Cobalt Arachne

Probably not, instanced zone maps are taken as copies from the original zone at the time of their creation, all zone functions stripped out, and then modified into mission maps. Adding the new sections to the instanced maps would essentially mean redoing them entirely from scratch. It's too much effort for what would change almost nothing for the missions on those maps. As for outdoor maps... The AE building shouldn't exist in those old outdoor maps because Rikti War Zone content was from Issue 10 and the Architect system wasn't added until Issue 14.

We've investigated this issue, which is a result of Blasters having access to 5+ possible weapons from sets and players only having 4 total weapon slots on their costume's data format, so this has now become a hard-coded problem requiring some involved adjustments to resolve. I can confirm it's on our radar, and we're looking into it, but this won't be fixed in time for Page 7 unfortunately, it's not possible to resolve with things setup as they are currently. This issue is due to a weapon slot overlap, it wasn't caused by any recent sheathed/holstered changes, just made more visible.

They would have earned less Aether over time if we changed non-epic ATs to qualify for more than one role per the character creator. Not every team is going to be lead by somebody who cares about getting the bonus, leaving more chances that could be swayed by the AT you yourself play which would lead to reward imbalances inherent to certain Archetypes. Example: If you played a Warshade, you automatically fulfilled 3/5ths of the criteria by yourself and only needed two other roles on the team to qualify, making it easier to earn the bonus regularly without trying for it. That being said this thread is about the current feature, so we'll let that get back on track.

Simplicity and fairness primarily. One AT, one primary team role. Example: Stalkers would only qualify for Melee Damage... No matter how creative you want to try and be with it, their main advantage involves using stealth to drop aggro at any time (opposite of a Tank's job), and doing critical melee attacks for massive damage. How would it be fair to Stalkers that they get to just naturally earn less Prismatic Aether than everyone else? Because other multi-role ATs would qualify for the bonus more often and thus earn more over time. Since some ATs would only be able to qualify for a single role, for simplicity and fairness, we went with everyone's one primary role. (Not counting the Epic Archetypes.) Fairness was weighted far more heavily in the design considerations earlier for the previous feature due to that reward involved.

Reiterating on what Jimmy said, this new feature is the response to the feedback. There were concerns brought up that adding continual currency incentives to the team assembly process would pollute the inclusive spirit of City of Heroes where you can join almost any team and have no idea what will be on it, but can still complete the content without issues. To that end, we shifted to a reward that simply represents that you've done it once, instead of requiring on-going, continual team composition management to maximize your rewards. Personally, this was the argument that resonated most with me, and prompted discussions on alternative solutions. This feature originally arose from the added capability to run Lua scripts through the challenge settings feature automatically and we used it to write scripts that can check the team's composition, which wasn't previously possible as a criteria check for rewards. AT Duplication was added as a foil to the AT Diversity. While educating new players on team role dynamics was one of the goals of the previous feature, there were several issues with the reward delivery and incentive consistency that made us determine it would not be the best idea for the game. We decided that it would be healthy to also establish that you can take a team of all duplicate archetypes and still clear most content. This way all team configurations remain 'valid' in the eyes of the players as far as badges are concerned, and nobody loses out on rewards for prioritizing playing the game how they prefer over the team's composition.

I'll look into these. Thanks!

Hero 1 has a power that is essentially that already, he even mentions the Fae with the power's activation dialog, it's just not explicitly called 'Aid from the Fae'. Could rename it though... Honoree would not have access to that power as explained by their inability to wield Excalibur anymore after their transformation.

This is correct. The badge is for the entire team all being the same AT and having at least 4+ members on it. 7 Defenders and 1 Tanker on a team = does not qualify 7 Defenders on a team = qualifies 3 Defenders on a team = does not qualify 4 Defenders on a team = qualifies

Known issue with K'ong in Build 2. Syntax fumble with the Lua script; it will be fixed next build, please use /completetask 0 on Brainstorm to bypass that mission for now if you're testing the Advanced Mode of Lady Grey's Task Force. Thanks to a hot fix, Lady Grey should be fully testable again on Brainstorm!

They're tuned for level 50 + Alpha Shift as that's the state that max level character's spend the majority of their tenure and how they would be running tests.

That's a little different, if they're not there that's due to players being nearby when the zone loads. They won't spawn in that situation until all players have moved far enough away to unload the spawn trigger. (This won't happen on live servers because all zones are loaded before players are allowed in) If you destroy a living dummy/pylon it should re-spawn immediately once the spawn is set to active; If you just destroyed one and it doesn't respawn quickly (10 second timer), let me know.

Which body type? Weapon FX are separate per body type so I'll have to look at the specific ones.

This is currently a technical engine limitation, unfortunately. Back items don't take scaling, so the weapons are not able to be aware of any body slider changes. If that were to change in the future with code improvements, I'd redo all the weapons to take advantage of it, but at this moment not something that's doable.

For balance changes, yes. For pet recipes, no; Mostly because there is an existing pet that is basically a mini Winter Lord already.

I can look into this; You mentioned it's just the Minion-class Vanguard costumes that have this issue?

What I'm reading is more that many players take issue with there being any kind of bias towards a defined team structure at all, not the requirements or rewards.

If the consensus here is that this change will be a negative for the game, we can simply remove the free bonus and drop this feature. The sense I'm getting from reading feedback is that many feel like any attempts to influence the nature of team assembly is antithetical to the nature of City of Heroes.

I don't believe that the x2 Boosters are the ONLY cause of the imbalances, just one of the various factors, it's a complex game with many facets. The team has been having on-going discussions regarding the difficulty of maintaining an SO build while leveling due to various factors. A bit off-topic now, can't say much else yet because decisions about that aren't made, but we're absolutely aware of that Influence deficit and are looking for solutions.

Disagree, that is not an alternative suggestion because it does not achieve the same goal. ATs are not roles. Simply bringing 5 different ATs does not promote healthier team composition balance because all five could technically be the same one or two roles.

If you've got alternative suggestions on any names that communicate the bonus's goal and function, I'd love to hear them! The name can be changed effortlessly, it's a single string to adjust; If somebody has a better sounding idea, please let me know. 🙂

That's fine, if you'd like to suggest an alternative solution to mine that would achieve the same design goals then go ahead I'd love to read it, otherwise I will disagree with you on your point. I believe our players are smart enough to understand the context of the game and know through common-sense that the main roles one is expected to perform when joining a team of strangers does not equate to them being the only things a character can possibly contribute.

As the designer, I spent the time creating the recipes, the mini pets models, and the drop system for the purpose of supporting the Giant Monster system and making it more rewarding for those who like fighting Giant Monsters, ending with it giving them a unique sourced drop they can market to other players. If you can get these rewards by doing non-Giant Monster content, that throws the entire purpose of this feature out the window. Giant Monsters are already one of the most popular activities in the game, despite the fact they reward very little for the relative time spent; So that doesn't really apply here.

Not a simple problem to solve due, one of the primary reasons that low level players are so poor is that Double Experience Boosters turns off their Influence gains and so, as a result, they have no money to buy SOs. Changing boosters is a very complicated/touchy affair, as they're already quite the controversial topic to begin with. We could suggest players not default to using the Double Experience Boosters if they want to earn Influence, but we sort of know how that goes because we're having the Influence problem in the first place.

I've added a level 50 dummy to the level ranged area, and also added dividers so that it's not possible to accidentally hit more than one with AoEs.

So let me explain the reasoning behind this free bonus: In most MMOs on the market, they function with the holy trinity of Tank / DPS / Healer. However, City of Heroes does not function this way, and rather has a more diverse set of roles that players take while playing on a team together. This new bonus is to help guide players who are unfamiliar with City of Heroes to the basic fundamentals of team building and archetype roles, and then giving a small reward to teams that are inclusive and bring every type of player role. Perhaps the name of the reward should be changed to 'Role Inclusivity Bonus'? From experience, chasing rewards can oftentimes work better than tutorials for guiding players to more natural success in their gameplay, so that's why this was decided. Lastly, it puts a little more Prismatic Aether into everyone's pocket for minimal effort, which helps new players by virtue of being able to convert it to influence on the AH which also stimulates the player economy and also teaches new players to utilize the AH while working on their characters. For a new player, a single Prismatic Aether could potentially fund their entire build on SO enhancements; Extremely valuable for somebody just starting out. FAQ: The roles were chosen so that the full classic team of all five Hero or Villain archetypes would complete the free bonus; This is reflected in the challenge icon. One role per AT for simplicity & fairness; There are too many ATs that would count for more and others that would count for less. Epic ATs count for three roles because their inherent powers all deal with teams, so this makes them extremely appealing for team invites and is in-line with their design goal. Corruptors are listed as Damage because their Inherent power, Scourge, only deals with doing more damage, not support. This free bonus was not in any way an attempt to sway or influence Advanced Mode team compositions; This free bonus reward is far too low to have any kind of impact on regular runners of that content. This free bonus is not an attempt to disrupt the City of Heroes element of 'any team can work', because while that's always been true... 'any team can work well' has never been a guarantee and there have been plenty of teams I've joined that have been rough experiences because the composition just wasn't considered while forming the team. While lopsided teams can always work, they shouldn't be considered the ideal or baseline experience to strive for giving our new players.