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FC.31.20140919.0 PTS Update
lordgar
Posts: 267 Arc User
This build will hit PTS today, 9/20/2014. I do not have exact timing at the moment.
Release Notes for FC.31.20140919.0:
Anniversary Event: Mechanon:
GATEWAY Station:
Other:
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 elsewhere.
In particular, do not report bugs from the live game in this thread, unless they are impacted by changes in the PTS build.
Release Notes for FC.31.20140919.0:
Anniversary Event: Mechanon:
- Added some Mechanon voice overs.
- Mega-Destroids, when "Liberated" by Mechanon now gain a stacking Upgraded buff that increases their damage, max & current health, and improves their new Anti-Vehicular Beam.
- Liberated Mega-Destroids gain an Anti-Vehicular Beam that targets randomly selected players in vehicles.
- The Floating billboards around Ren Cen now change for the Mechanon attack.
- The event now drops the correct reward.
GATEWAY Station:
- Fixed a typo in the Stabilization Belt's description.
- "Main Screen Turn On" perk was awarding when other people triggered it. Fixed.
- Dueling is no longer allowed on the station.
- GATEWAY is now a "small" instance (similar to Club Caprice) in terms of population cap.
- "Rusty" now has a selection of healing items for sale.
Other:
- Small static instances (the tutorial, Club Caprice, the Powerhouses, UNTIL HQ, and now GATEWAY station) have had their population caps increased by 10.
- The door at the end of Cislunar Mechanon now opens to space during the final cutscene (visual only, you cannot pass through).
- Resolved an issue which was causing FX to drop out when too much activity was occurring on screen.
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 elsewhere.
In particular, do not report bugs from the live game in this thread, unless they are impacted by changes in the PTS build.
Post edited by lordgar on
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Comments
Could the teleport in until hq be changed to allow multiple players to use it at the same time.
It can cause a bit of a queue.
Also, I'm not sure if this has been noticed but I encountered two content/power interaction bugs. I mentioned it on the old thread, but I'm sure it got buried.
Bug #1 Pestilence procs on Fevered Citizens who are near combustion. This makes them attack the player.
Bug #2: The Heat Pumps cannot be targeted by Power Armor's version of Plasma Beam. So if you are a PA user who has Plasma Beam - it won't damage the Heat Pumps.
I'm loving all the content updates BTW.. amazing job.
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If players have some effect on whether or not Mechanon can liberate Mega-Ds, this update makes sense.
As in, there could be a displayed timer based on how long he's been up, and how many Mega-Ds he's reprogrammed after a certain amount of time. Or if he's now been programmed to move back and forth to come in range and liberate.
However, if it occurs as it seemed to on the prior build, the liberation doesn't appear to be affected by player actions and you're losing a good opportunity to provide some interesting twists to the fight.
I agree - there needs to be a mechanism to prevent the Mega-Ds from being liberated, adding a tactical edge to what is like most other events just a DPS race. Targetting vehicles may slow down the race but adds nothing but an additional danger. Danger's need to have a mitigation method.
Players can block telegraphed incoming attacks. Vehicles can not.
All good fixes thanks for these. To please the duellers/pvp fans I hope you have added plans to future gateway additions for an Arena/Duelling area (or areas! - I am sure some people would love to have a zero G duelling room for example - maybe use the layout from the Powerhouse Movement Training Room - with all those platforms, rings, crates etc would be an interesting map to duel on I think. )
With regard to the last item above, just to clarify we will see multiple instances of Gateway?
Additionally as mentioned by other posters, can we add functionality to the ADIS platforms to not have them locked when in use by another player - can't think of many (if any) other doors or gates between instances which locked to one user at a time. Mission Items, yes, Doors, No.
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- How high can Upgraded stack? (Is it on a similar mechanic to Enrage on Frosticius? If so then stacking on death of a player could be interesting or irritating dependent on how potent the buff is.)
- As others have already pointed out, will there be some way for players to stop Mechanon from liberating Mega Ds?
Suggestion: Have Mechanon focus on "liberating" Mega D's using a clearly visible beam attack (or Aura of Liberation) which players can reduce the potency of his converting influence via attacking him AND the Mega D's. "Mechanical Liberation Beam" or "Aura of Liberation" should have a timer or some sort of indication that targeted Mega Ds have almost been converted. A sustained assault on Mechanon by players should break this effect for the beam idea. If Aura, simply draw Mega D's away from a certain range of Mechanon. However to keep things interesting Mechanon should definitely be able to convert at least two Mega Destroyers, provided they aren't defeated by players. (That last part should only be the case, IMO, if the Upgraded buff isn't hilariously potent, aka strong but not unmanageable.)
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Unless the attack one shots and fires every second, it won't inhibit vehicles. Either way it's a poor solution as it's not addressing the actual problem that engrosses any instance where vehicles are permitted. This will be a problem for the Halloween Event and Winter Event too. Plasma Beam needs to be brought in line, the last reduction did nothing.
Advanced Hyperkinetic Dampening System is a vehicle's block equivalent. It is on a short cooldown but provides the same sort of reduction player blocks give.
Welp. There goes my plan for fighting Caliga in the bar where all can see his humiliating defeat. Grats for making an epic idea (Space as the backdrop would be AWESOME!) impossible now -.-
Fine for people with Mark 2 vehicles or more expensive vehicles with plenty of slots. What of those who want to take part in their Mark 1 Jets etc? Plus again it is them promoting a single vehicle build. everyone has plasma beam and dampening shield going forward - no diversity. Problem stays.
Agree they need to look at perhaps lessening the effect of vehicle weapons / stacking against event bosses/mini bosses. If this can be done without removing the effectiveness of the weapons in a one vs one engagment that would be a great solution.
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Ah well.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
If anything plasma beam breaks after 600 stacks and does no damage and causes little to no damage from other attacks as well you would be thing the mega d will go down faster with 800 stacks on it? well it doesn't and i think there should be a Plasma shear cap kind of like bleeds but its only for everyone.
Also some mechanon costume pieces materials for example his foot accesories have different patters on them.
Would be grateful if you guys fixed the materials for the mechanon pieces
Then you can offer a Mark 4 version for even more Questionite. It's not like this racket ever gets old.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
The last entry on that was 42 stacks or so.
Base damage of beam could be buffed, stacks limited to 5-10.
Just put in a reasonable limit on Plasma Shear debuffs already. Some will whine, but who can seriously expect to be allowed to group stack a debuff to such a ridiculous level? I'd rather see a reasonable limit on stacks placed, that won't effect solo play. In it's current state Plasma Shear can actually break the game. Let's just bite the bullet and limit the stacks to something logical and fair.
given a standard team is 5 people - would 5 x 25 stacks be fair? a max of 125 plasma shears. i think that seems reasonable maximum and well below the break point people have seem for stacking.
@Liath | My PRIMUS Page | Altaholics | New Vehicle Models | New Emblems | Flag Tights
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But only along with next mark of the Advanced Hyperkinetic Dampening System. To help with Antivehicualr Beam.
Predicting the future in CO never was easier. :biggrin:
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
in Mechanon recog store?
That's the base underlying model for his bots.
There seems to be a bit of misinformation about this. Since the March vehicles update, Plasma Shear stacks above 50 have had no effect. They could probably just cap the counter at 50 to fix the overflow bug.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
How many times have the Vigilante secondary bonuses changed since implemented? Let me answer that for you: zero. Vehicles and related mods/weapons, on the other hand, have been a constant cycle of: hype/market/sell, nerf a year+ later, introduce upgraded version to enhance the nerfed version, repeat.
The cost is inconsequential to me. It's the ethics of the practice that I find rather objectionable.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
BUG: Mechanon Arms do not have glow and the leather and metal textures are broken.
Bug: Mechanon Feet Accessory leather and metal textures are broken.
Suggestion: Add glow to the Junkbot Work Light 4th Color (the color of the light bulbs).
Suggestion: Have the Junkobot TV 1 and 2 head screens go off the 4th color and also add glow to the 4th color.
Mojo addressed the stack damage misconception, but this part is also important.
Given the nerf completely broke the already jumpy and paper thin functionality of Enemy Hull Scanners, it's almost impossible to consistently isolate vehicle debuffs right now during testing, shear and otherwise. They skew wildly all over the map when you go to the individual attack level, and honestly, I feel a bit bad for Lordgar or whomever gets to troubleshoot this. Given it seems to vary from toon to toon, vehicle to vehicle, and mod to mod with no apparent rhyme or reason, this is going to be a brutal bug to track down.
It's one reason we absolutely need to have hull scanners fixed - the bug remains on the current PTS build - to see what actual DPS numbers for vehicles are supposed to look like now, since despite a whole bunch of claims to the contrary, nobody really knows.
I tend to believe that responsible playtesting involves balancing/nerfing/changing powers when you actually know how they operate consistently, but I'm sure others will find urgent reasons to disagree.
Bingo. Add in that many of us who have been most passionate arguing about this aren't even particularly concerned with changes to the platform, but the process has been such that it raises real concerns.
Plasma Beam should be retooled as a power. Slightly up Plasma Beam's damage and remove sheer damage completely. Make Sheer a single stack resistance debuff.
There is a plethora of evidence proving Plasma Beam is grossly overperforming compared to player powers, even the most overperforming of player powers. I have not seen any evidence proving otherwise.
MMO's are changing entities. If you want an enjoyable playing field powers need to be retooled and kept in line. This will always be true, nobody gets power balance right the first time and power balance always has to be reviewed as environments change.
The introduction of the anti vehicle attack is admitting there is a problem with vehicles, address the actual problem please.
It's difficult to test without a zone full of people or knowing how quickly/how Mega D's can be converted into Liberated versions (I sat through an event and by the end 3/5 were converted). If it takes too much time or if Mechanon needs to be present the anti vehicle power will never see the light of day as Destroids are generally burned down together thanks to Plasma multi target functionality. I also don't know how many targets the anti vehicle power can hit at once.
I'm not usually one to participate in such discussions, and I know that you're pretty decent about other matters pertaining to the game, so I would suggest simply surveying a random selection of players in zone (a few dozen should be enough) to see if the concerns of the playerbase in general (including everyone from altaholics to people trying to level their first 40) reflects what you posted above. Something like the following:
1. Did you participate in the mega-d invasion event?
2. Level of character and number of 40s?
3. Vehicle or no?
4. Difficulty?
5. Do you think plasma beam damage ought to be significantly lowered for the encounter?
6. Do you think the mega-d AOE ought to hit more players/hit harder than it currently is?
7. Overall, do you think your character/vehicle is underperforming, or outperforming for the encounter?
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Block timing explained
I think it's marginally outperforming player powers, in a pretty specialized situation. If the role of vehicles isn't to be useful in the occasional open-world events, then what is it?
This generic line of argument completely ignores the way that Plasma Beam and its ilk are made available and marketed to players via micro-transaction. Not to mention the forced obsolescence of older versions of vehicles/weapons as upgraded versions are sold. Player powers being rebalanced has never been an issue for me. But I think it's questionable to be selling non-cosmetic items that significantly effect gameplay in the first place; even more-so if they can't seem to be expected to be reasonably stable in their effects, or at the very least adjusted within a very short period of time of their being pushed into production.
Let's also not pretend there is some new change in the environment that just recently forced Plasma Beam to perform the way it does.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
You know you can multi qoute right? Also if you miss one you can click edit instead of posting loads of times in a row... Just saying. <_<
Anyway as for the update:
Is this just the current same healing items just sold at a new merchant or is this a new healing consumable?
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Ok, 2 things here and I appologize if they sound horrid. I'll try to word them as politely as I can.
1. When comparing player powers vs. vehicles are you comparing vets who actually know how to play this fairly simple game or everyone, which includes the "not so good" players routinely encountered in alerts? I believe this is part of the scenario to be considered. Sure, to alot of people who participate in this forum this stuff is kinda easy in most cases but let's consider there are still a decent amount of people in this game who die to henchmen on a regular basis in normal difficulty missions(because they sometimes rage in zonechat and I sometimes have zonechat turned on...but not that often if I can help it cause...zonechat).
2. IMO, the role of vehicles is to be somewhere between ATs and Becomes with a high emphasis on look and speed potential(not to mention the ability to have flight on a toon under 35 who did not pick a flight right off the bat). Since you mention the cash alot I also have to mention that I would guess they also want to sell those ATs and FF Slots and not just vehicles. So, for that reason as well as general game mechanics...vehicles should be "an" option and not "the" option.
You are correct. This is why I have been mentioning this as far back as the Vehicles 2.0 PTS threads. So much so as to run "stock" vehicles without mods or ranks on ridiculously low level toons and solo all kinds of content which I had no business even bothering with. IMO, this was simply missed then and should be addressed now considering this new content, Bloodmoon 2014, Winter 2014, and so on....it's not like this is going to get better if this one OM has the ability to single out vehicles when, IMO, the simpler solution is to just remove sheer from Champions and allow PB to debuff and hit decently on it's own.
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Not really.
I recall you taking a discussion waaaaaaaayyyyy to seriously but I figured that was old news.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
What is the average DPS you parse of player output? The mediocre and high end ones? Compare that to output parsed on Vehicles. Take note how many people are using vehicles now, compare that to last year before Plasma Beam's overperformance was common knowledge. Really the fact that there's a party ball going on during the Mega D attack should raise some red flags.
And take into deep consideration when looking at parses from mega D's at how much damage reduction is happening. Someone doing 1.5k and someone doing 4k may not seem like that big of a jump, but then realizing damage is being practically halved in our current zone event sheds some light on how big of a gap it really is.
I've linked plenty of parse info, scope it out for yourself. Plasma Beam is the best and easiest dps option. Bar. None. That is not okay.
I foresaw this coming... but perhaps consider an area in the station were dueling could be allowed? Like a carl's gym in space or something...
Earth powers on Live seem to provoke the Waste Extraction sewer area to lag horribly and take about a minute to recover on what was a high-ish end machine two years ago. (i7-Ivy Bridge, Radeon 6970 2GB) It does not seem to be limited to Earth powers though and may be more a result of the particles it kicks up. This occurred on a full team.
Launcher problems? Try these from Cryptic's site:
http://files.champions-online.com/launcher/Champions%20Online.exe | http://files.startrekonline.com/launcher/Star%20Trek%20Online.exe
Probably not germane to the discussion but...I'm guilty of this...a lot.
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All I've seen are some parser screenshots that seem to show that the majority of vehicles in these events are using vehicles. Even if we concede that, I'm not sure it tells us much, since Cryptic has been selling and giving away vehicles for 3 years now, and this is one of the few types of encounters where they are usable. Personally, I've been using primarily vehicles for the open-world events for the past couple of years, not so much because of the damage, but because of the greater mobility.
Would just the fact that the majority of players in an open world event use vehicles by itself indicate a problem?
I think a better question, specifically stated is: What does the overall distribution of Plasma Beam damage for this event look like compared to the distribution of non-Plasma Beam damage? Are the means and standard deviations for these distributions outside of some expected threshold?
I'm not sure I care enough to do this study myself, but just from eye-balling the encounter parses I've seen, the median damage of Plasma Beam vs non-Plasma Beam doesn't seem likely to be very different. The DPS does seem right-skewed with the top performers generally using Plasma Beam in the encounters I've seen. BUT: the top performers are generally using Plasma Beam Mark 3, Mark 2 Vehicles, and cycling in other vehicles weapons like Anti-Aircraft Missiles Mark 2/3 for additional damage boost. MEANING that they have shelled out more than the average player for upgrades, so wouldn't we expect them under this model to get some additional performance in this, the encounter type the vehicles are usable in?
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Here is a spreadsheet of damage sources vs. Mega D for an encounter I logged last night, sorted by average penetration (i.e. resistance debuff). The vehicle Plasma Beam attacks are highlighted, so you can see how their damage reduction compares to the other attacks.
(A couple of notes though: the parser isn't currently configured to break out the Mega D's from the other trash NPC's in the encounter, so they're all included in this data set, but their significance is small. Also, I filtered out the attacks that did less than 100 total damage or less than 5 occurrences, as they weren't meaningful.)
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Also note that this encounter was basically designed for plasma beam, in that a) large, open area, b) two enemies with huge amounts of HP that can be lined up, an occurrence that virtually never occurs in any other vehicle content, and c) high player participation numbers.
Anyhow, the debate in this thread isn't whether PB is overpowered (it probably is, though the delta between single-target pbeam damage and FF builds is probably 20% or less, based on my parser results), but whether this pattern of nerfing "pay-2-win" powers is the way to go, or is going to continue to alienate players from this game.
OTOH, while Honey Badger may not care that he dies a lot, the only way that Savage can survive long enough to do any damage at all is by flying his Lemurian Tank; melee attacks against a pair of Mega-Ds plus adds are just a fancy way to commit suicide. And this year, he's been hit by something that kills his Tank outright - one-shot from full health to "you are dead".
Besides, as has been repeatedly pointed out, placement on the damage list for the open mission is bragging rights only - rewards are randomized, so long as you manage to do so much as a single point of damage. So really, I'm not seeing the problem here.
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Or if there should be p2w powers in the first place? Btw I payed 300 euro for my LTS.
That goes both ways then?
Good points, Jim.
Yes, if it's not clear, I think there should not be pay-2-win powers. But if there are going to be pay-2-win powers, they should be tested/balanced before being offered (or within a reasonably short timeframe). They should not be continually nerfed, with an upgrade offered for additional cost.
Respectfully, I think the comparison with LTS has some flaws. When you buy an LTS, you receive a host of benefits including but not limited to access to FF. The nerfing of any particular power does not have a meaningful impact on the overall value of what you purchased. When someone purchases a specific power/weapon like Plasma Beam, they are doing so for a specific effect. A subsequent 20% decrease in that effect reduces the value of what was purchased significantly (in some cases, making it worthless.) Doing this repeatedly will alienate even the best customers. Fortunately, the overall value of a Free Form slot has been pretty stable and we have not seen Free Form Mark 2 offered for additional cost.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
That would mean Premium ATs and FF slots should have a $0 price tag. Vehicles should not be in lockboxes, in the cash shop, or in the Drifter Trash store. Legacy devices should also not be gated behind Drifter Trash. Any mods, buffs, or gear in the Q shop would also be highly questionable since you can buy Questionite with real money. Then we have regular Becomes and Sidekicks which are throwing money at the screen for power. (In theory. The theory being they are buffed to accommodate for the OnAlert effective nerf.)
Making money in CO revolves heavily around players buying their way into more power and that is not likely to change ever.
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