map. [Yay!]
Veteran Rewards
• Added text to the Long help descriptions of the Veteran Reward powers explaining that damage enhancing powers will not apply to them. [Yay!]
• Changed Short Help text for Veteran Reward Powers so they better match the Long Help descriptions.
• Turned off floater text for base details when claimed.
• Claiming Prestige Sprints should now remove the option to claim them. If you already have these sprints claimed, you may claim it one last time to get rid of it off your Veteran badge list.
• The Ghosts in Croatoa are now properly affected by the Ghost Slaying Axe Veteran Reward Power and are affected by the bonus damage versus undead. [Yay!]
• Modified the Veteran Reward powers Nemesis Staff and Blackwand. The temp powers gained through missions are unchanged.
– The Nemesis staff no longer has a Disorient function; however it will deal bonus damage in the hands of any character of the Technology, Science or Natural origins. [Yay for meaningful origins!]
– Blackwand’s bonus damage is now usable by Magic, Mutant and Natural origin characters. Additionally, Blackwand has had a minor To Hit debuff added.
Game
• Emotes for /eat food and /eat donut should work a bit more consistently.
• Sit emotes should work more consistently. They should always reposition you at ground height and be interruptible by flight.
• Wings will now animate while falling. For example: running off of something and falling or turning flight off while in air and falling.
• Wings will now animate while jumping.
• Enhancements once again con based on combat level rather than security level.
Badges
• Fixed typo in Bad Luck badge.
Tailor
• Big Afro added to male and huge
• Assassin & Angelic patterns added to male & huge
• Samurai belts are now available for huge
• Skull face option now scales properly with huge
• Huge now has the option for putting chest details over trenchcoats
• Female now has the option of No Sleeves with trenchcoats.
• Fixed issue with many chest details clipping through huge characters.
• Martial Arts belts should be available when wearing a Jacket
• Epsilon, Zeta and Eta no longer repeat in the chest detail listing.
CITY OF HEROES
Powers
• Blaster Improvements:
– These changes are all aimed towards addressing sets based on feedback from players. These changes also affect Defender and Corruptor versions of these powers where applicable.
– Blaster Fire Manipulation: Ring of Fire: Increased overall damage. Damage ticks are now faster, as well. Recharge was increased to 6 seconds.
– Blaster Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword: Bonus damage increased.
– Blaster Fire Manipulation: Combustion: Bonus damage increased.
– Blaster Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword Circle: Bonus damage increased.
– Blaster Fire Blast Powerset: Bonus damage increased by 50% for all appropriate powers. [Huzzah for Torchy!]
– Blaster Fire Blast: Blaze: Increased Range to 40′ [Huzzah for Torchy!]
– Assault Rifle Ignite: Increased Range to 40′
– Energy Blast Power Burst: Increased Range to 40′
– Radiation Attack Cosmic Burst: Increased Range to 40′
– Sonic Attack Shout: Increased Range to 40′
– Blaster Devices Taser: Increased Range to 20′
• Blaster Archery Fistful of Arrows: corrected an issue which could prevent the power from damaging foes.
• Blaster Archery Blazing Arrow: corrected an issue that could limit the DoT portion of the power from doing more than one tick of damage.
• Blaster Assault Rifle Flamethrower: Range increased slightly and recharge time changed so it now matches the range and recharge of the Corruptor version of this power.
• Blaster Electrical Blast Aim should now display the proper look, and match the other powers in the power set.
• Gauntlet and Aura Inherent Taunt Changes: [Damned if I can tell if these are Good or Bad — looks like a mixed bag for Hildy and Velvet]
– All of these powers may now affect Archvillains and Giant Monsters once again. However, they must pass a ‘To Hit’ check at -20% for the taunt to effect these targets, even for powers such as Invincibility which are normally ‘Always Hit’
– Invincibility was looking at the wrong table for it’s inherent taunt ability. It now looks at the correct table, which will bring its taunt functionality more in line with other Taunt Auras. Additionally, the Magnitude of the Taunt was increased so that it matches the other Taunt Aura powers.
• Controller Containment bonus is now identical when used on critters or players. When a damaging power is used on a character under the effects of a detrimental status effect, the damage caused will be twice the base damage. (Exception: Spectral wounds damage bonus remains lower, due to the nature of the power.)
• Controller Ancilliary Powers:
– The damage of these powers was made artificially high originally, to make them desirable. In general, the damage was set to be roughly equivalanet to that of a Blaster. When Containment was added later, this was not taken into account. As such, these powers all do roughly twice the desired damage under Containment conditions. This series of changes is aimed at bringing these powers closer to balance. [Poop. The damage from these powers always seemed low. This makes them even lamer.
Lvl 40 powers should be kick-ass.]
– Earth Mastery Hurl Boulder: Base damage reduced from scale 3 to scale 1.64
– Fire Mastery: Fire Blast: Base damage reduced from scale 2 to scale 1.1
– Fire Mastery: Fire Ball: Base damage reduced from scale 1.6 to scale 1.05
– Ice Mastery: Ice Blast: Smashing damage reduced from scale 0.8 to scale 0.2, Cold damage reduced from scale 1.2 to 0.8
– Ice Mastery: Ice Storm: Removed unresistible PvP damage and added Containment.
– Primal Forces: Power Blast: Smashing damage reduced from scale 0.8 to scale 0.2, Energy damage reduced from scale 1.2 to 0.8
– Psionic Mastery: Psionic Blast: Base damage reduced from 2 to 1.
– Psionic Mastery: Psionic Tornado: Base damage reduced from 0.35 to 0.175. [Lame power now even lamer.]
• Defender Electrical Blast Charged Bolt has had the amount of endurance drained in PvP increased. There was a decimal shift error which had this aspect of the power underperforming.
• Defender Lightning Bolt has had the -recovery portion of the power reduced. It is now consistent with the rest of the powers within the powerset.
• Slightly increased the PvE Endurance Drain for Defender Electrical Blast Short Circuit to bring it in line with other versions of this power. It now drains 35% endurance if unresisted, compared to 33% previously.
• Slightly increased the PvE Endurance Drain for Defender Electrical Blast Thunderous Blast to bring it in line with other versions of this power. It now drains 55% endurance if unresisted, compared to 50% previously.
• Defender Lingering Radiation powers -Regen was operating at 1/5th the scale of the equivalent Corruptor or Controller version. The base scale now matches across all three Archetypes. [Yay for Peep!]
• Revamped the Effects for Trick Arrow/Glue Arrow. Should cause fewer frame rate errors, appear more visible, and accurately reflect the radius of the glue patch.
Powers – PvP specific:
• Blaster Energy Blast Power Push now has a portion of it’s damage unresisted in PvP. Additionally, the Knockback portion of the power now follows standard suppression rules in PvP.
Emotes
• Most of the emotes that were not working properly for Kheldian Dwarf form were either modified, replaced, or disabled. Most of these changes were made to resolve issues with the Dwarf sinking into the groundplane or registration issues (i.e., shoving a hot dog into their noggin). The effect emotes include:
– Sit (and all of the new sitting poses)
– Ledgesit
– Lotus/Yoga
– Kneel
– Eat Donut/Eat Food/Drink
– Read Newspaper/Listen to Police Band
– Grief
– Batsmash
Tasks
• Fixed bug that sometimes assigned players to a mission location with no door in Atlas Park.
• Defeated Vahzilok in Faultline once again are counted properly for the Numina Task Force.
Critters
• Removed Undead status from the Infected villain group. They are diseased…not zombies!
City Zones
• Croatoa: Fixed Red Cap spawns in the zone and in missions so that Red Caps below level 35 appear again.
CITY OF VILLAINS
Powers
• Brutes attack powers will now generate Fury faster against high ranking enemies (including players in PvP)
• Traps: Poison Gas Trap should play the vomit animation on targets occasionally.
• Corruptor Bitter Freeze Ray’s Scourge attributes were set up incorrectly. As a result, it did not handle Scourge in PvE properly, resulting in lower damage output. This is now fixed.
• Corruptor Dreadful Wail’s Scourge was missing the Delay variable which made the Scourge damage appear before the animations were complete. This is now fixed.
• Changed the Long Help description on Lightning Rod so it no longer states you must target the ground for this power to work
• Mastermind Thug Henchmen: Some improvements made to the change in costumes when fully upgraded.
Badges
• Villains were not supposed to be able to earn the “Villain Disruptor” badge. Villains who earned this badge will have it revoked, and they will be unable to earn it any more.
I was tickled to get a police band mission last night to rescue a woman named “Betty Jo Bialovski” (though the newspaper called her “Nancy”) from the CoT, who had presumably kidnapped her because she possessed the cursed gemstone, the “Third Eye of Danger.”
Mal (as I knew he would be) was greatly amused.
Fine stuff.
From the official list:
11.28.06
Issue 8: To Protect and Serve
Headlines
Veteran Rewards: Now players will receive rewards for the time spent playing the game. New costume pieces, badges, powers, pets and more! Something new every 3 months!
Police Band and Safeguard Missions: Calling all Heroes! Bank Robberies, Sewer Bombings, Jail Breakouts and more villainous attacks are in progress! Monitor the police scanner and come to the rescue to thwart these diabolical schemes!
Fautlline: Rebuilding of ruined sections of Paragon City has been a long time goal for the city. The old Overbrook area, known today as Faultline, has made significant restoration progress. However, crime and crisis plague the area, requiring the vigilance of the cities’ Heroes.
COMBINED NOTES
Veteran Rewards
New powers are available across Paragon City and the Rogue Isles: Veteran Rewards! Now, as your account accrues time, in 3 month intervals, your characters will gain access to all new badges, abilities, costume pieces and more! For complete details please visit the Official City of Heroes or City of Villains web site:
http://www.cityofheroes.com/community/veteranrewards.html
Additionally, you can now visit PlayNC.com’s Account Management Page https://secure.plaync.com/cgi-bin/plaync_manage.pl to view details of your account and a listing of which Veteran Rewards are available to it!
Updater
Pocket D Changes
Powers
Tailor
Titles
Bases
Tasks
Titles
List of new or updated emotes:
Emote Invent
Emote Dance1
Emote Dance2
Emote Dance3
Emote Dance4
Emote Dance5
Emote Dance6
Emote EatDonut
Emote Donut
Emote EatFood
Emote Eat
Emote Food
Emote ListenPoliceBand (Heroes only)
Emote SitChair1
Emote SitChair2
Emote SitChair3
Emote SitBench1
Emote SitBench2
Emote SitBench3
Emote SitBench4
Emote SitExecutiveChair
Emote SitStool
Emote SitTable1
Emote SitTable2
Emote Teabag
Changes specific to 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.
Features of the “new” Faultline:
Police Band Missions
Paragon Police Department 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.
In addition to normal missions, the PPD will give out Safeguard Missions. You get Safeguard missions after performing three to five Police Band missions.
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.
Giant Monster Spawns Increased
Tasks
City Zones
Powers
Game
Changes specific to CITY OF VILLAINS
City Zones
Powers
Dominators
Tasks
Haven’t even downloaded yet, but a few notes showing up on the boards:
More to follow …
… that I8 is up and patches are downloading.
On 11/28/06 our regular server maintenance window will be extended to prepare for the launch of Issue 8: To Protect and Serve. Normally our downtime is reserved from 8AM CST to 10AM CST. Although we will restore the servers as soon as possible please note that this maintenance could take an additional two hours to complete. More information will be posted as it becomes available.
Quoth Lighthouse (emphasis mine):
It is true that there are no free character respecs with Issue 8. However, Veteran players who have played over 9 months will receive one free one per character that way, and Veteran players with 21 months (1 year, 9 months) will receive a second free one per character.
Everyone will be receiving a free respec in an update that will follow Issue 8. Castle talked about some of the changes included in this coming update on the blaster forums a bit here where he talked about some buffs to some blaster stuff. Because there will be these, and other, power changes,
it will warrant a free respec for everyone.So, we understand that everyone likes free respecs, but please understand that we only give them out when there are changes to powers that might lead people to want to change their builds because of those changes.
This isn’t stopping people from complaining that they aren’t getting freespecs every other Friday, or that the ones that are coming with VR will (gasp!) require you to actually go someplace to get it, and they aren’t giving away any plastic rocket ships or ponies, either! DOOOM!
Quoth Lighthouse (emphasis mine):
We want to thank everyone for their continued testing efforts on the Training Room server.
Issue 8 is in it’s final stages of testing. We’ve recently made a couple tweaks which we feel has properly prepared Issue 8 for a post-Thanksgiving Launch. We really appreciate everyone’s patience with the testing process as we work to ensure a smooth release.
Which immediately drew the standard collection of “Thanks!” and (of course) “OMG No I8 4 TGvg Weekend DOOOM sad cry They Should’ve Told Us 2 Weeks Ago DOOOOOM Devs Lied Players Cried!”
Quoth Castle on the subject of (gasp) Blaster improvements:
In an upcoming patch, here are a few things you’ll see:
Increased Maximum ranges for attacks like Blaze.
Some improvements for */Fire (No, no powers were switched out. No Fiery Embrace, I’m afraid. )
Some improvements for Fire/*
A very minor improvement for Gadgets…I mean, Devices! (Yeah, it was a dumb mistake — typing in haste and all of that.)
Okay, so Last Ice Dragon will like the Devices boost. The rest — boo-yah! Blaze’s range is the biggest danger Torchy has; even with an SO Range Increase in it, she still has to run up and practically kiss the mobs to use it. And if it’s “attacks like Blaze” — maybe Fiery Breath will get a boost, too! Woot!
Huge slew of messages over the weekend. A few notes:
And, for those who (cough) missed it: the latest patch notes on Test (which tie into some of the above):
COMBINED NOTES
Powers
• Changed more power effects to decrease reported frame rate loss.
Affected powers: Storm Summoning/Steamy Mist, Radiation Blast/Irradiate, Umbral Blast/Dark Extraction, Dark Armor/Oppressive Gloom, Superspeed, Trick Arrow/Flash Arrows
Veteran Rewards
• Updated the description of Base Item Claim badges to indicate that these rewards can be claimed more than once.
• Using a Veteran respec no longer removes all other saved respecs.
• You can now add Enhancement Slots to the Veteran Prestige sprints when you respec
Tailor
• Oriental Warrior armor pieces renamed to Onomichi Warrior
• Characters can have tails and wear trenchcoats at the same time
• Changed Veteran Arachnos chest to be different from the one awarded to players earlier
• Several new costume pieces added
Bases
• Tech teleporters in bases work again
• Players should no longer be getting needlessly kicked from bases.
Game
• Improved game stability
CITY OF HEROES
Tailor
• Players with only Hero access can use the Elf Ear, Imp Ear, Fairy ear, Demon Ear, and Vampire Ear costume selections.
CITY OF VILLAINS
• none