PTS update FC.28.20120605P.2
This build is scheduled to hit PTS by 7:00pm PST
Greeting!
In tonight's PTS update, we roll out a new
five-man Custom Alert called "Harmon Labs".
In this Alert, players will face off against Warlord and his mercenaries as they take over the lab in search of new Power Armor technology.....which I'm pretty sure they'll use for bad-guy stuff.
We've also temporarily disabled the Gravitar 10-man fight so that we can go back and tune it based on the feedback provided by the PTS community.
Please format any bugs you find in the following format:Bug
Where it happens
What happens
To queue for Harmon Labs, you can either click on the custom Alert button, or you can click the queue button next to the minimap and select the "Harmon Labs" in the Alerts tab.
Known Issues:
- Rewards are not final
- Environment art is a work-in progress, and players may notice some minor art issues
- Players may experience some occlusion issues in certain parts of the map
- Certain corners of the Warlord room can cause the boss AI to think the team has wiped should the last person (or the entire team) get knocked into this area. We are aware of this issue, and will provide a fix in the next update.
Comments
Teleporting from Timbuktu is really immersion breaking
P. S. - Are alerts (like Adventure Packs and Comic Series past) this year's "new content" or are you creating maps for new zones or even adding more critters to /expanding existing maps (Vibora is still hella tiny). Also in one year will they be abandoned for a new "new content" type.
I do not like alerts. I do like more content.
If this is going to tie in with the News of the World article and the release of the PA at then i must give props.
For a while it seemed like things were just randomly happening in CO but the way you guys are using story to tie things together makes the world feel more alive.
lol as if any other time we teleport isn't?
with Warbird and Warcry, Warhead, Warmonger & Warpath and...Warcra...wait..I think that's it.
So only Silver accounts won't be getting any occlusion issues? That's great! I'm paying for great bugs.
Also epic spelling error there
Goes with the 20% damage debuff!
Awesome sauce... now COSMIC ALERTS please.
You can't really say they aren't adding new critters when we've seen that they're adding in 2 new encounters with IP villains that have never been seen in CO before. Looking forward to testing this, even though the Warlord was never one of my favorite Champion villains. Still, more is always good!
The animation bug for quickly combining a toggle with Plasma Beam is fixed, and the approach of using the standard animation when combining quickly is a very cool one. It does lead to the minigun clipping the character's head if Minigun and Plasma Beam are fired in rapid succession.
No resolution on the Plasma Beam with elevation bug.
The new sound effect for Plasma Beam is quite nice. The new one for Tactical Missile is quite wimpy, almost inaudible. Maybe it's missing the "missile flight" effect?
Tactical Missile still has the single-cannon popup for a five-missile volley, each individually too big to fit in that barrel, and all the new hand weapons are on the left hand. Pretty much resigned that it's going to stay that way, alas. Between this and the sound effect, the overall effects of Tactical Missiles are very disappointing to me. I may end up going to the mechanically inferior Power Gauntlet as a result.
Infrared Guidance System is still 2 points. Wasn't it supposed to be 1?
Chest Beam: Point Blank Blast damage remains strictly inferior to an uprank at all ranges.
No resolution on the Phalanx Defense System shield being hued like the triggering power rather than the Energy Shield power. This isn't really a big deal, and would be even less if the ballistic powers didn't look much better with their default coloring.
Reconstruction Circuits is not blocking out chest slot powers... but interestingly triggering one will end it early.
I tested this very cursorily but it seems REC drives most of the Overdrive scaling with INT/END playing a minor part, which isn't what I inferred from the tooltip.
Also, loved the lab. I want that environment as an RP option even more now. Great work, ANUBIS.
Now I hate to be *that guy*, but...
1. Any chance we can put face masks on the merc models and change their tag from "Mercenaries to "Shadow Army", to reflect the mercs Warlord uses in lore?
2. Any chance that Warpath and Warcry can appear in a couple of the minion mobs? Players have said that they want to see more villains, and having a couple in the mobs leading up to the boss fight would be a good place for them, and those two are probably the easiest of the War Machine to build and drop in.
Thanks!
That's how all the toggles work now.
At least this is how I feel..
*Sigh* Looks like I'll have to wait for the plasma beam fixes..
Since the Warlord alert is centered around the villain trying to steal suits of power armor, I'd assume the PA changes will go live when this alert does.
New Zones ? Why .. everybody is leveling in Smashs, so there is no need for them to create more zones,
at least i expect that to hear from Cryptic ... if maybe at some point again comminicate with us :rolleyes:
And yeah .. i also want more "real" content and no more overlong APs and CSs, and no more crappy Alerts.
Just some more real full zones like Canada or Monster Island.
I totally agree with both these suggestions. The Warlord needs to have the Shadow Army backing him, please
His flamethrower attack was interesting : it starts with very low damage followed by much bigger numbers, he actually killed our invul guy with his attacks because he was not ready. The good thing is that we now know that there is a lockout on this battle. Seriously Cryptic, again with the lockouts?
Anyway, the power armor device and the device drops are very nice, though some randomisation with the PAs would be nice (or better yet, color code every PA and add 2 other colors, like, say, blue and green, to make the Power Armor Rangers!...).
Oh, and put a mark somewhere for the wall we have to break or something, we had absolutely no idea what to do when we got to that part. It's only when I randomly Fired All my Weapons with the PA device on a chair that it affected the wall next to it.
But overall, a really nice alert, packed with action, interesting new drops and good voice acting. And Warlord really looks cool... I can't wait to see it in its complete, fixed version (also yes, Shadow Army and additional vilains as mini-bosses would be pretty cool).
Drax knows the score. Hell, even Warbird and Warhead are relatively easy, you could get away with just giving them the Invincible AT.
I'm dying to know how close my attempt at Warlord's costume is to your own work, Cryptic! Gonna investigate soon.
Make the power armor devices grant the masked pa.
The power armor devices from the alert should be the red ones with the mask on them. The open face version doesn't agree with the identity's of a lot of players.
Example:
KenpoJuJitsu always has that Shonuf guy he plays. Then he gets the power armor item from the War Lord alert and Shonuf suddenly goes from a black guy to a albino white guy?
Again, use the PA that covers up faces to avoid this kind of weirdness.
Invincible AT's have been locked out due to Archetype Rotation Program code activated.
Its only an issue personally as 5 test toons I had ready have been locked out currently. Not a big deal though as I expect that the AT Rotation is coming back on LIVE with the Invincible's launch from this so it makes sense an all. So if not a bug, then yay! The AT Rotation works for the new AT. Verified
There's a good deal of trash mobs before you reach the Warlord- to make it a little more interesting to fight through them, I'll echo Thundrax's suggestion that the War Machine be included- Warbird, Warhead, Warcry, Warmonger and Warpath. Most of their abilities can be easily represented ingame, with the possible exception of Warmonger- though she could just be given some munitions powers and a morale boosting megaphone. The named villains could be placed throughout the labs, each of them commanding a squad of Shadow Army mercs. This would help break up the trash pulls some (and more IP villains will always be a plus).
I absolutely love the trash mobs dropping new devices. This makes people want to run the alert and feel like they came away with something cool even if they fail to down the Warlord (a very real possibility, he's no pushover). They seem to drop fairly regularly, so the limited number of charges on each device doesn't bother me too much. The become device seems fairly standard, giving players a decent smattering of the new PA abilities. Maybe a permanent version of it could drop from the Warlord himself.
I like the Warlord's voice actor, and his personality is spot-on. No complaints about the actual boss fight, it seems challenging and fun. Though, a little indication before the fight starts that wiping to him fails the alert would help avoid confusion, I think.
Overall this seems like a solid alert, and a great way to introduce the Warlord to the world of Champions Online. Great job, team!
THIS!!!
OMFG :mad:
PLS
Oh, and Protection Field. Let's have that go over the PFF as well. Bring more inset compatibility to the Force set and Impulse ATs.
But not Mindful.. leave those other shields for In-Set synergy
Actual example (again, this has been a problem for at least 2 years or so):
This is what I believe is the intended graphical behavior.
This occurs with other colors, with the geometry aside from the barrel being painted a slightly shifted hue of the Power color.
With work being done on graphics with these powers, I had the thought to direct some attention onto this issue.
These would be the main things i change.
I also like that this alert seems a tad longer than the others.
What are you talking about? The Pa pass isn't live.
Have you checked the patch notes for the 8th >_>?
OK granted technically it's not live YET....but it will be by tom0rro. :rolleyes:
. good
Wow, this is very disappointing.
sigh......
I hope they at least fixed targeting computer.
EDIT:
And by fix Targeting computer we mean that lock on mode does not provide its stated crit / severity bonus and that lock on mode does not scale with rank and TC does not buff melee even though melee attacks were added to pa.
Please don't let the PA review end with PFF (the force passive) getting looked at but TC ( the PA passive) staying bugged.
http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=147508
It just means they have a development schedule they got to keep with the AT (which is the actual product in consideration for release) and TC isn't a factor in regards to said archetype, so it won't hold patch back cause of its issues. There's been plenty of examples in the history of this game where frameworks as a whole get patch fixes & damage control during the initial weeks post-launch. (I understand there's precedent established to the contrary but it's like rolling a dice with this development team to be honest so I'll just go with the axiom that it "has" therefore it's "possible" again)
I'd say the build isn't ready if TC was part of the Invincible AT or if the Invincible AT just was broke with its current setup. But my personal opinion regarding this patch is that TC isn't the product it's just an important power that we'd like development to give the utmost attention ASAP due to its apparent under-performance and not be left behind after this patch goes LIVE.
Another example of this is the Laser Sword powers; some have said and I agree that it's missing an "Ego Blade Annihilation" style power, but the powers themselves aren't broken per se and they also aren't part of the Invincible AT, so why hold the patch back for an extra power? That just ends up costing money in the end in development costs, when they could easily squeeze in that power and TC adjustments in the next development cycle using a new allocated budget.
In the end, I all I personally ask in this is that there's some a final closing response from development regarding any closing thoughts or something before closing this thread for the next PTS update; just to say, "We here ya, will see what we can do on the next PTS push or something of that matter.." then lock the thread and move on.
Well that's fair, as there's a separate thread for that, then we can say, "Hey remember us?" like you just did and we can all move there for PA stuff.
Devs care? ofc not, we had no patch that didn't introduce new bugs since f2p.
This goes back much further than FtP. All the way to launch really.
The day 1 patch was EPIC FAIL!!! :rolleyes:
Yes, yes it was.