Cobalt Arachne

You aren't wrong, part of the thinking was with repeat content you'll be exposed to it more, but it can certainly be difficult to fully absorb all the details while on a team. Adding a 'story difficulty' option to TFs is something that's been on our radar, just another feature we have to iron the details out for and find time to implement.

Ah! I totally misread, my apologies on that! 😨

About the Dr. Aeon's Strike Force's length... There are two main reasons for that, one more simple and one more complex: First: The simpler, is that story in the Dr. Aeon's Strike Force was not written as a two-parter narrative and was meant to be a lore dense piece of content, but that should be expected for content that is the capstone finale of an existing story. The strike force was always meant to be the finale moment to the original Gold Bricker's story in Cap Au Diable, which never got a proper conclusion and the players never got to tango with big bad King Midas himself, despite numerous arcs about him and involving him. As a result, this means that for full enjoyment of the Dr. Aeon SF's story, it is best to have played all the Cap Au Diable mission arcs about/involving the Gold Brickers and have some familiarity with those stories since it obviously plays a big role in whether you can follow along and understand what is happening during Aeon's wacky inter-dimensional romp to settle the score. Second: The more complex, is that in City of Heroes there's always been a stigma that 'long content = bad content', and while older player availability as adults may be a factor certainly, that's a bit heavy-handed as the only reason when people use it with so much objectivity. I don't necessarily see longer content as an objectively bad thing; It allows for more build-up and anticipation on the way to the finale showdown with the mastermind, it often lets the player feel like they're part of something more epic, and let's us really flesh out the characters, locations, and story. Penny Yin's TF typically being a 15-30 minute romp makes me feel like I'm on a chore during lunch, not thwarting a major scheme of a villainous organization bent on my city's destruction; That is obviously a very subjective take, and I've run and enjoyed my fair share of Penny Yin's, but it was never the type of experience the Dr. Aeon's SF was aimed to be. Dr. Aeon's Strike Force was designed from the beginning to be a longer, more elaborate piece of content. Variety is the spice of life, and players already had lots of shorter content choices already. If a player wanted to pick a piece of longer content, they generally had to look at the oldest team content in the catalogue which is infamous for obvious reasons... (Looking at you, Dr. Quarterfield!) The real question is how & why bad longer content is actually bad: Older long content that has coined this infamy mostly achieved its length with frustrating/slow mission objectives: Lots of 'kill all' missions, 'glowie needle in a haystack' missions, 'rescue & escort' missions. I believe the real reason people don't play the older longer content as often is because the objectives can be very dull, they can't really be streamlined much, and they often contain copious amounts of padding to make the content bulkier when it doesn't make it any more interesting. All of those things mentioned are completely absent in the Dr. Aeon's SF, which is longer content by virtue of it's content richness, variety, and scope. With many considerations also taken to allow the team play the content to speed it up or slow it down as they desire, it is a very flexible piece of content, with speed PUG teams finishing it regularly in 30 minutes, and other teams taking longer by their choice, not by force, which I believe is the key difference.

This is exactly the case.

Because we wanted players to actually have new incentives to play the game and earn the costume rewards (or spend a lot of influence) instead of just logging in for 15 minutes to buy everything new immediately after Page 4 went live with massive stockpiles of existing currency and then go back to being 'caught up with nothing to do or work towards'.

Looks like the child FX for the Arachnos Soldier AR weapon FX were missed for the disjointed firing point fix. Just fixed it, so expect that to go out next patch.

Thought I had fixed this; I'll check again.

Hmm, assuming maps that have a Vault Reserve present out of bounds (since those stores are library objects the vendor is added literally anywhere they are used); I'll make the Vault version of that vendor just not have any shout text.

I don't think there's a way to put a preview image like that into the store interface, but what you can do to preview the costumes is buy the 14-day temporary version found on the Halloween vendors as a way to demo them. The Halloween vendors and event have already been updated and include all the new costumes in Tier 1.

I've improved the positioning offsets for where the Rularuu Mace (and a few others with the same issue) sits on the back of Male/Huge costumes for next patch so they don't lean as far away from the torso. It should be positioned very similarly to your second screenshot. Unfortunately, I can't revert the size, as it needed to be increased by approximately 20% in order to accommodate the two-handed Bane Spider/Mace Mastery animations. Example of how it'll sit next patch:

Given the seriously bizarre state of things, and the totally inconsistent introduction, we may end up just making her unlock for owning the Sister Valeria arc completion badge instead to ensure she's accessible on every character and no matter how you do the arc. I can't see anything in her contact data or Sister Valeria's that would explain the level of inconsistency we're seeing here.

Okay that IS bizarre; I'll keep digging. 🤔

We've figured out the issue here is that if you do Sister Valeria's arc by going to Ouroboros instead of talking to her in the zone. Since Ouroboros mode does not offer contact introductions, she can't introduce you to Alexandra Sideris after the first mission. Looks like this is working as intended and, unfortunately, there isn't a way to do a dual unlock condition. The solution here will be to go talk to Valeria in-person and complete Mission 1 of her arc outside of Ouroboros, it will then unlock Alexandra Sideris for you. Edit: Apparently something else is going on, continuing to dig into it.

Probably not, I just wasn't aware of it until your post. I'll check on it... It may end up being a part of a post-Page 4 patch though.

Why that response? I explained how the payout numbers were calculated. Just noticed my typo lmao. Haven't had my morning caffeine yet. 😴 Thanks!

Originally it was decided using the count of AV-types you fought... But looking at the list again, and after the ITF had the extra AVs added + the ASF's original list actually included the optional ripple AV you can skip... If we exclude those, the list is actually fairly equal. Advanced Difficulty Dr. Aeon's Strike Force required AV fights: Cauldron Champ Frobe Princess Zoe Golden Roller Mr. Rodney Apex (Counted since while technically skippable, only doable by failing the ripple timer at 45 minutes, which isn't practical.) Ripplesurge Princess Zoe Mr. Rodney King Midas Dr. Zeon Advanced Difficulty Imperious Task Force required AV fights: Requiem Romulus Augustus Romulus Phalanx Computer Laeva Dextro Vandal N.Romulus Augustus kill #1 N.Romulus Augustus kill #2 N.Romulus Augustus kill #3 N.Romulus Augustus kill #4 I'll see about bumping the ITF's PAP payout to be equal to the ASF's.

Good find, especially on a release candidate, those HM-only conditional triggers were definitely working at one point, I'll have to dig into what changed. Thanks!

Something about that Excalibur makes me crave some watermelon. 🍉

The only real fix for this is likely going to be forcing the cutscene to play from farther away, the way it was set-up was kind of lazy in that it just triggers from the proximity of players to the mob's spawn location, but as you can see if you bypass the outer limits by teleporting in closer than expected the system has no way to know which ones should and shouldn't be spawned and does both. This was likely due to the lua script change to make the cutscene variable between modes. The dialog he uses in HM is slightly different and so the script controlling that setup is different from before. Will thinktank a fix for this.

Incarnate/Advanced Difficulty Cimeroran Traitor lieutenants had their Shout of Command (Ally +Res(Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confusion), +Perception) replaced with Rallying Cry (Ally +DMG, +To-Hit, +Crit). The reason for this was to make the enemy group more controllable, as LTs won't be prone to free all their comrades when they hit 50% health. Cimeroran Traitor bosses still have Shout of Command like before, which they drop at 50% health, but are less likely to hit that very fast and interrupt controls being used to manage the mob pack's alpha.

Also note you need one of the Phalanx TF badges or the Shining Stars 2 souvenir to unlock the LRT destination, it's not unlocked by default.

Likely because the zone's map server isn't set to auto-launch at start-up, try going to Fort Trident on foot then back to Atlas and see if it becomes available; It'll always launch once it is on Homecoming.

That's a per server setting, not a default, so it's not set on Brainstorm. It was configured so that Homecoming staff could add/remove the zone as events were held, but the team then elected to just leave it open at all times. It'll be there as always on Homecoming when Page 4 drops.

Unfortunately, a large number of mission map tilesets in this game are designed around the specific player height cap, anything that would let you exceed that cap to a noticeable degree would invite a host of problems with camera positioning, severe clipping, etc.

Was that one Vahzilok weapon in the GIF the only one you noted that needed fixing? If not, please list any more you noticed with weapon name and body type. Thanks! 🙂 WAI because they are actually completely separate menu categories sharing a mutually exclusive costume slot.