Issue 26 Page 1

Issue 26

April 28th, 2019, Patch 1

• Excelsior Shard added to the pool

April 28th, 2019, Patch 2

• Indomitable and Everlasting shards added to the pool with +100% XP Boost
• Login Queue System enabled - Shards limited to 1,500 players
• 15th Anniversary badge added

April 29th, 2019

• City Zones set to unload if empty, may cause slightly increased loading times when entering an empty zone.
• Players can now skip the login queue if reconnecting within 10 minutes of a previous disconnect.
• All logging for player information has been disabled

May 1st, 2019

• Architect Entertainment -50% XP Nerf added to discourage farming missions from flooding the system.
• Weekday +50% XP Boost added on all servers to encourage players to spread out playtime away from weekends.
• Weekends on Everlasting and Indomitable will be set to +250% XP Boost
• Leveling Pacts disabled due to instability.
• Fixed scenario that allowed players to create Architect missions with enemies that actually healed you instead of damaging you.
• Fixed bug that caused players to receive multiple copies of the 15th Anniversary Badge reward

May 5th, 2019

• Super Packs Added
• XP Boosts adjusted for servers, on permanently until otherwise noted.
• Character Shard Transfers enabled

May 7th, 2019

General

• All servers now set to +50% XP Boost
  • There was an issue with Respecs granted from leveling badges; they were following the old limit of holding a maximum of 3 respecs at a time, which means you got the respec for levels 10, 20 and 30 but not 40 and 50. This should be fixed now
  • Added free respec for all due to the cooldown issue and the level 40 badge not awarding a respec (may take a day or two to arrive)
  • Fixed the infinite cooldown bug affecting some powers

Tasks

• Arcs marked Developer's Choice in Architect Entertainment will no longer be affected by the Architect XP reduction (This is an experimental change, and may not work as expected - in the event of bugs, we’ll work on fixes)
  • The minimum level for Positron TF Part 1 has been lowered to 8

Badges

• As the #badge-hoarders have noted, Echo: Faultline did not have any exploration badges. This patch fixes that oversight, returning three badges that were in the original Faultline zone before Issue 8 to Echo: Faultline, and adding 8 new exploration badges and a zone accolade
  • Moved "Newsman", "Faultless Mystic" and "Apex" from Faultline to Echo: Faultline
  • Added "Riveting", "Upcycled" and "Rock Bottom" to Faultline
  • Added "Forsaken", "Pristine", "Claim Denied", "Spare Parts" and "Dug Too Deep" to Echo: Faultline
  • Added "Epicenter", Echo: Faultline zone accolade.
  • Added "Fashion Victim" for spending 50,000,000 inf on the tailor. Rewards a Free tailor token for your trouble

May 9th, 2019

• Arenas Enabled
• Salvage Market seeded to keep costs down: 10K for common salvage, 100K for uncommon salvage, 1M for rare salvage, and 50K for a Brainstorm Idea

May 16th, 2019

General

• Halcyon has been renamed to Reunion (EU).
• For the next week each account will be given 20 transfer tokens every 3 days to allow for easier migration.
• The XP Boosters in Super Packs have been replaced with charges of the Experienced power (which grants Patrol XP).
• Moved the Respec Recipe from the Merit Vendor (formerly 50 Reward Merits) to P2W (10 million influence).
• Completing a Morality Mission now rewards 30 merits regardless of whether the player switched, reinforced, or double-reinforced their alignment.
• The costume change delay timer has been lowered to 15 seconds.

Custom XP Rates

• The base XP rate on all shards is now back to 100% (AE rewards still halved outside of Dev Choice content).
• You can now acquire +25%, +50%, and +100% XP boosters for free from the P2W Vendor (or the Transact 4 Victory vendor in Praetoria).
• These boosters will reduce your inf income by the same amount they boost your XP gain.
• The boosters last for 1 hour of in-game time, but you can acquire up to 8 hours at a time.
• The boosters stop working immediately at level 50 - Veteran Levels must be earned normally.
• The boosters can be deleted from the Powers window (right click > Delete Power).
• Please note that this is an experimental feature, it may be altered or removed without notice.

Power

• Beta Decay (Tanker, Scrapper, Brute, Blaster): the "first target" 10% recharge buff should no longer erroneously stack for all foes in range. The 2.5% per target recharge buff will continue to stack as expected. Max recharge buff with 10 targets should be +35%.
• Beta Decay (Blaster): Will now require a target for it's "first target" 10% recharge buff to be applied.
• Bio Armor > Evolving Armor: Fixed a bug where the stacking portion of the buff was overlapping 50% of the time.
• Frost Bite: Fixed a bug with the damage scale for this power which caused it to heal targets.
• Paragon Police > Call for Backup: this power will no longer endlessly summon PPD reinforcements. It previously attempted to limit itself to 3 uses by doing weird things with Stealth which didn't work; it now uses the Meter attribute.
• AV Purple Triangles now provide protection against OnlyAffectsSelf.

Bug Fixes

• The PPD in Kings Row will no longer infinitely multiply using the "Call for Backup" power.
• Patrol XP should now work again. It was not compatible with server-wide XP buffs.

May 30th, 2019

General

• Added power cooldown indicators as a WIP option, accessible through Options > Window > Beta Settings.
• Fixed a couple of issues with the Cathedral of Pain that could cause it to get stuck if all the Obelisks were destroyed or the Aspect of Rularuu was defeated right when the Willforges respawned.
• Replaced the Jetpack Suppliers in the Shadow Shard with P2W Field Agents.
• Some unused Pandora's Box SSA contacts were being introduced by other contacts; this should no longer happen.
• Fixed a server crash when a player in the final stage of character creation disconnected from the queue server during an unusually long SQL wait queue.
• Fixed a client crash when putting an enhancement in the Auction House (OuroDev PR #66 & #70).
• Fixed a client crash seen during activities with many active power effects, such as the Rikti mothership and Hamidon raids, by switching to 64-bit FX/Sequencer handles.
• Fixed a client crash in the UI drawing code if a pet has a creator but no owner.
• Connections from the client to the QueueServer were not encrypted; they now are. In addition, encryption keys have been upgraded from 512 to 4096 bits.

Base Editor

• "Apply to Room" and "Apply to Base" will now work to fill an entire block floor-to-ceiling.
• Added an experimental option to use outdoor lighting in supergroup bases. It is recommended you try it with different skies to find one suitable for your base style. Outdoor lighting disables the dynamic lighting used in base rooms and from base items; there's (at the moment) no way to have both.
• Replaced the "Exit" buttons with an "Options" menu with options for Default Sky, Lighting Type, Grid Size, Angle Snap, Room Clipping and Hidden Markers. The hotkeys and slash commands still work, this is just for ease of discovery of the new features.
• Yes, new items are coming, they just weren't ready for this patch.

Graphics

• Offloaded all the hardware-only physics effects to the CPU. This results in the same physics quality as enabling PhysX hardware, as has been requested, without having to actually update the PhysX libraries. The reason it's being done this way is because updating the libraries would break the game client for other servers that share the same game files. The impact on the CPU is negligible on modern hardware.
• Modified the Glacier FX so it can be looked at from below.
• Improved particle effects for Burst Of Speed power in Blaster/Martial Manipulation secondary.
• Improved the Ki Push FX from Martial Combat.
• Lowered the saturation of the reflection cubemap used in the tailor, to better display colors while in the costume creator.
• General improvements to many chest emblems, chest details and supergroup emblems: cleaned edges, reduced compression, standardized resolution.
• Added a second color on many chest and shield emblems that previously only took a single color.
• Repairs/improvements to Face textures to help with skin tone matching and reduction of uncanny valley. The Medusa face was missing the entire blue channel in its diffuse map, this has been reconstructed based on clues in the other parts of this face.
• Improvements to the Makeup color masks for female heads; mostly blurs the edges of the lipstick so it blends better and fits onto the lips more fully when the player chooses heads with different shaped features.
• Fixed a glitch with the Buckled Leather top and alpha channels on chest emblems.

Powers

• Immobilize Powers in Controller and Dominator primary power sets should no longer make their targets immune to KnockUp. KnockBack will be converted to KnockDown. This helps sets like Ice and Earth, as their AOE Immobilize power will no longer make their AOE Knockback power useless.
• Cold Domination for Controllers and Masterminds now have a Minimal FX option, just as Defenders and Corruptors do.
• Archery animations should now work properly. No more floor kick animation when trying to fire an Acid Arrow, among other things.
• Rain of Arrows animation has been reduced from 4 to 2 seconds. Base recharge time has been increased 5 seconds to compensate.
• Bio Armor > Hard Carapace: This power should now offer damage resistance in PvP.
• Stalker's Ice Melee should now crit on PvP.
• Flash Freeze should now affect flying enemies.
• Glacier should now be usable while flying.
• Fixed an error that allowed players to create Shield Defense characters with Claws, Dual Blades, Ninja Sword, Spines or Staff Fighting primaries. These characters always were broken and unplayable.
• Scrapper's Shinobi-Iri should now be able to accept Jump enhancement sets.
• Sentinel's Beam Rifle > Refractor Beam should now accept Defense Debuff sets.
• Doppelgangers from players with the following powersets will no longer spawn without any powers:
  • Blaster Support > Ninja Training
  • Blaster Support > Plant Manipulation
  • Blaster Support > Radiation Manipulation
  • Brute Defense > Radiation Armor
  • Brute Melee > Radiation Melee
  • Dominator Assault > Radioactive Assault
  • Mastermind Buff > Cold Domination
  • Scrapper Defense > Radiation Armor
  • Scrapper Melee > Radiation Melee
  • Sentinel Defense > Bio Organic Armor
  • Sentinel Defense > Radiation Armor
  • Sentinel Defense > Super Reflexes
  • Sentinel Ranged > Beam Rifle
  • Sentinel Ranged > Water Blast
  • Stalker Defense > Radiation Armor
  • Stalker Melee > Radiation Melee
  • Stalker Melee > Staff Fighting
  • Tanker Defense > Radiation Armor
  • Tanker Melee > Radiation Melee
  • Tanker Melee > Spines

Rewards

• Patrol XP can now be consumed in Architect Rewards mode and/or with a bonus XP multiplier. It will always add 50% to the base XP earned.
• The conversion rate from Vanguard Merits to Reward Merits has been increased from 10:1 to 30:1. The intent of the conversion rate is for a Mothership raid to award between 30 and 50 Reward Merits, with Hamidon rewarding 80 Reward Merits as it requires a lot more setup and coordination. The initial ratio of 10:1 was set on a small server, and it is entirely too good for the kind of population that Homecoming supports.
• Rikti War Zone pylons now drop 3 Vanguard Merits when destroyed, for a total of 60 Vanguard Merits for all 20 pylons.
• Rikti Drop Ships and Patrol Ships now drop 6 Reward Merits and 10 Vanguard Merits when destroyed.
• Fixed an issue with Morality Missions not resetting the mission owner's alignment points on completion in some cases. This does not apply to teammates, only the mission owner.
• Increased the reward for completing a Morality Mission to 40 Reward Merits. Originally this was lowered from 50 to 20 based on datamined times it took to receive a new Morality Mission after completing one, but that time was skewed by the above bug allowing players to run Morality Missions back to back.
• The reward table at the end of the Statesman Miss Liberty Task Force and Lord Recluse Task Force stated that the Synthetic Hamidon could be picked once every 24 hours, and if you had ran the Task Force before the 24 hours were up it granted a Single Origin enhancement instead. However, the timer on the reward table itself was 18 hours, leaving a window of 6 hours in which you thought you would get a SHO, but got a SO instead. This has been fixed by lowering the 24-hour check to 18 hours.
• Death From Below will now gradually grant less Experience Points after level 10. The effect is based on the experience points required for each level, so it has a built-in curve that starts with a very minor decrease and ramps up until level 20. Please see GM Jimmy's post below for more details on this change. Jimmy nerfs.

June 5th, 2019

• Added over 200 items to the base editor, under the "Nature" and "Vehicles" tabs.
• The 40 Reward Merits from Morality Missions will now award after you make your choice to switch or not, if you are given a choice. If you select "Choose Nothing", you will not get the 40 Reward Merits. Your alignment points will not reset in this case, so you can run another Morality Mission immediately to claim the Reward Merits.
• The Death from Below scaling XP booster will now stack with XP boosters from P2W.
• Sudden Acceleration: the Crafted (not Attuned) version of this IO set had its set bonuses active when below the exemplar level, like purple sets, but it isn't a purple set. So it no longer does that.
• Fixed a client crash when moving towards the exit of Brickstown under certain graphic settings.
• Turned Null the Gull into a Merit Rewards dispenser. Rolled back because Jimmy didn't find it funny.

External Links

• Issue 26, Page 1
• May 30th, 2019
• June 5th, 2019