Cobalt Arachne

Specific to the new costumes rewards and the new Aether currency: They were added primarily to incentivize running the new Advanced Difficulty content, with the few slower methods included as a generosity to make Tier 1 costumes reasonably accessible to anybody who wants them. Adding the new rewards to an existing currency that most people have huge stockpiles of doesn't accomplish anything other than removing a tiny amount of those stockpiles from the economy, which doesn't make that new content any more appealing and thus doesn't accomplish the intended goal.

We can probably look at adding Reward Merits to those arcs, but how many they get would be based on the datamined median completion time like all other story arc content. Originally on the retail servers, those Dark Astoria story arcs only gave their incarnate rewards one time ever, on the first non-Ouroboros completion per character, but that was changed to be every completion to allow for super-accessible solo-capable incarnate power progression, a purpose they still serve completely intact with the changes, and not something we're planning to remove or change.

A patch note detail was missed that I just added to the main patch note post and the original post in this thread. Those Incarnate Trial Reward Merits are subject to the standard 18 hour cooldown on the same character and are priced at the exact numbers you'd have gotten if you converted all the Empyrean/Astrals you earned from a fresh run into Reward Merits. These were added as a bonus to ensure the reward values of running Incarnate Trials remained relatively the same even with the removal of the conversion option.

If you don't enjoy the challenge of difficult content, and the costume rewards do not appeal to you, nor does making a big profit on selling Aether, then you can simply choose to spend your time doing other things. Not every update will appeal to every player, but we hope there's other things in Page 4 that are to your liking! They are in the Special salvage tab, and do not take up any inventory space whatsoever. They aren't meant to be purely for fun, they're meant to serve as incentives for doing more difficult content, plus being able to be sold on the AH so people who prefer alternate forms of content can purchase them with influence if they absolutely avoid the harder stuff, with the bonus that people who like harder stuff but not costumes can make a tidy profit from their extra-effort endeavors.

I'll look at it; It was on the list, but I'm also juggling all fixes/tweaks to Sheathed Weapons, Aether Costumes, Advanced Difficulty ITF, Fort Trident & The Crucible, yata yata. The seagull noises are likely because the sound size of the coastal ambience was just set to be giant because it didn't have to consider any underground, adding a tailor is an easy 'sure, can do' as well, I'll even go look for a CC0 pirate shanty to add to the space for ambience.

I don't think that's going to be an issue, he's on the zone's minimap and with a store icon. Players should be using maps until they've memorized where things are. 👍 Everyone has vault access everywhere at all times now, check the top left of your Salvage window. It's been that way for a while if I recall. 👀 I could add one, but it'd just be for visual transparency. Already looked into that and it is not possible. SG base maps are formatted differently than zone maps and can't store item data like that so it would not function if added to Fort Trident. I was instructed to add them by the lead devs to prevent a brand new player from wandering into Fort Trident and one-way teleporting themselves to Founders Falls and being stranded in a zone filled with +35 enemies. 😱

Oh yeah! Forgot about that, the Lead GMs have orange names, normal GMs have blue names, thanks for the reminder haha!

Not trying to be deceptive or confusing; There's three branches under the Homecoming banner in nutshell: The Development Team, we have cyan forum names and we work on new updates to the game, fixing bugs, adding features. The GM Team, they have orange (Lead GMs) or blue forum names and moderate player/community affairs, promotions, and running contests. The Homecoming Team, they have yellow forum names and oversee Homecoming as a whole; Things like running the game servers, handling finances, and managing the coordination of the two other teams. I hope that clears things up!

Just to clarify, the Development Team doesn't manage Homecoming's promotions or events, we just work on updates to the game. It's the GM Team that manages community affairs, moderation, promotions, contests, and events. Despite their being called "Developer's Choice" the judging and awarding of those AE arcs is handled independently by the GM Team, not the Development Team.

It's not really the Development Team's place to promote player-made content, especially when that content differs between each server and the owner's of said content could cut off all access to it for everyone if they felt like it, making it a tough candidate for any kind of 'patched-in and permanent' type of promotion. If you're interested in seeing more SG base spotlights, that'd be something to suggest to the Homecoming/GM Team who manage community events/affairs.

Next build of Page 4.

The hostless Nictus' teleport is unresistable since as players have reported, if you move away from the hijacking chain it can get a bit buggy; Since this is for a micro-event, not an ordinary enemy teleport. Those oranges will work against the Elite Boss Cimeroran Beast's Shadow Slip though.

Actually, next patch the door to The Crucible will be in Mercy Island! So you can rejoice in it being far easier to find/access soon! 😉

Not a bad thought... Good suggestion! I'll add an Arachnos/Freedom Corp greeter by the doors who can be clicked and will explain what the facility is and what how it works/can be used for.

Just as a heads-up, there's a known issue currently where the hostless Nictus can successfully begin channeling their body hijacking but the hold power falls off due to what I assume is hard coded limitations on how close a target must be in order for a targeted toggle to stay active. This will be fixed next patch, if a hostless Nictus grabs you they will teleport you to them with a hold, so there's no discrepancies/ability to move out of their range and it's also very obvious which one grabbed you. Most the strange behavior currently is people not realizing they were being hijacked because the hold portion didn't take effect and then suddenly dying from far away (only the initial power in the hijacking chain checks for range). I imagine the Level 1 bug would be because the hijacking checks the level of the hostless Nictus that stole your body to set the doppelganger's, but if you moved too far away from the hostless Nictus, the game can't check its level to set the spawned doppelganger's and thus defaults to 1.

This number hasn't changed recently. She's always been the Atlas Park trainer, then later Paragon Studios replaced Statesman in Independence Port with her as the task force contact for the now Ms. Liberty Task Force, and as a result, she also had to replace Statesman in Fort Trident as the contact for said task force. Mostly I think people kind of forgot Fort Trident existed up until recently (for good reason heh).

Not sure what this is referring to, in Fort Trident/The Crucible all of those have minimap waypoints. Except for Quartermasters, which aren't in those zones yet, but will be added next patch alongside tailors in those zones, as well as an update making all Facemaker/Icon tailors able to change body types instead of just the ones labeled surgeons.

The system is designed to be expanded upon, expect lots more costumes later on! 👍

No worries! There's a surprising amount of people who never visit the forums or aren't in the right social circles to know about those convenience bases, so this was provided as a hard-to-miss alternative so they aren't missing out just because they aren't as tuned in. Everyone who's played for awhile should know just how terrible City of Heroes can be at actually explaining itself in-game haha.

You mean the supergroup bases that new players won't know exist and cannot access at all until/unless somebody tells them about it + provides an access code? I don't think there's anything to worry about in terms of the value of player crafted convenience bases, they're still generally superior for size, can be far more function-dense, and also contain portals to most every zone in the entire game vs. only the couple that have Freedom Phalanx/Arachnos contacts. This is just as an alternate convenience with more transparency, so that somebody not in the know isn't at a disadvantage in terms of functionality they have access to.

Aether can be traded like any other unbound salvage, sold on the AH, or placed in base storage bins.

They're using the existing doppelganger tech, if you go into AE and make a test arc that spawns a doppelganger boss of your character, the Nictus will have those exact same powers if they stole your body

We did what we could, but at its core the ITF is still very anti-control by its design, but we did make some efforts to make sure control had some valuable things to do. Spoilers for anyone who doesn't want to know the mechanical changes in the Advanced Difficulty ITF:

Currently each star rank of difficulty removes one additional rank from susceptibility of Confuse, excepting for 1-Star which used to have it for Elite Bosses but was removed: 1-Star - No confusion protection on any mobs 2-Star - EBs, bosses 3-Star - EBs, bosses, LTs 4-Star - EBs, bosses, LTs, minions If you are suggesting a different approach, I would be totally fine with making bosses+ have the Confuse protection at all ranks instead and leaving it off LTs and minions if that's more desireable. Meaning you'd get this: 1-Star - EBs, bosses 2-Star - EBs, bosses 3-Star - EBs, bosses 4-Star - EBs, bosses There has to be a compromise somewhere because of how extremely strong Confuse is and because it incurs no aggro to the user. It's not like other forms of control that actually have consequences for sloppy execution or careless use, so it's not only incredibly potent, but also completely safe.

When was this? On Brainstorm? I can look into increasing the delay between the FX telegraph and when the hostless Nictus spawn if it's not enough to react reliably even when looking for it.