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PTS update FC.21.20111016.3
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PTS update FC.21.20111016.3
This build is on PTS
This patch addresses a lot of the issues and feedback since the last build.
The focus remains on the new Vibora missions, unarmed review and new Unarmed AT's. Your feedback is always appreciated.
Please format any bugs you find in the following format:
Bug
Where it happens
What happens
Here are the details of the Patch
Audio
Vibora Missions
UI
Bloodmoon
Item Powers:
Archetypes
Powers
Martial Arts:
Sorcery:
Travel:
This build is on PTS
This patch addresses a lot of the issues and feedback since the last build.
The focus remains on the new Vibora missions, unarmed review and new Unarmed AT's. Your feedback is always appreciated.
Please format any bugs you find in the following format:
Bug
Where it happens
What happens
Here are the details of the Patch
Audio
- The Unarmed and Fist powers have had a polish pass
- Additional music has been hooked up to the new Vibora map
Vibora Missions
- Corrected Rewards to no longer contain 2 "Sawn off shotgun". Now has Combat Harness and Sawn off Shotgun as different items.
- Additional mission rewards are hooked up
- The Minefield Door has been fixed
- Gemini and Dead man Walking now have VO
- Tracing twins has been updated
- Gemini Hood: Shotgun blast will now apply knock resistance.
- The playable area in the map has been decreased
- The Crate zombies have been adjusted
- You now get to the steamboat from the docs
- There is no longer a level restriction for the new Vibora map.
- Access to the new Vibora map requires that you have the missions in the arc. Once you complete the mission chain, access to the map is removed.
- Critters in the zone will no longer drop loot or rewards higher than their level.
UI
- Minimap: The new hideout button now displays the correct text in the tooltip when moused over.
Bloodmoon
Item Powers:
- Amazing Grace now activates the Active Defenses shared cooldown and gets it activated by other active defenses.
Archetypes
- The description for the Master and Fist have been updated in the C-Store
Powers
Martial Arts:
- Rush: This buff should once again work.
- Tier 4: Fury of the Dragon: Should once again interact with Focus properly.
Sorcery:
- March of the Dead: The Rank 3 zombies should once again use Noxious Gas.
Travel:
- Scarab Tunneling has been added to the Mummy Become critter C-Store item
Post edited by Archived Post on
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Comments
EDIT: Unless im crazy, it seems this has been fixed, as all forms add a now generic focus buff. instead of personalized ones. Sweet.
For some reason, the Dogz does not count toward the 'Minefield Sweeper' defeat count. Maybe the above bug got something to do with it?
The zombies in the crates to the south of the mission location does not count toward the "defeat zombies" count for "Delivery of the Dead". The other crate zombies works fine though.
The blood moon devices all have cooldowns with identical items (So even if you have 25 Nimbus items, they all have a shared cooldown). And they did before this fix went out
Dragon Uppercut Still requires too many power choices (5) when it should require 3 power choices like all the other dragon powers.
Dragon Uppercut:
The advantage on this power gives less damage than rank 3 in every situation.:mad:
I think that person was referring to a shared cooldown across *all* BM items. So, if you had an amazing grace and a nimbus of force, activating one would put a 30 sec cooldown on the other, even though they are different items.
We thought about that when we looked at them, but we decided the powers were different enough from each other that having them cool down just the same item made more sense.
Amazing Grace got the Active Defense cool down because we don't want it stacking on top of other active defenses. Hope that clarifies things!
EDIT: It was changed within the last month. So that is why you haven't noticed it yet I would guess.
+1 U've officially made this device useless, considering the fact it also can't be used while u got nailed to the ground debuff on you.
It is a Tier 3 power, not a Tier 2 power. All of the old ones are Tier 2, but this is not a requirement of Dragon powers. We have no plans to lower it to Tier 2.
Currently, with WotW and around 240 in each Super Stat with full Strength bonus, allowing the DoT to fully tick averages slightly higher damage than with Rank 3. However, it is lower than intended as this DoT (as well as the DoT for Burning Chi Fist) are not properly scaling with melee damage buffs (like Way of the Warrior). This has been fixed, so that the advantage now causes Dragon Uppercut to deal about 10% more damage if you allow it to fully tick, which was the intent.
It also means the DoT from BCF is getting a buff.
These should be in the patch tonight.
Item Powers:
* Amazing Grace now activates the Active Defenses shared cooldown and gets it activated by other active defenses.-
Doing this made this device useless as it is it does not scale with the level of the device so now your going to make a weak version of masterful dodge put masterful dodge on cooldown and all other active defenses, BAD VERY BAD. This device is now unuseable if your going to do this it needs to be buffed to function like a true active defense otherwise your just turning it into a complete waste of time that will never be used.
In this case then yes, advantage at least has a reason to get it. The problem is that like every single other DoT in the entire game, it gets nullified by any sort of defense (Defiance, Invul, IDF, Energy Shield's advantage, Force Shield's advantage, LR if your dodge chance is high enough, etc etc etc), which makes these powers outright worthless against other players.
Plus, the dimensional damage roll is on a different combat line, which means that defenses (and IDF) get applied to it as well, reducing the '10% bonus dimensional damage' down to nill.
It's nice that the DoT is so quick for Dragon Uppercut (3 second duration instead of the usual much longer one), which means it'll be useful in PvE combat (unless DU outright smacks your target down), but again because of above, it's a worthless feature in PvP.
This is why we keep mentioning that DoTs and powers that 'split' the damage (100 Hands, not-Hadoken with the advantage, etc) are not worth taking, due to how their damage potential gets clobbered against any foe that has defense (like IDF).
We'll see how well the damage ramps up though on the next patch before I say anything more.
I have to agree. I'm all for activating a cool down among the devices themselves, but the bonus from a single AG device isn't so great that it needs to apply a cool down across all AD's. There definitely was a problem with stacking THE DEVICES themselves, but I dont really see it being harmful when used in conjunction with other AD's, especially if the devices themselves are sharing a cool down and cant be stacked.
Either make the Device as potent as Masterful Dodge or only apply the cool down across the devices and not all Active Defenses.
It's not changed at all for people who don't have an active defense power
It is less useful to people who were using it in addition to a single active defense.
It is perhaps now useless to people who already have 2 active defense though. Darn, can't stack still MORE defense on top of that. How sad.
What you fail to realize is that its not as good as an active defense its only major benefit is that it grants a 20% dodge chance, it provides no avoidance whatsoever and the movement bonuses are meaningless in almost all confrontations. what is being said here is that the device is to weak for it to warrant such a connection to active defenses, its to weak. It needs to be boosted to make this change viable and not a complete nerf into the ground. There is nothing wrong with the shared cooldown if the device was strong enough to warrent it as it stands now its not strong enough,
At the start of intro cutscene for new VB the camera is focusing on a character who isn't there.
The description for Sawn Off Shotgun has a spelling error. It should be "beloved by mercenaries" not "beloved my mercenaries"
Damn. There goes my hope that additional arcs will show up in the future for this new VB.
I haven't checked out Vibora Bay yet but does this mean limited access to that spiffy club? Or was the club cut? Am I remembering something totally different entirely? In any case, I'm a saaad panda....
While we agree with lots of this, it is definitely not as powerful as a full Active Defense, and the penalty is a little steeper than we're actually happy with. We're going to reduce the shared Active Defense Recharge that using Amazing Grace incurs down to a base of 20 seconds, instead of 30 seconds. This will make it a pseudo-Active Defense, that incurs some of that penalty, but not the whole thing.
Masterful Dodge: +200% dodge chance, +87% avoidance
Amazing Grace: +20% dodge chance (and a movement speed buff).
It's not even the best defensive effect among BM devices, the only reason it was a problem is because it could be stacked and was completely invisible.
Imagine my surprise when I exited Minefield to do Minefield Sweeper to see level 39 New Shadows outside.
Observed everywhere I've seen a Zombie "Crusher" in prior builds, confirmed inside "Shipping and Reanimating" warehouse on this one.
Still just holds cement in hands and then you get hit for knockback with no throwing motion, for one example.
Noted this at /loc : 2108 -22 877
I think a problem of this type was fixed before at a location reported for a prior patch...is there any way to collectively check for all these occurrences on the creator/editor side, rather than playtesting and trying to go hunt down all of them individually?
Inside "The Minefield", accessed with the "Minefield Sweeper" mission active.
The door used to work where you just clicked on it to open it, but there seems to have been an erroneous interact trigger added to it (I'm not sure it had an "Interactive" glowie effect before, so perhaps that was why one was added), and it seems to be the same trigger effect as the entrance door to "The Minefield" in the "Queen City" Vibora Bay open world, as if the interactive specification part was copy-pasted.
Could this be something about my drivers or some texture optimization it is performing behind the scenes? My settings are high, and this stands out as looking wrong just from walking across the room, but I haven't seen other comments about it.
A "black mirror" effect, where nothing was reflected but specular highlights to convey a reflection, or something of the sort, seems like it would work better here, if it could be done, and the cube map specified just isn't, and can't be made, suitable for such a large, flat, reflective surface? Again, assuming the highly noticeable low res texture I'm seeing isn't unique to something my particular drivers are doing to screw it up...
Will continue later after I make my way back to "Queen CIty" Vibora Bay from level 37+ Vibora Bay, as the exit to the "The Minefield" takes you to...
On a more positive note, i just saw the new unarmed MA animations that WOW just added and they don't hold a candle to what you guys have done here.
so cudos for that.
Overall this pass seems pretty good on the pve end.
*crosses fingers for an eventual pvp pass*
I don't think it is the lockout causing this, but just buggy destination values, because I had this happen to me on a brand new built from scratch (on this Build) character who was running the mission for the first time. My character was able to enter the Queen City Vibora Bay again.
Reflections. If you have "Reflection Quality" (second to the bottom in advanced Video>Effects Settings) set to "High" you should be seeing this, cubemaped reflection, which is as good as it gets in our game I'm afraid. Yes, it's fairly low res, but there is no sense in wasting a ton of texture space to something that is normally only seen in very small/curved objects where details can't be made out.
if you have it set to "Low" you will see this, a spheremap which the game auto-generates from the cubemap info. These are much less accurate, and move in a different way than cubemaps do.
If you have it set to "Off" you will likely see a big black plane. (flat surface, not flying machine.)
As for the Manager's office Doors. This is a result of you standing in the path the door is trying to move. If you stand clear of the doors, it will not teleport you anywhere. This is a side effect of our gate tech. I'll bring it up with programming, but this is how it works right now.
Why not make burning chi fist into the dragon attack? It's kind of lackluster at the moment, as DoTs aren't all that great.
Also, why not get rid of the DoT and just give it up-front dimensional damage?
Its kind of neat that you can do that
With that kinda option in hand I have to echo Pantagruel slightly and mention Nimbus of Force. I have it on my main along with 1 active defense, and I have to say if there was an element of tactical decision making where in a moment of brown striking the occilating air-driver I can EITHER save myself for certain with my active defense OR maybe save the whole team with Nimbus, that seems like more interesting gameplay than just casually slamming BOTH keys.
Isnt 10% more from a DoT, requiring that the DoT fully tick, still underpowered compared to attacks that defeat the foe before the DoT could run its course ?
Especially if a direct damage attack can crit and DoTs seem to be moving away from being able to do so ?
What if we don't have the correct papers?
Couldn't they just shove us out of the way like every 'normal' citizen that runs around MC does with every superhero they come across?
Considering the DoT only takes 3 seconds to complete, not really. If you are talking about PvP, it's possible you won't want this advantage, because you want burst, and because plenty of people are using flat absorb powers. If you are in PvE, 10% more damage against critters that are going to live long enough for it to matter might be worth giving up 10% more damage against critters that won't matter. Or, more likely, you'll be using an AoE power on the critters that don't matter, so it just ends up being 10% more damage against the critters that do.
It also changes the way you want to use the power from "spam it over and over" to "fully charge once, use another power" so if you just want to use one power over and over, it might not be the advantage for you.
The point of most custom advantages is to provide more power in certain situations - if we wanted everyone to take the custom advantage instead of Rank 3, we just wouldn't make Rank 3 powers.
As for DoTs critting, they will regain that ability once we can make it work the way we want.
Thanks!
This is a bit of a stretch, but I don't suppose Will of the Tiger (or something close to it) could be added as an attack in Bestial? The device is the only power in the game that uses that claw animation, and I've been hoarding numerous copies of that device since BM was initially released specifically for that animation.
No and no. The minefield can still be accessed in VB proper.
Wow...I really didn't think there was anything surprising about noticing the reflection and finding it unappealing or that doing so would garner this type of surprise on what I was "focusing" on, at least if what I was seeing was what I was supposed to be seeing.
I do recognize that no one else, that I've noticed, has brought it up, so while it continues to stand out to me as something that honestly doesn't convey a reflection, at least as a perfectly flat and very large surface that doesn't break up the cube map at all, I guess that I have to recognize that it might not prompt the type of reaction and potential commentary in others as I thought it would.
This is what I see, both at the top where you explained the one-way mirror is (and I do think that concept is very fitting for the office), and behind the bar, and it just looks particular bad to me, because it looks exactly like that in-game. I don't understand how it doesn't stand out as an odd artifact to everyone who looks in that direction, but apparently it doesn't...I guess that's that, if so.
That seems surprising...don't the doors open inwards, or couldn't they? I hope the problem can be addressed...it is a very glitchy occurrence when it happens.
I notice it, but it's an effect I don't look at. They attempted to give a pseudo reflection and given the graphically intense nature of Champions, adding in real time reflections would probably be taxing on most computers. Again it's something I wouldn't mind, but it's furthest down on the list of things I think Champions needs first than worrying if a cube map properly reflects the environment.
To be clear: I'm not bringing this up because of an abstract principle like "reflections should properly reflect the environment in real-time", but specifically because this particular usage directly stands out as something visibly remarkable and problematic to me.
Well, to put it another way, unless I am looking for it specifically, I never notice it. It's an RP instance to me, one that I hope will be better than Club Caprice, but I know probably won't be considering half the god-moders can't be bothered to get out of their teens, let alone bothered to get to level 32 to get into Vibora.
Ame i dont think you understand how much that still sucks, the device does not scale with the item level or level of character it is a flat 20%dodge bonus which was fine by itself but adding the shared cool-down with REAL ACTIVE DEFENSES makes the device unusable, it destroys the use of actual active defenses, again compare it to every other active defense in the game it is a minimal boost one that is not truly noticeable unless exploiting it. all this change does is yet again screw over people that were using it properly. if you want to fix its stacking issue then fix the issue not make the item unusable and if this is the only way you can make the item not stack then at least make it worth while as it is its a joke by itself, a shared cooldown with other active defenses makes it a slap in the face.
Which given the way dimishing returns work in this game makes it almost unbelievably GOOD. It gives you +20% when you only have 16.7%... and it STILL gives you +20% when you have 80%.
A behavior quite like those algorythmic stat bonuses that are so busted.
...the very things that make a linear +20% kinda silly...
Other than the minor triffling fact that any sort of active defense stacking is so powerul its flatly barred across all frameworks.
By "properly" you mean what? Because right now I see it still fitting neatly into the 75 seconds of time a single active defense is not accessible. It seems very "properly" usable even with this restriction - a full 55 second window out of every 90 seconds where the shared cooldown impacts NOTHING.
I don't think I've seen the br'er rabbit defense quite so mis-managed before:
"Its harmless, its pitiful... PLEASE DON'T TAKE IT AWAY!!!"
and again pay attention we dont care if it shares the cooldown if it is as strong as an active defense
AG is an ADDITIVE boost to your Dodge level. In other words - if you have 50% Dodge, when you activate it, you'll now have 70% Dodge.
It works like how Evasive Maneuvers works (16, 20, 24% increased chance to Dodge based on Rank, no matter your current Dodge level), and it's why that power is so strong to begin with.
Masterful Dodge works the same way - by giving you +200% Dodge Chance (so at minimum, you'll have 210% chance to Dodge - and upwards of the 250-270% range if you have Lightning Reflexes already). This is why the power is so powerful too.
The reason why the devs want to put an Active Defense countdown on it is because it's as powerful as Evasive Maneuvers without the power pick, and it can be stacked on top of said power (or anything else that increases Dodge).
I am not the one you need to convince. Try that again telling to Devs to do it. Try the same dismissive tone about their understanding when you do it, too - I want to see how that plays out for ya.
It was NEVER about "are they equivalent benefits?" as demonstrated by them refining the change with a shorter shared cooldown. It's about making a choice between two options rather than engaging both simultaneously.
Sorry, I didn't mean any offense by that, just that I am genuinely surprised at what garners attention to some people. I fully acknowledge it does not look amazing. But I thought it was better than the alternatives I had in mind at the time, and I feel that the reflections, while not awesome, are enough to convey what the surfaces are that they appear on. I never intended them to be scrutinized. While installing those mirrors, my expectation was what Silverspar expressed. Through normal gameplay, you shouldn't notice them. If you inspect them closely, of course they're not going to hold up to reality, but (I believe) the vast majority of players will not do so.
What mirror?
Ok, joking, but now, I will certainly go check it out.
If I may, since I'm still kinda new on C.O., how old is the engine running it really?
(By that I mean its core since you guys tweak it every so often)
I mean absolutely no disrespect in saying the following (else I wouldn't have thrown all those / $ at your feet :-p), but sometimes, it feels like this whole game was just, you know, a small project among friends. The kind of "What if we..." adventure. A bit like Gates or Jobs had in their garage.
I'm asking, not to troll, but because as a programmer, I was hit on the head many a time (think Gibbs' slap XD) for not creating my stuff as modules that could be exchanged or modified independently from one another. And this, here, just has the exact same feel...
Was C.O. a small project that grew larger than intended?
Well, you obviously don't see vampire players complaining.
If that had any effect on what you are hinting on there, I cannot tell, I'm not a programmer. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't a 'small' project, either way.
@Tumerboy: I wouldn't be surprised at what people focus on, really. I'm an artistically inclined person myself, so when it comes to you and your architecture guys, or Brad and his art design guys, I do tend to stop and examine what you've done. Frankly, I think too few people really appreciate it. When people stop to look, it's often because they do appreciate it.
See, I remember when I was playing Neverwinter Nights II with an old friend of mine, and there were times when I was just astounded at the sheer effort Obsidian went to to do interior decorating, how sometimes they'd even actually juggle their statics, so they're using the same objects, but things look different. The attention to detail was astounding. You could see that someone actually cared about this, you could see that there was a passion behind it. There was someone there who wanted to do the best damn job on interiors that they could.
I was stunned that my friend, who is probably a more common gamer of the sort you describe, didn't ever stop to appreciate this work. He blasted through. Often, if I asked him what particular things were in any given environment... they didn't have a clue. They don't even realise the environment is there. And honestly? That depresses me just a bit, because sometimes you can just stop and see where real work has gone into something.
I like doing that with Champions Online, too. You really gave The Minefield your all, Tumerboy. It's an awesome little place. And whilst most gamers may just run through and ignore all of that, I prefer to stop and look. Sure, you notice things that you may not otherwise notice, like mirrors not being truly reflective, but at the same time you actually get to appreciate the attention to detail. And frankly, not using true reflections makes sense for an MMORPG. It's for optimisation. MMORPGs need to run on older computers. It's pragmatism, and sometimes you just have to put pragmatism over art.
Still, like I said, the optimisations don't bother me at all, they're necessary, but I'd never ignore the environment because of them. I'm going to stop and look at everything! This is what I do. Hell, the group I'm running with currently is just as bad as me in this regard. We love to stop and poke things, and we will be examining everything you and Brad do in great detail, T! But don't worry, we haven't seen anything to criticise yet. Frankly, we appreciate your efforts.
This is why I'm such a Tumerboy fan. :P To say it again, I'm an artistically inclined person myself, and I really appreciate the effort you guys put into your environments and designs, even for stuff that isn't strictly necessary.
Ok, first I'd like to get something straight: there are a great deal of staging decisions (the sun near the horizon, viewed from Monster Island, "shadows stretching from the off-shore rock formations to greedily furrow dark stretches in a sea like a carpet of dancing jewels"), creative details (bothering to put subtle details of rust on a car, or a subtle ripple or grain on a surface, as some examples), and even sometimes little factors that sort of straddle artistic finesse and graphics engine capability (noticing the simple issue of the transition from water to shore, and comparing it favorably to, for example, Borderlands, and ahead of several instances in even WoW with its much fancier water and massively greater budget).
I note all these things, and value them, but the only speaking I have and will continue to do with any consistency on positive impression from things like this (though this is certainly not a rule), is to have bought the game and played it, while paying a subscription.
This, as well as my general approach to PTS, is the context of commentary on graphical issues, including things like this "mirror issue", as well as something like past commentary on how metal reflections on my costume seemed to be lacking for a long while (it is mostly fine now and has been for a few months).
...
Back to this "mirror issue", though, and what I consider to be continued misunderstanding of what prompted my commentary:
This is how I basically approach all content, and I think would be typical (though, perhaps, at least sometimes, without the weird imagination) of the way many players experience anything but the most repetitive "corridor maze" content.
This is why I was wondering if it was something my drivers might be doing, and I still plan to take a look with new WHQL drivers that just came out.
While I still recognize other people are saying they don't notice it to the same degree, and that my inability not to notice it and find it lacking does not seem representative, I do also think is that a better reflection effect should be part of the graphics engine toolbox, and that a very few select places (I count 2 so far...) would benefit greatly from it, and it would provide the opportunity for a more advanced look for specific aspects of future content, and/or improvements to old, going forward.
For what it's worth, and even though the general decision seems to be that it wouldn't be worthwhile, here are my thoughts on such a hypothetical "full reflection", with what I consider the most relevant distinction from past Dev response to real-time reflections in an MMO setting in bold:
I generally picture, what with it being limited to specific staging elements and not a replacement for the existing cubemap usage everywhere, that a starting ceiling of approximately two times graphical workload increase is feasible for many graphics cards (obviously, this would be an option), and could be scaled down right off the bat for fragment/pixel workload because full resolution doesn't seemj necessary and, I would think, be scaled down even more significantly in that that optimizations and culling should offer far more dramatic savings since the viewport used could be controlled to always far less than a full screen render, and most often much much more limited. This is exactly the type of thing that seems like it would be a natural fit for 1) the "DX 11" renderer improvements that seem to be at least a long term consideration, and not even just restricted to DX 11, but as a change to the engine to facilitate more advanced features that would not require DX 11 to implement, 2) the general "keeping up with the Joneses" type of improvements to graphics capability a shared engine would undergo so new projects don't look like projects from years ago, even if the temporarily tested "DX 11" option was not such an effort.
It does occur to me that the entire glow/post processing implementation and its issues might present a sticking point in this type of rendering change, but I also think that needs to be addressed anyway, and the enumerated issues above would still remain relevant.