FC.31.20220422.3 - Lockbox/Temp Devices

kaiserin

Lockbox

• Added Heraldry costumes to the pts lockbox store.
• Added Shining Knight auras to the pts lockbox store.

Costumes

• Added Chainmail 2 pattern to Chest and Leg tights.

Alerts
Vigilance Mission

• The Vigilance mission has been reworked. Players with the current mission will be able to complete it if they currently have it active.
• New Vigilance: Complete any custom alert daily mission 3 times, rewards Questionite Ore, Silver Recognition and UNTIL Recognition. Repeatable weekly.

Devices

• Many temporary devices are receiving changes to address various balance issues.
• Known issues: Many of the devices have been given temporary tooltips over the messy auto-generated ones that may not reflect everything the device does.

Modular System Devices

• Can no longer stack. Harmon Labs alert now drops a box that contains one of these devices that stacks up to 20.

Nighthawk Devices

• Can no longer stack. Franklin Stone's Penthouse alert now drops a box that contains one of these devices that stacks up to 20.

UNTIL Recognition Limited Devices

• Reduced charge count to 1.

UNTIL Recognition Summon Devices

• Fixed an issue where many of the summoned entities were not considered pets for the purposes of power interactions.
• All summon devices in this store are now toggle effects to match other summon devices. Only one can be active at a time.

Argent Neutralizing Taser

• Updated the hold effect on this device to apply a Stun.

Bleak One Minion Net

• Updated the hold effect on this device to apply a Paralyze.

Necrotic Disruptor

• Updated the hold effect on this device to apply a Paralyze.

Qularr Adhesive Grenades

• Updated the hold effect on this device to apply a Stun.
• Updated the root effect on this device to apply a regular Root.

Argent Neutralizing Taser

• Fixed an issue with this device's FX not playing properly.

Steelhead Flamethrower

• Fixed damaged being set to level 1.

​​

jaazaniah1

The shield clips through various blocks. Needs fixing. I really, really hope that all those body part specific auras are rare drops. They are very similar to other auras we have and who needs more of the same.

hallsofwalls

Bug
Heraldry Gloves
For female avatars only, the Heraldry Gloves are not available by selecting "both" hands in the tailor. You have to choose it on the left and right hand individually, or by searching in the unlocked costumes tab.

lillysaturn

Huh ? Nighthawk Devices can not longer stack? What do you mean by this? Modular devices same? The Flamethrower to Lvl 1 ? Srys ?

h4forums

what is even the reason for nerfing all these until devices? few people bothered to use them, and reducing charge count from 3 to 1 just makes them even worse.

wizeman

h4forums wrote: »

what is even the reason for nerfing all these until devices? few people bothered to use them, and reducing charge count from 3 to 1 just makes them even worse.

It's likely their plan to make most device pets into toggles with a shared limit as was started with the Q-Store ones. However, I recently shared info about unique things the UNTIL Rec Vendor pets could do on a Discord the devs are in so that may have sped this nerf along. Reducing uses from 3 to 1 was beyond my expectations though, but so was the vehicle nerf and many others. I won't be coming back with the devs still rendering things useless like this.

jaazaniah1

h4forums wrote: »

what is even the reason for nerfing all these until devices? few people bothered to use them, and reducing charge count from 3 to 1 just makes them even worse.

I hear you. I tried to get some use out of such devices when I first started playing and rapidly found out that all they were good for was vendor trash. At least this part is not a change to something important.

atlassarnosian

kaiserin#0958 wrote: »

Lockbox

• Added Heraldry costumes to the pts lockbox store.

Costumes

• Added Chainmail 2 pattern to Chest and Leg tights.

Was rather hoping there'd be straps to the shield rather than it floating out like that.


This image shows that there are arm accessories to these. Are they unique to the set or are they something else? Because they're not within the lockbox contents.

spookyspectre

It would be awesome if the New Harmon Taser could get updated as well. Fingers crossed.

metalheart

Already dissected this armor to allocate to different toons. My only grief, Still no bikini type chest plates!😕

spordelia

I believe that Glint Aura (White) and (Rainbow) are swapped. (White) is displaying rainbow colors and vice-versa.

omnius

New Vigilance: Complete any custom alert daily mission 3 times, rewards Questionite Ore

This is pretty much a giant kick in the arse for silver/premium players with a refinement limit of 8k ore/day. At least with the current vigilance you could look forward to a refined Q reward at the end. Anyone running any kind of content that rewards ore instead of refined Q (which is basically a lot of the endgame stuff) can tell you how easy it is to have a ton of ore that builds far faster than you can refine it to Q for the exchange.

Example: I had a toon that had to build a bunch of scr/gcr for gear. By the time I had enough, I had accumulated so much ore I've spent at least a month not playing that toon so I could refine all the excess ore. And I'm still waiting probably another month before the remaining ore excess will be refined.

I don't see any scenario where this change doesn't result in a silver player having to wait even longer now to exchange Q for the Zen store Did I not read a description somewhere that said something like "Questionite exchange allows silver players to buy Zen from LTS players who get Zen every month"?

Not asking this to be a wise-guy, it's a sincere question: Was this decision fueled by a desire from up the ladder to get players using their credit card more often for Zen tokens by slowing down the Q to Z exchange?

ericrightshow82

omnius#0640 wrote: »

New Vigilance: Complete any custom alert daily mission 3 times, rewards Questionite Ore

This is pretty much a giant kick in the arse for silver/premium players with a refinement limit of 8k ore/day. At least with the current vigilance you could look forward to a refined Q reward at the end. Anyone running any kind of content that rewards ore instead of refined Q (which is basically a lot of the endgame stuff) can tell you how easy it is to have a ton of ore that builds far faster than you can refine it to Q for the exchange.

Example: I had a toon that had to build a bunch of scr/gcr for gear. By the time I had enough, I had accumulated so much ore I've spent at least a month not playing that toon so I could refine all the excess ore. And I'm still waiting probably another month before the remaining ore excess will be refined.

I don't see any scenario where this change doesn't result in a silver player having to wait even longer now to exchange Q for the Zen store Did I not read a description somewhere that said something like "Questionite exchange allows silver players to buy Zen from LTS players who get Zen every month"?

Not asking this to be a wise-guy, it's a sincere question: Was this decision fueled by a desire from up the ladder to get players using their credit card more often for Zen tokens by slowing down the Q to Z exchange?

I think, respectfully, you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. With this update, you will now have a chance at 6000 Q per week, totalling 48,000 to the 30,000 vigilance now awards. Plus now we can skip alerts we don't like (*cough* STE), and we now have access to 20 SCR per week that we didn't have before.

I get the complaint about refining Q, but all in all this is a big improvement

jaazaniah1

omnius#0640 wrote: »

I don't see any scenario where this change doesn't result in a silver player having to wait even longer now to exchange Q for the Zen store Did I not read a description somewhere that said something like "Questionite exchange allows silver players to buy Zen from LTS players who get Zen every month"?

Not asking this to be a wise-guy, it's a sincere question: Was this decision fueled by a desire from up the ladder to get players using their credit card more often for Zen tokens by slowing down the Q to Z exchange?

Probably yes. I'm all for any changes to the game that get other players than me (since I do buy Zen) to fork over money to support the game I play. Win-win as far as I'm concerned.

omnius

Silver players don't buy zen? I know I do, regularly.

jaazaniah1

Apparently not enough. Some plaers take pride in never spending money on the game. That's why you see some people offering tons of Gs for stuff that other players pay money for.

h4forums

I just wanted to add that nerfing down to 1 use really hurts the 25 charge items. Also, explosive temper makes no sense with one charge since its a pseudo combo power. Successive attacks alternate right hand and left hand.

thisiscraftaaa

I like how the solution to Questionite inflation in the economy isn't "give us things worth spending Questionite on that isn't just the same kind of Lockbox-esque gambling that almost nobody bothers with to begin with BECAUSE it's gambling for something that has a barely-beyond-cosmetic effect at best," it's just "make common sources of Questionite (but never Cosmics, we don't touch Cosmics) players run either require exponentially more effort or reward exponentially less Questionite so that anyone new coming to the game trying to get anywhere without spending a hundred and fifty dollars gets actually disintegrated in real life instantly while whoever's already saved up a hundred million Questionite will still sit pretty and never have to do anything ever again due to the lack of anything to actually spend Questionite on. Which has been and continues to be the real issue: unless I care about being able to apply Ghost/Goo texture to my hands (heh) and similar levels of pointless vanity, what is there for me to actually spend Questionite on? Weapon displays, mag and shrinker auras and a few minor costume and texture unlocks are about it, since very few of the devices are worth using at all, you only ever need one set of Heirloom gear, there are heaps of cheaper and identical alternatives to Mercenary that don't justify the total 300kQ price tag for a set bonus that'll get thrown out the window the nanosecond you go Justice/Distinguished anyways, and the other gear pieces are just blatant newbie traps.

I'd like to highlight in short, especially with the change of 6kQOre, not even refined Q, that all this is doing is further punishing people who want to grind Questionite doing something that isn't Cosmics, which are themselves partially responsible for the same "too much Qnite in the market" issue this Vigilance nerf seems like it's intended to fix. Lairs are already a bad choice versus Cosmics despite being harder, Rampages aren't run enough to be a viable secondary source, Adventure Packs take too long and Vigilance only held up due to at-your-leisure mass farmability across tens of characters when just two or three characters doing Cosmics every 20 hour span in the same time would generate that same amount of Questionite. And the issue is that the strongest source of Questionite (Cosmics are the strongest/fastest, Vigilance is just a lower-effort but much less rewarding alternative, just like how Lairs (which need a reward buff) are a much higher-effort but STILL less rewarding alternative) still vastly outdoes... honestly, not even its alternatives, but the Q sinks already in the game. We need more Q sinks, since the TPB was done with a lack of understanding of what the average player really cares to spend on.

Honestly? This is the exact same problem that Resources/Globals have, the difference being that since Resources/Globals don't have a direct conversion to Zen (having to use Questionite as a proxy,) Gs don't get touched as inflation continues, when what both need aren't making farming it in ways outside of "dev-friendly optimum strat spam" (Smashes in Aurum/Lockbox Merc-equivalent and Cosmics in Lockbox Merc-equivalent) more nightmarish and un-fun than the optimum already is, but more (actual important/valuable things) to spend them on. Give us power unlocks that take Gs and useful endgame consumables that cost Q; allow us to use Gs and/or Q to buy (account bound) fusable R4s or R5s directly, give us a Q equivalent of the GCR self-rez device and let people burn Resources directly to buy trace amounts of event currencies, and many, many more like that.



I repeat: we need many, many more interesting things to spend old money on to get it out of circulation (fun goes up, problem gets smaller); not the bandaid solution of making it harder for people to get new money (fun goes down, problem gets bigger more slowly but still keeps getting bigger.)

jaazaniah1

Just want to note that the Lemurian Intirgue and Serene Abyss missiom chains are also solid sources of Q. If you do those and the Cosmics you are netting 30K+ of Q daily.

flyingfinn

Helmets need open eyeslits.

guyhumual

I like the idea of never having to do STE ever again

panthrax77

I hope this change expedites changes and updates to some of the less popular custom alerts. It's going to be a lot harder to get people to do STE now.

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redcastle56

Bug; If you have any of the limited devices from the until store in your inventory, even if you got them from drops, you can not buy another from the store. Its treating them as unique.

Bug. Temporary sidekicks no longer in the until store. They were a nice way to try out a sidekick to see if it fit your playstyle, etc. Why did they vanish.

I really don't see the reason for the nerf on the temp devices. You just nerfed the modular devices recently to make them single use, and increased cooldown but at least made them stackable. So that was at least somewhat useable.
To make them single use, and not stackable is crazy. Will take up too much bag space to be useful and trying to shuffle inventory to belt mid combat is crazy. Either leave the charges, or make them stackable. And reducing the charges on things like the trident, temper etc completely defeats the purpose of those devices.
A little explanation as to why this was necessary might be nice. particularly for those of us to don't live in the discord.

The change in pets is annoying as well. Just did a bunch of research to describe the difference between different pet device types. Can you at least make the cooldown a little shorter, or fix it so that they don't share a cooldown. If I choose to have 2 or 3 different pet devices slotted, I should be able to cycle between them at a reasonable pace, Use a different one if one is on cooldown. Can do that with backup devices for example.

I know you have to balance out trying to make the devices useful vs making them too powerful, and I assume that there are probably some PvP exploits that you are trying to control. But this seems a little heavy handed. There has to be a better way to make the devices fun to use occasionally (like letting my melee toss radiation balls for a little bit with temper), without causing problems.

superalfgorn

No chainmail bikini?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO