FC.31.20150819.6/.9 - Supervillain Onslaught Update

ladygadfly

Release Notes for FC.31.20150819.9:
This build is available on PTS now, 9/4/2015.
- Created new Action Figures for Supervillain Onslaught: Onslaught Medusa, Onslaught Gravitar, and Gentleman Grond. Added Action Figures to Villain Store for purchase.
- Reduced magnitude of UNTIL Defender weapons. Shifted placement of southest Onslaught target to be further from respawn point.
- Added custom Grond power icons.

Release Notes for FC.31.20150819.6:
This build is available on PTS now, 9/2/2015.

LIVE Fixes for Thursday
- Added new emote icons for both death reach emotes. Updated old emote with new icon for shaolin ready emote.
- Fixed issue with DeathReach01 emote not unlocking properly.
- Added "Really Big Deal" perk and title that you get for logging in during the 6th Anniversary Event.

Supervillain Onslaught Changes
- Onslaught Supervillains are now immune to control.
- Onslaught Supervillain damage improved by roughly 30%.
- Attacking an Onslaught Supervillain now only flags you for 3 minutes (down from 5).
- Once a player has been killed by an Onslaught Supervillain they cannot reward tokens for 60 seconds.
- Onslaught Supervillains are no longer healed by healing boosts.
- Onslaught Gear is now secondary gear. Existing Onslaught equipment on players may be broken.
- Onslaught Gear Passives should now work much better categorically. Should read much more clearly.
- Gravitic Ripple: Reduced the target caps on this power to reduce negative physics interactions.
- Gravitic Ripple: Damage increased by roughly 30%.
- Gravitic Ripple: Now has an energy cost. Gravitic Ripple: Now counts as a ranged power.
- Gravity Well: Reduced the target caps on this power to reduce the negative physics interactions.
- Nuclear Shockwave: Now properly has an energy cost.
- Nuclear Shockwave: Now counts as both melee and ranged damage
- Nuclear Shockwave: No longer has a cooldown.
- Nuclear Shockwave: Now requires being fully charged before it will activate.
- Nuclear Shockwave: Tooltips now correctly show both damage types.
- Lance Rain: Now correctly behaves as an AoE power.
- Lance Rain: Energy cost increased by roughly 50%. Lance Rain: Base damage decreased by roughly 50%.
- Endbringer's Grasp: Now has an energy cost.
- Endbringer's Grasp: Should no longer improperly persist and cause FX to play repeatedly.
- Added powers audio to Medusa and Gravitar
- Reduced pricing on Villain store power unlocks from 25K to 10K.
- Created new "Hermes Heavy Turret" critter. Replaced MCPD Protector power armor units with Hermes Heavy Turrets. Placed Hermes Heavy Turrets around all player respawn points. Placed extra turrets around Ren Center. Removed turrets from areas that weren't respawn points or Ren Center.
- Added 3 ranks of Guardian and Supervillain Perks with unlockable titles for Supervillain Onslaught; these are based on number of tokens guardian/villain tokens earned.
- Added "Uninvited Guest" perk for crashing the anniversary event as an Onslaught Villain.
- Fixed typo on ambient line for Onslaught contact.
- Added new supervillain audio lines. Added new mission lines.
- Added new weekly Onslaught mission that requires players to play a number of villain and hero missions to complete. Added new weekly reward pack.
- Adjusted placement of far west Onslaught target to be further from respawn point in Westside.
- Changed Kinetic Maelstrom and Earthblast FX to use Instanced geometry for performance reasons. Reduced debris duration on Kinetic Maelstrom.

Please format any bugs you find in the following format:
Bug
Where it happens
What happens

Please stay on topic in this PTS thread. We use bug reports from this thread to decide whether a PTS build is ready to go live, and so we need to make sure we're seeing everything in it. Please do discuss the changes, but if you find yourself writing about something that isn't specific to what's on PTS, then that should probably go here: http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/categories/gameplay-bugs1.

These player & moderator maintained threads are checked weekly by developers:
- http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/discussion/1198089/known-power-bugs
- http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/discussion/1194284/champions-online-alerts-issues
- http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/discussion/1199083/costume-bug-list
- http://forum.arcgames.com/championsonline/discussion/1198119/compiled-list-of-bugs-issues-and-qol-concerns-version-2-0

aiqa

I don't know if the other threads in the PTS forums are also read, but to be sure I'll add this here too.

Preliminary testing on Onslaught Gloves of the Sniper shows it's still not usefull.
Dps on my lightning builds dropped from 5k to 4.8k when switching from Vigil to the Onslaught item.
Of course there might be some specific uses like Power Armor, since the damage works on all the its attacks sperately, and maybe also attacks like Lead Tempest.

Possible changes:
- Make the damage bonus a percentage of the main attack, like on the Slicer item.
- Significantly buff the static damage bonus, but add an internal cooldown per target and lower the damage for AoE attacks.

djwinza

BUG

Tried to log in and test, PC restarted within 10 minutes of logging in. Tried again, same result.

Tried other Arc/Cryptic games, no issues.

When my PC fully restarts, it's temperature was unchanged, and no external programs caused the restart. Is there something in the code that damages or doesn't work well with nVidia GeForce GTS 450? It's the only thing I can think of since I haven't heard anything about PC restarts from other players and the GFX cards I have aren't a normal standard for most PCs.

draogn

The gear and powers still cost too much, especially now that they are fairly useless secondaries. 10,000 villain tokens is 2,000 kills with out the dailies, 5,000 tokens is a 1,000 kills per piece.

Having ways besides gambling and hoping the rampages will 1) not fail 2) award you a token to get good primary gear isn't a bad thing

pantagruel01

draogn said:

The gear and powers still cost too much, especially now that they are fairly useless secondaries. 10,000 villain tokens is 2,000 kills with out the dailies, 5,000 tokens is a 1,000 kills per piece.

It appears that the intent is that most tokens will come from dailies. If you do a minimal daily (10 kills) you'll get 300 tokens per day, which is 33 days for a new power, which unlocks for all your characters. That's really not all that unreasonable difficulty.

I'd like to propose an additional mission for "play all three villains", though.

biffsmackwell

I gotta say I'm not excited that it's going to be secondaries now. I thought this gear was for people who wanted an alternative to the Rampage grind. Is there any reason you can't offer both primaries and secondaries? Even if they don't go live with the Onslaught update, adding them later on would be fine, I'd still grind out the tokens for them. I see myself playing these Onslaught villains less if it only means secondaries.

crypticbuxom

The number of tokens needed for secondaries is still crazy and needs to be reduced. In the long run, players are going to get worn out if they have to farm so many tokens to get their gear for each of their characters.

Make it lower so that people don't get burned by the sheer numbers.​​

biffsmackwell

I think it really needs some live testing to find out what's "too many" tokens and what isn't. I know 5 tokens per player kill doesn't sound like a lot, but putting it into practice in a real zone, not just whoever showed up to PTS that day, could make a substantial difference.

darqaura2

crypticbuxom said:

The number of tokens needed for secondaries is still crazy and needs to be reduced. In the long run, players are going to get worn out if they have to farm so many tokens to get their gear for each of their characters.



Make it lower so that people don't get burned by the sheer numbers.​​

I agree. Making them un-moddable secondaries makes them as a reward less enticing.

the cost on these needs to go down or in months from now the content will be less used than some of our Rampages.

draogn

pantagruel01 said:

draogn said:

The gear and powers still cost too much, especially now that they are fairly useless secondaries. 10,000 villain tokens is 2,000 kills with out the dailies, 5,000 tokens is a 1,000 kills per piece.

It appears that the intent is that most tokens will come from dailies. If you do a minimal daily (10 kills) you'll get 300 tokens per day, which is 33 days for a new power, which unlocks for all your characters. That's really not all that unreasonable difficulty.

I'd like to propose an additional mission for "play all three villains", though.

That's a month for a single item for one character. That's not quite as bad as most Korean grinds, but it's getting there.

mrhinkypunk

As it stands Nuclear Shockwave is one of the worst powers in the game, maybe add something more interesting that just two bits of damage to it? I don't know how you made a worse power and mini mines currently is but you did... It's like mini mines without a CD that you have to charge annoyingly and self root yourself with a lazy animation. If anyone buys that with their 2k kills worth in tokens then they're gonna be sorely disappointed...

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pantagruel01

draogn said:

That's a month for a single item for one character. That's not quite as bad as most Korean grinds, but it's getting there.

First of all, it's an account-level unlock. Secondly, the real measure of grinds is the number of hours it takes, and this is something like 9 hours, which is not very long.

notyuu

Ok....the onslaught gear as secondary gear is still rather ineffective when compared to vigilante gear, netting a rough performance loss of about 20-40%(varied from toon to toon), to overcome this, I suggest the following:

-Have the onslaught gear have the exact same stats as vigilante gear, and have set bonuses on the gear which at 2 pieces grants you +30% damage resistance (or maybe a +20 to super stats?) and at 3 pieces triggers the effect on the secondry offensive piece you have equipped (such as the DoT effect from the slicer gloves)

draogn

pantagruel01 said:

draogn said:

That's a month for a single item for one character. That's not quite as bad as most Korean grinds, but it's getting there.

First of all, it's an account-level unlock. Secondly, the real measure of grinds is the number of hours it takes, and this is something like 9 hours, which is not very long.

That is one measure for a grind, but not the only one. The amount of time will greatly depend on the number of players participating and how quickly someone can complete the dailies or kill the 2000 targets. But powers are not the only thing in that vendor.

pantagruel01

notyuu said:

Ok....the onslaught gear as secondary gear is still rather ineffective when compared to vigilante gear

Not sure how effective it should be, 5,000 villain credits may well be less effort than 150,000Q (we don't have enough experience with people farming it to say), but it should certainly outperform stuff like Armadillo and generic purple secondaries. I'd probably add some basic superstats (maybe the same as Armadillo gear) and then look at the secondary benefits. The masks, in particular, are really boring; maybe replace them with some legacy benefits that no longer exist in modern gear, such as legacy Perception gear.

chaelk

oh yay. Onslaught gear is now a secondary and by the look of lack of stats is another, only SS gear. OH well, good thing there's still the normal purples ingame, for those who don't stack everything into their SS's.​​

roughbearmattach

Stats on the secondary gear just need to be better. What about something like Vigilante boost to PSS, plus a boost to both SSS?

mrhinkypunk

roughbearmattach said:

Stats on the secondary gear just need to be better. What about something like Vigilante boost to PSS, plus a boost to both SSS?

I think if it was just +12 to +18 to both SS's it'd be probably be a really nice alternative to vigi? Or would people think that as too much?

jaazaniah1

I was hoping that one could slot some a mod into the new secondaries. Maybe no more than R3 for each.​​

xrazamax

Where was all this push back on Onslaught gear being secondaries when a ton of people were asking for it in the last thread??

The only positive aspect of Onslaught gear as secondaries is it will require people to still que for rampages. That is about it. Vigilante gear works great as a reason to farm Questionite, and should not be replaced as top tier secondaries, onslaught gear should just be gear to optimize particular builds. I rather not see it just out perform justice or vigilante outright.

notyuu said:

Ok....the onslaught gear as secondary gear is still rather ineffective when compared to vigilante gear, netting a rough performance loss of about 20-40%(varied from toon to toon), to overcome this, I suggest the following:

-Have the onslaught gear have the exact same stats as vigilante gear, and have set bonuses on the gear which at 2 pieces grants you +30% damage resistance (or maybe a +20 to super stats?) and at 3 pieces triggers the effect on the secondry offensive piece you have equipped (such as the DoT effect from the slicer gloves)

Then it will just be flat out better than vigilante

ladygladfly said:

Onslaught Supervillains are now immune to control.

I would hope this could be turned into really high resistance instead of immunity, as players with CC focused builds should be able to give at least some form of holds/roots/snares on Supervillains. Otherwise it kinda really feels unfair to them.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I don't think Onslaught gear as a secondary is necessarily bad. However, I am concerned about the fact it mitigates the need for vigilante - and THAT only bothers me because vigilante gear is a major sink for Questionite. I worry what will happen to the Q market once people ignore buying gear that is 150k Q ( x3 for a full set).

To be fair, the affect Onslaught has on Questionite rates may be minimized by the addition of the new tokens being sold at 10k Q. Either way, there needs to be more uses for Questionite. Reducing demand for vigilante gear further weakens the value of Q - it is just something to consider.

christy300

you could add Grond footsteps audio in same time.....

sterga

What about just have +20 to various stats? As in the gear has multiple versions for stats. It would then be a choice if you want 44 to your pss or +20 to whatever stat plus other effects.

Another option is have a single mod slot so that you could add the stat of your choice, but probably cap it. Maybe even make it so that the rank of the mod doesn't matter, it just gives you a flat amount based on the stat on the mod. That might actually make the Vet's core of might useful. *gasp*!

Might be nice to have the option for mix 'n' match Vigilante / Onslaught gear. The gear we have is already OP for the entire game. Having gear that's blatantly more powerful is pointless.

notyuu

xrazamax said:

Where was all this push back on Onslaught gear being secondaries when a ton of people were asking for it in the last thread??

The only positive aspect of Onslaught gear as secondaries is it will require people to still que for rampages. That is about it. Vigilante gear works great as a reason to farm Questionite, and should not be replaced as top tier secondaries, onslaught gear should just be gear to optimize particular builds. I rather not see it just out perform justice or vigilante outright.

notyuu said:

Ok....the onslaught gear as secondary gear is still rather ineffective when compared to vigilante gear, netting a rough performance loss of about 20-40%(varied from toon to toon), to overcome this, I suggest the following:

-Have the onslaught gear have the exact same stats as vigilante gear, and have set bonuses on the gear which at 2 pieces grants you +30% damage resistance (or maybe a +20 to super stats?) and at 3 pieces triggers the effect on the secondry offensive piece you have equipped (such as the DoT effect from the slicer gloves)

Then it will just be flat out better than vigilante

And yet given that it is going to somewhat harder to acquire than vigilante gear, why shouldn't it be better? (250 tokens per daily mission + 5 tokens per player/target kill..which is rather hard to do given the lackluster strength of the villans, combined with gear costing 5K tokens per piece...)
after all, justice gear is better than legion stuff, due to being somewhat harder to get.

pantagruel01

Bug/Exploit: Until heavy turrets have shorter range than Gravitar (probably all of them, I was just using 200' attacks).

xrazamax

notyuu said:

And yet given that it is going to somewhat harder to acquire than vigilante gear, why shouldn't it be better? (250 tokens per daily mission + 5 tokens per player/target kill..which is rather hard to do given the lackluster strength of the villans, combined with gear costing 5K tokens per piece...)
after all, justice gear is better than legion stuff, due to being somewhat harder to get.

Because players are strong enough as it is. That really is the main reason I would not like to see gear that out preforms the best existing gear in every way. Having gear that specializes in different areas is great, so I like the effects on Onslaught gear. However, with simply making onslaught superior to vigilante, vigilante will become mitigated to the same role as Mercenary gear - it will be gear that is simply passed over because if you are going to spend time farming, you might as well farm for the good stuff.

riverocean

xrazamax said:

ladygladfly said:

Onslaught Supervillains are now immune to control.

I would hope this could be turned into really high resistance instead of immunity, as players with CC focused builds should be able to give at least some form of holds/roots/snares on Supervillains. Otherwise it kinda really feels unfair to them.

Speaking as a player who loves CC builds - I'm going to say leave the immunity there. Having played as an Onslaught villain - there are just too many ways crowd control makes an Onslaught villains life rough. Remember, they have no real travel powers. They are basically slow moving bags of walking HP. Just a few players running manipulator builds can neuter their best attacks (all charges) over and over again.

I sadly wish that wasn't the case. But I know our fellow players and once they figure out they can string stun or sleep the Onlsaughts, they will abuse it. I'd like for the Onslaughts to have some reasonable chance of completing their missions.

Also when specced right CC powers still place debuffs on targets. I imagine we'll see lots of slows, telepathy dots, and other debuffs stacked on them.

darqaura2

xrazamax said:

notyuu said:

And yet given that it is going to somewhat harder to acquire than vigilante gear, why shouldn't it be better? (250 tokens per daily mission + 5 tokens per player/target kill..which is rather hard to do given the lackluster strength of the villans, combined with gear costing 5K tokens per piece...)
after all, justice gear is better than legion stuff, due to being somewhat harder to get.

Because players are strong enough as it is. That really is the main reason I would not like to see gear that out preforms the best existing gear in every way. Having gear that specializes in different areas is great, so I like the effects on Onslaught gear. However, with simply making onslaught superior to vigilante, vigilante will become mitigated to the same role as Mercenary gear - it will be gear that is simply passed over because if you are going to spend time farming, you might as well farm for the good stuff.

Then Onslaught Gear should be made equivalent or slightly better.

itsbrou

I'm of the opinion that gear should be equivalent, but be themed after the content we're running, so it seems like our character has changed in some way from running that content. What's happening on PTS is close.

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pantagruel01

Suggestion on Onslaught itself: make Onslaughters (both villains and heroes) show up on the map, like teammates do.

riverocean

A suggestion regarding immersion. Right now the Onslaught content feels a little bit shoehorned into the setting. Here's a few things I think might help:

- Near the primary Onslaught Agent set up a "hazard zone". Similar to what we have for Mechanon content. Some police officers, a barricade. So that it feels like the authorities are responding to rampaging supervillains.

- Have a police officer NPC there who will offer an explanation of what's going on when clicked on. For example: "I'm glad you showed up! It's chaos out here. We have reports that some of the most dangerous villains on earth are terrorizing the city.. etc..."

_ Also we need a reason for the Onslaught targets to exist. Right now I have no idea why they are there. Are they special stations set up to help avert the crisis? Just what are they exactly - tell the players so it's clear.

It's not a huge change and would add a little bit more atmosphere to the event. Also, maybe coming up with some kind of motivation for heroes to suddenly assume the role of villains. That part still feels a little rough.

kamokami

I'm fine with the token cost for the gear. Seems like it'll take time but not too much time

pantagruel01

Bug: Gravitar's rupture doesn't give any bonuses if the target dies

crypticbuxom

I will say that I will play this system regularly if the token cost for gear isn't so high simply because I have a lot of characters. Because of how Justice gear is such a non guaranteed token grind, I only got three sets and then gave up. Add content and rewards to said content that encourages players to keep going back to it without having to pull their hair out for how tedious it is to acquire.​​

chaelk

xrazamax wrote: »

Where was all this push back on Onslaught gear being secondaries when a ton of people were asking for it in the last thread??

The only positive aspect of Onslaught gear as secondaries is it will require people to still que for rampages. That is about it. Vigilante gear works great as a reason to farm Questionite, and should not be replaced as top tier secondaries, onslaught gear should just be gear to optimize particular builds. I rather not see it just out perform justice or vigilante outright.

Ok....the onslaught gear as secondary gear is still rather ineffective when compared to vigilante gear, netting a rough performance loss of about 20-40%(varied from toon to toon), to overcome this, I suggest the following:

-Have the onslaught gear have the exact same stats as vigilante gear, and have set bonuses on the gear which at 2 pieces grants you +30% damage resistance (or maybe a +20 to super stats?) and at 3 pieces triggers the effect on the secondry offensive piece you have equipped (such as the DoT effect from the slicer gloves)

Then it will just be flat out better than vigilante

Onslaught Supervillains are now immune to control.
I would hope this could be turned into really high resistance instead of immunity, as players with CC focused builds should be able to give at least some form of holds/roots/snares on Supervillains. Otherwise it kinda really feels unfair to them.

you answered your first question yourself " I rather not see it just outperform justice or vigilante. outright." same everytime new gear comes out, the ones with it, don't want others to have something better or easier to get. The also stated reason was to be able to use it WITH Rampage gear.

and if people have given up on queuing for rampages because of the awful RNG?

The only consolation is, they can't put mods in, so npo DUC on a 10% damage gear.​​

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aiqa

I don't see a big problem with token prices, the daily missions are clearly meant to be the main source. You can get one piece in a few weeks doing only the missions.

carrionbaggage

Regarding the Onslaught adjustments, are there any known issues from the previous thread that are still in the process of being programmed?

aiqa

After playing around with a villains a bit with CB, my feeling about them are a little mixed.

The damage buff made Medusa and Grond able to kill even quite tanky builds, but by comparison Gravitar is still quite weak against players. The high damage does have a downside, squishy builds are now easy pickings for Grond and Medusa once they have unlocked their attacks. I am not sure how to improve on this without complicated mechanics that will probably have their own problems.

With the CC immunity the supervillains are much more fun to use, but this also makes that very hard to fight with melee builds. All the supervillains have strong ranged attacks which they can spam while their default jump can easily keep them out of range of any melee players almost all the time. I would like to see NTTG limit their movement abilities to that of a normal player.

Stealth is still an odd mechanic. With the supervillains now immune to so much things it's odd this is kept as their single weakness. But it's also the only way for squishies to now have a chance at surviving for a bit.

About the gear.
If Onslaught Gear kept as secondaries I do think the questionite store needs an update. An semi-easy idea is to add TP devices of the TP's currently available in game.

aiqa

The rewards on the "Happy 6th Anniversary!" missions are really very nice.

Bug: Right clicking the "Serpent Armor" unlock unequips a justice or onslaught set bonus item.

kaiserin

Culled some off-topic posts.

Edit Bug: Ran some tests with Aiqa against Medusa. Villains are not repel-immune and I was able to shove Medusa around with the wind block, it also greatly hampers her melee abilities. This needs to be addressed as much worse things can come of this.

Really, why don't repel abilities grant repel resistance stacks in general? >.>​​

spinnytop

kaizerin said:

Really, why don't repel abilities grant repel resistance stacks in general? >.>​​

Because repel is already weak enough as it is. If your target became immune before you were even done fully maintaining a repel power, it would effectively have been neutered into nonexistence.

pantagruel01

Yeah, the villains are still vulnerable to both repels and interrupts. Incidentally, there's only one way for a player to get repel resistance: there's a legacy gear secondary that grants +50% knock and repel resistance.

Which, incidentally, is another thing that might be popular as an option for Onslaught gear, and a bit different from anything currently available.

mrhinkypunk

pantagruel01 said:

Yeah, the villains are still vulnerable to both repels and interrupts. Incidentally, there's only one way for a player to get repel resistance: there's a legacy gear secondary that grants +50% knock and repel resistance.

Which, incidentally, is another thing that might be popular as an option for Onslaught gear, and a bit different from anything currently available.

I don't know if I'd call repels too much of a problem, and interrupts although they make the devices weaker if an enemy happens to have one adds atleast some sense of skill to versing one if you time the interrupts. Maybe this new gravitar repel thing would be annoying though if used on you seeing as you don't actually have a TP repels will feel stronger on you.

circleofpsi

I'm really disappointed on on how this is going on right now , we had value comments of a QOL Power, that NEEDS to be released, and not a joke

carrionbaggage

Judging by this and other threads discussing Onslaught Gear, its current implementation is still leaving players unsatisfied. Below is a suggestion:

Build-Your-Own Onslaught Secondaries
Replace the current Onslaught secondaries with just one gear piece for each Secondary slot, with bare-bones bonuses. Each of these pieces has 3 slots, and can only be slotted with Onslaught mods purchased from the Onslaught vendor. Onslaught mods are similar to regular mods, but with adjusted values and without the Core/Enhancement/Armoring limitation.

The gear is Bind On Pickup, but the mods can be traded. This would offer:

• grind-phobic players an alternative way to purchase some Onslaught goodies (they'd still have to participate in Onslaught for the base gear)
  
• an economic reason to continue participating in Onslaught after players gear up their character(s)
  
• stimulation of trade and interaction between players
  
• another Questionite sink when unslotting mods

With this system, if a player mods an Onslaught Secondary for the same bonuses as a piece of Vigilante Gear, the Vigilante piece typically ends up better numerically (see chart below). However, the flexibility of the Onslaught Secondary would still make it desirable for tailor-made bonuses. Vigilante Gear remains at the top for its respective bonuses, while Onslaught Gear offers a new level of customization.

The following link presents a table to help clarify the concept:
Proposed Onslaught Gear Table

circleofpsi

Yes! Thank You So Much For This!: Added powers audio to Medusa and Gravitar!

Thank You!, this also fixed the Mind Break, that had no sound, thank you thank you!

What About Shadow of Doubt, can we fix that next please?

carrionbaggage

Bug?: Purchasing a Villain Unlock only unlocks it for that character (not account-wide). If this is intentional, I would suggest reducing the token cost.

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pantagruel01

It's particularly silly for villain unlocks, since it makes absolutely no difference what character you use to play a given villain, other than I suppose for which character can get the subsequent tokens.