Night

I made some posts about this issue in the patch discussion and was hoping the devs would respond to notes about it from others as well, but since it doesn't seem to get much traction as people are discussing other issues so you did a good thing of making a bug thread of it. With my initial lookaround, and then following that with more testing, the recent patch somehow broke render distance and water rendering. None seem affected by /visscale and are an issue even on the default visual distance. The issues seem to be in heavily lowered render distance, testable by just flying back and forth along some trees and seeing the details on them pop in instantly once you get close enough whereas the details would face in gradually normally and the objects load in with more detail before the patch. You didn't need to be very close to the object to see its model fully loaded, which seems the case now with trees, rocks and even cars, as well as rooftop detailing. The water texture also is rendering on top of every other map effect, causing really uncanny views and in open maps it allows you to see the edge of the world. The third part to it is the seeming removal of world fog that would blur the edges between the skybox and the rest of the map. All of those issues can be tested just by going to Ouroboros as it even has some trees, and just looking to the side you can see both the water textures rendering and see the square of it in the distance, as well as the lack of map fog which causes a weird bright ring to appear around the map area.

I usually run on /visscale 4 and the issues I described and screenies I posted were on that setting. The issue seems threefold: 1. The render distance seems to have been lowered, as objects (very visible on trees) will have their higher-detailed parts pop in instantly instead of the usual gradual fade-in that they always had, it seems to affect trees, rocks and cars in particular, but also details on building roofs. 2. The water texture is being rendered on top of every other visual map effect, causing such uncanny effects as in the screenshots instead of following the rule of fading out with the map level of detail fog. 3. The actual map fog is disabled. The fog effect is still active on ground and buildings, but not on water or the skybox itself. Normally you'd be able to see a blurring along the horizon that would meld the skybox and the map itself to give a nice effect, but now it's a clear, sharp line separating the map from the skybox itself. As to what I mean with point 3, here is a comparison of the horizon line of before and after the update (taken from the same spot and angle), I tried to get the screenshot roughly at the same time of day as I had originally but it was difficult to time, note how in the second screenshot there is a clear divide of the horizon as everything below is way brighter:

All water textures just render no matter the distance and make things look really weird, it's odd. There's also the pop-in of details that should gradually phase-in instead. Fly back and forth along some trees and watch all their detail instantly appear and disappear as you move past certain render thresholds, it's wonky.

Did something change with the graphics? Seems like the 'fog of distance' got turned off by accident? It seems to work fine on map objects, and on maps enclosed by War Walls, but on maps without those something broke. The foggy blur along the horizon that prevents it looking so uncanny is also gone. Here's Croatoa, Ouroboros, Striga and Talos. Talos, despite being enclosed in War Walls, also has this issue. Perhaps it's something with bodies of water? Water texture suddenly rendering where it shouldn't, while other things that should render don't quite work, and it messes with the fog? Something definitely seems messed up with rendering as well as details on objects like trees or cars pop into view instantly instead of gradually fading in as you/they get closer like they used to. It's only really visible during the daytime as at night it all blends together once it gets too dark to see, as with the most recent screenshot during the day being here during the night.

More minor bugs! This one a bit bigger since it messes with the design of a practice dummy. The Vanguard MDC from the Mobile Dummy Combatant accolade power inherits your resistance bonus from the Expedient Reinforcement pet damage resistance IO. The resistance affecting pets is not a bug, it is working as intended, but the practice dummy specifically being affected by team buffs doesn't seem like it's working as intended as it also gets affected by defense buffs from things like Maneuvers or the Call to Arms IO proc. While the IO works as it should by creating an aura around you and thus goes away if you move away from the dummy, the goal of the dummy is to represent an RWZ Rikti Pylon for testing purposes and while I have no issue with it, additional damage resistance and defense from the dummy's owner/team buffs could mess with people's damage calculations.

This thread has a few ideas about new gun powersets, including some for single pistols

I like the idea of making the three PvP zones into villain zones. Or, well, making copies of them for villains as suggested. There are definitely plenty story arcs that could be done there, perhaps some with a more gray-blue-leaning in parts, more for rogues and vigilantes but not exclusively so. Like bringing up the entire reason Siren's Call exists, a hero accidentally blew it up, a great starting point for people lobbying for much stricter power control for the villain to bring crashing the whole operation down. The Drowning in Blood lvl 15-20 trial brings you to Bloody Bay and is right in range of it, following on with the story of Shivans and Neo-Shivans which could be further built upon as well. It also helps that the zones themselves already are populated with their specific selections of NPCs so stories could be told around the areas they occupy and utilizing the lore from exploration badges and environmental storytelling of the zones.

Eden [1666.4 -6.3 1510.5] there's a seam in the ground of the small lake that you can peek through and even see the nearby tree trunks that reach underneath the terrain. Eden [1920.2 -6.0 1481.8] At the same lake just a bit west, there's another seam at a point where the lake gets a bit deeper, the sloped ground not quite meeting the flat ground.

Steel Canyon university appears to have a tree glitched into one of its walls at [-3079.3 -64.6 1895.9] A stone railing is clipped into a concrete wall in Steel Canyon at the same level as the wall, causing a z-fighting effect at [-4484.0 -0.0 -2177.0]

In Helix's story she says she has an environmental suit, and she is covered head to toe in a suit with armored bits on arms, shoulders and boots, so when she mentioned that in story that seemed a plausible enough explanation for flashy powers.

This sign can't stop me because I can't read! Despite what the popup when trying to control more than one cataphract says, you can control two at a time. It's a secret Longbow doesn't want you to know! So when you take control of a cataphract, the game locks you into it and even logging out and in doesn't remove it from you (although alting to another character and logging back does remove it, so you can still farm the badges for taking control of them that way. Still slower than when the zone was first released on live where you could just dismiss the Heavy). But what seems to happen upon logging out is that if you make enough distance between yourself and your active cataphract, it disappears from your pet window and that allows you to pick up a second and control both. And while zone PvP is dead these days so this bug hurts nobody, it can help you going after the three ridiculously grindy pillbox badges with double the firepower. As a bonus, should either of your cataphracts die, you can go and get a new one from the same station once its model despawns. Happy Farming. A moment to rela-time's up! While in Recluse's Victory, the zone resets with ~25 seconds to go on the countdown timer, effectively making the break between zone-war that much shorter. Sometimes...sometimes the timer counts down to 0 and then starts counting up again before the zone resets. It's odd.

Nice! Never expected to run into anyone from The Super Union again, nice to know you guys are around 😄

The Twilight Shield power from Warshade's Umbral Aura powerset is missing it's vfx. What the toggle does currently visually is only give you the Warshade eye effect that appears whenever using powers from either Umbral Aura and Umbral Blast as it should, but it is missing the actual unique effect of Twilight Shield. The effect was that you were surrounded by a purple bubble, just as with Gravity Shield power, but you also had two fluffy energy circles rotating around the shield in opposing directions. It was a cool and unique effect and is missing entirely from the power. Not having touched a Warshade in years I've no way of knowing how long this has been an issue but the effect is currently missing. Strangely, the Peacebringer version of this power, with the same effect, still has that effect of a shield with two kheldian energy circles rotating around it. Peacebringer's Thermal Shield also has an additional bubble around it which it didn't use to have, so perhaps that's where the Warshade's missing bubble went 😛 And unlike the Peacebringer version of the power, Twilight Shield does not have a "With No Bubble" customization option available, but perhaps it does internally and it's permanently set to No Bubble as default...who knows, spaghetti code.

Are there any plans for continuing the incarnate storyline, or for new post-Mot itrials? Or is it more a closed case, with further slots in the incarnate tree closed and with Hybrid being the set pinnacle mechanically?

Zone: Founder's Falls Three buildings/storefronts seem to be missing their doors, other buildings of this type have the usual double door so unsure how that happened, or if it's by design for some reason. [4515.0 0.2 3006.9] [4481.1 0.1 3041.0] [4407.3 0.1 3041.0]

Light as a feather! A bug that's been around for a very long time. When you draw a rifle (particularly the Assault Rifle and temp powers which use its rig), your character is put into an awkward pose of holding the big rifle to their side in one hand. The proper animation used to be that the character drew the rifle and held it in both hands, in the same animation that you go into when drawing the weapon and just moving a little, the idle two-handed gun-holding animation.

Can I report an NPC for chat spam? A curious case of Ghost of Scrapyard getting stuck(?) on the ramp in Hell Forge roughly at [1289.4 67.7 19.1], where I started beating up his nearby followers for the badge and he just wouldn't stop spamming his lines for a good few minutes. He stopped after he aggroed and moved away from the spot, but it was uncanny to have him shout his lines at the pace of a minigun.

Skyway City at 2266.0 -10.0 -5247.6 One of the huge ventilation boxes(?) floating above the roof unattached to anything The Hive at 2025.3 0.0 -4423.6 Three boxes and two barrels are floating above the ground in the yard

The Origin of Power arc from Percy Winkley is missing the Talk to Positron step that should take place once you speak with Penelope Yin. Because of this, you don't learn about the Technology origin and Positron's theories anymore. The arc goes as follows: War Witch->Penelope Yin->Manticore->Synapse->door mission. While Penelope Yin even tells you that 'Positron has some theories about that' at the end of her dialogue, implying he's the next to talk to, and he should be but his step is missing. That's what the arc list looks like on the wiki, with Positron's step in there, and even the HC wiki isn't updated to include Penny Yin. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Percy_Winkley#The_Origin_of_Power

It got ended cause you got called out on stealing people's stuff, like you've done here. And now you're saying you're gonna do it again?

As long as they're your own original ideas and not stolen from other threads again

The name, the power descriptions, the power icon choices, literally everything

If it's not a proposal then seems pointless to start a poll that accomplishes nothing here? All of these are already in the original thread you copy-pasted them from.

You literally copy-pasted everything, the names, the descriptions, power icons