Cobalt Arachne

Good suggestion! I'll adjust the Advanced Difficulty modes so that you always get the max reward for the content you do even if you join a lower difficulty TF earlier in the day, akin to how the Incarnate Trials are set up. It'll still be capped per content, but after adjustment means if you complete 1-Star ASF you'll receive 2 Aether, and then after if you immediately complete 2-Star, you'd receive the difference, which would be 5, for the same total of 7 that is reward total for completing 2-Star outright. Expect this change next build. As for why add goals to the game for players work towards? That's what makes the game healthy and sees people playing regularly. If you're asking about why we don't give everything to everyone for free, that's because we already do, that's already available for literally everyone at all times on Brainstorm. Everyone is welcome to go play on Brainstorm where they can experience everything this game has to offer without any restrictions or effort. As has been mentioned this is purely for vanity costume powers, if you don't care about them, then you can ignore them and sell any Aether you get on the auction house, it changes nothing about your gameplay experience. They don't provide any buffs or make your character stronger. Why have them on a cooldown? The reward restrictions are to introduce some sanity, so people don't feel pressured to repeatedly do same content over and over and over for the rewards. The entire game has always done this, you can't get infinite Hamidon Enhancements doing the same content back to back in the same 18 hours, it's no different here really.

Hello to all UNDEFINED_ORGANIC_TARGETS waiting in here! We're hurdling towards- <TWITCH CLICK> All hail Lord Nemesis! ...Issue 27, Page 4's reveal! In the meantime, seems like this thread could use a- <CLICK WRRR> ...little pick-me-up, so enjoy this early preview of one of the new rewards from the upcoming ERROR:TEASE_DEFINITION_NOT_FOUND system being added with Page 4:

For kicks and giggles one time, I loaded the game up in VorpX on my Oculus Rift and played first person in VR. It was kind of neat, until I got into a mission, remembered I was playing a Scrapper, and phew... Playing melee in first person is not ideal. 😱

Development is still fully underway! The original plan was that we were going to release a small 'Page 3.1' update in January that would've included the almost done things that missed Page 3's release date. However due to circumstance and availability on our dev team changing unexpectedly, it had to be delayed and it was rolled into Page 4 instead. Page 4 is nearing completion and everyone on the team is very excited to pull back the curtain and show you guys what's coming. It's already looking to be a massive update with a plethora of long-time feature requests. This upcoming Page 4 update is a full blown page, and includes a huge amount of stuff beyond what would've been the Page 3.1 update if it had happened in January. The reason we can't commit to dates/reveal things until they're closer to release is because our timetables are not directly under our control. We're all unpaid volunteers who donate our time and expertise to work on the game for free, but how much time we can donate varies a huge amount on a day-to-day basis. We can't commit time that would cause our personal lives to suffer, as that's not long-term sustainable, so we work on the game as much as we possibly can as unpaid volunteers. Our love for this game/its community is the passion that continues to fuel us to work on it, and I can promise you there is no shortage of it on the dev team. Homecoming prides itself in the consistency of our updates, operations, and running the game in a very professional manner, comparable to the game's quality when it was a retail service backed by a publisher. That being said, oftentimes that gives players the impression that our content output should also be equal to a professional development studio, but unfortunately that's not possible since we're not able to work on the game full-time, 40 hours a week, like a paid team would. We thank everyone for their patience, it's not easy waiting sometimes, but we are doing our utmost to ensure it's worth that wait! 💙

It is haha, but it's also not a new animation; At least not on a certain body type...

Fiiiiiiiiiine; Only one more though! 🤔 Me walking to go post a teaser: Also me when my walking IS the teaser... 👀

Sheesh, really twisting my arm, eh? Fine here, take it! 😔

Sounds like we're in need of an infusion of TEASE! 😏

As others have mentioned, we ignored many of the usual balance considerations when it came to what a mob can or can't do because this was a for-fun event and the expected size of the groups fighting this GM would be league-sized (sometimes even two leagues!). 😱 Rest easy, the various crazy things that the Dreaded Mapserver™ did would never go into normal, permanent content. The GM was a flavor wild card thrown into the event to liven it up with some bizarre-level nonsense. Given it's drop reward was a tiny fraction of the event's overall income and most times it was dead minutes into the zone's invasion, I don't believe it had any impact on the event's success.

Phew! Thanks to everyone's combined efforts to hold back the Dreaded Mapserver, our hard-working server engineers had the time needed to suppress and contain the dangerous sentient code! Invoking an ancient ritual known only as CTRL+X&CTRL+V, we have sealed the glitchy threat away on a very secure USB thumb drive that we hid in the janitor closet, where it will surely never be unleashed again! Definitely. 100%. Nobody ever goes in that closet anyway! We hope everyone had fun and walked away with a few extra levels under their belt!

Oh my! I've received reports that GM_Bot has once again begun accepting tells and distributing costume upgrades in-game. I'm sure everything will be fine...

Confirmed & found the source. Rikti Monkeys got a bump by mistake while creating the stronger versions that went into the event monkeys used in the Mapserver Madness invasions. Will be fixed next patch.

Mapserver Madness! (Four-One 2022 Invasion Event): After GM_Bot went rogue last year and was subsequently suppressed by our capable server admins, we thought all was well!...We thought wrong. 😱Small bits of the unknown and mysterious code that suddenly gave rise to GM_Bot's sentience have escaped and begun proliferating itself! We've now received reports that it has manifested within the various mapservers that run the zones of our fair City of Heroes!We do our best to keep our mapserver instances happy and healthy, but as you are all aware, the map server can be a fickle beast. Often disconnecting unexpecting victims at a moments notice, we thought it was likely just bugs in the code, but new information has arisen that shows there may be more...Something unnatural, more malevolent...The crisis we now face threatens the fabric of our world! The mapserver has gained sentience, and become the Dreaded Mapserver!™ It has had enough of our super-powered antics and has deemed all player life as requiring immediate extermination! Assembling the most terrifying, under baked, and volatile code it could conjure, the Dreaded Mapserver has assembled a violent army of glitches, bugs, broken scripts, and other abominations to attempt to wipe out all life as we know it!It is up to the brave players of our world to rise and combat the sentient Dreaded Mapserver, drive back its wicked and unstable minions, and to exterminate the fiend's sentience with a hard reboot! Those who muster the courage to face these aberrant distortions will find themselves as much as tenfold times more experienced than they were before, with an untold bounty of influence, infamy, and information that comes with such triumphs! We wish you noble souls the best of luck as you work to save our world! DISCLAIMER: This is a short, for-fun invasion event! Thus, there are no unique badges or rewards that can be missed, but we hope you will enjoy the x10 reward scale! Level some characters! This silly invasion event will run through the weekend until regular Tuesday maintenance time. ~FREEM! Author's note: The mapserver has stocked up on a lifetime supply of Blue Spider© brand Hero Repellant™ and Dr. Caretaker's© Signature Costume Bleach™; Beware!

Fragmentary Veritas - New Release: Chapter 2, Page 17 - 'Finally Seeing Eye To Eye': http://fragmentaryveritas.webcomic.ws/comics/32 Can't commit to any kind of release schedule, but still enjoy finding time to work on art when I can. 🙂

We're waiting to see how many badgers get desperate enough to defeat Romulus one hundred times. Naw, just kidding. 😉 It's still coming! January was, unfortunately, busier than we had hoped for many members of the dev team. The reality of being volunteer developers is that we have to ensure the responsibilities of our personal lives are met first and that comes with sometimes having less (but sometimes more!) time to work on the game than we expect. Good stuff is still in the works, rest assured! Stay tuned!

Events The Spring Fling event is now active. NPCs Pocket D Ganymede, Scratch, Jessica Megan Duncan, and Arbiter Hawk now have the proper Contact NPC FX rings. Dram and Chilly now have the proper Vendor NPC FX rings. Tasks Spring Fling 2012 - Arbiter Hawk: 'The Widow in Red' Revamped Virgil Tarikoss's dialog tree to better fit his character, as the previous dialog tree was copy-pasted 1:1 from the hero contact. The obol contact now provides a few vials of mana-infused blood which are used in the ritual instead of the player character cutting themselves. DJ Zero's involvement in this story arc has been removed as it violated his 'absolute neutrality' rule. Mercedes Sheldon (in Pocket D) has inherited his role with a rewritten dialog tree. A few lore inconsistences, typos, and mistakes were corrected in the arc's text. Spring Fling 2012 - Jessica Megan Duncan: 'The Widow in Red' The obol contact now provides a few vials of mana-infused blood which are used in the ritual instead of the player character cutting themselves. DJ Zero's involvement in this story arc has been removed as it violated his 'absolute neutrality' rule. Mercedes Sheldon (in Pocket D) has inherited his role with a rewritten dialog tree. A few lore inconsistences, typos, and mistakes were corrected in the arc's text.

To quote the wisdom of Joe Young: "The monkey's villains ain't kilt! They's De-feat-ed!"

Oh geez, haha, probably 1000+ hours or more easily? I didn't keep track. 😅 I spent most of my free time last year working on it (as I was able to without compromising on any real life responsibilities). As a result, it's kind of surreal that we're already in 2022, time seems to have evaporated so quickly... When I started out I kept things simple and realistic, as I didn't want to expand the workload of anyone else on the dev team due to my own inexperience. As things progressed however, and I learned what was possible with the system, there were moments of "Ooh, I could totally add this" or "We gotta do that". This became a bit of a double-edged sword, since it did introduce a fair bit of feature creep, but fortunately we stuck the landing and everything came out and at a high quality standard. I'll expand more on these under Question #4. In terms of being able to script the missions and assembling the working parts, I could do that far quicker now than I did originally. If we were to tackle another piece of ambitious group content I think with the lessons learned from the ASF, we could do so in less time, but as you guessed the map creation is something that would be difficult to speed up without sacrificing quality. Map creation was the one area that I was actually somewhat familiar with before joining the developer team. The City of Heroes map editor conventions and functionality are not too dissimilar from other map editor standards of the same time period, so I was able to adjust quickly to the quirks/nuances. As mentioned, high-quality map creation takes a lot of time, even with experience, and it easily took up a hearty chunk of the ASF's development cycle. 😄 I'm happy when I see people mention that the maps are one of the highlights of the content for them, they were a labor of love! Surprisingly, no there actually weren't! The most ambitious things on the original outline were the final mission's map and use of geometry phasing (seeing a player's first reaction to that map has been one of my favorite things) and the smelting cauldron mechanics for the fight with King Midas. Those big ticket items were included fully as originally envisioned and we ended up expanding numerous elements far beyond the original scope more than a few times. 😲 All these were features that were added during development: -Becky's appearances on the first and last missions -The entirety of the Smelting Cauldron Arena encounter, map, and mission -The Crey map and mission -The Golden Brickernauts and their self-destruct -Everything included by Golden Roller's ripple dimensions -The Ripplesurge encounter -The upside-down sections of the King Midas' fight -The D-Sync Enhancements -The Advanced Difficulty Options While that list looks great and things did turn out well, we learned as a team that feature creep made it difficult to coordinate tasks and delegate work equally. This is something we'll be sure and keep in mind for the next project we undertake.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with those who prefer to play MMO's alone, in-fact, I was one such player myself in the past. 😄 There was a really great GDC panel about the 'lone wolf' type of online player in the MMO space that I often think back on, so I do always keep stuff like that in my mind. That being said, this is an MMO, and there is going to be some content that was designed for teams. If somebody wants to collect 100% of the badges, it will require going outside their comfort zone sometimes and looking for some help to get these badges. There's a really great group on Everlasting who run open-invite nightly Incarnate Trial badge runs and Master Of's from their [Everlasting TFs] global chat/Discord/LFG channel that I was able to join with minimal interaction and got most of the game's group-oriented badges with them. Given server transfers are free, there is always the option to move to where players are who can help. (I'm sure other communities of this type exist on other servers as well, but I'm only familiar with the server I play on myself.) Mostly, it's about finding the helpful folk in the community. They are certainly out there, and more than happy to lend a hand if you are friendly and ask. 🙂

@darkgob, I always read through all feedback (even if I can't respond to everyone individually), while considering the context, but I feel like what I'm reading is based a few misconceptions... Badges in this game are always optional, existing primarily as little stickers of merit for doing specific things (with the exception of accolade powers that increase your character's strength, which are all set to be very reasonably accessible by everyone). If a player wants to get every single badge in the game, they should expect to have to do everything the game has to offer. This may include things they do not normally enjoy doing like PvP, challenge modes, or content that requires team coordination. 100% badge completion is a challenge involving an extremely diverse and time consuming list of things that have to be done to reach it, it is not something anybody should see as the 'baseline floor of accessibility'. That being said, we do always keep these things in mind. For instance, we very intentionally did not attach **any** badges to the highest difficulty modes in the Dr. Aeon Strike Force. Malicious adds the minimum mechanics needed to get the badges in the first place (one of the Master of badges does not even require Malicious and can be earned on all difficulties), but does not add any of the grueling difficulty bumps seen in the higher difficulties beyond it. We very intentionally held back the ASF's badges from being as hard as they could've been, that they require the team to be coordinated and approach the challenges with awareness is not really any sort of exclusion, unless you mean to suggest that all badges requiring a team to work together are inherently exclusive? Our group content data shows this is absolutely not the case. The Dr. Aeon Strike Force has been fairly popular since it launched and I'm told the GM ticket count on issues regarding it has been low relative to other content. Players who want to see it have been. Most players should be able to play the ASF and complete it without any problems. I've joined a lot of ASFs anonymously on my player account since it launched and merely hung along for the ride without adding any input to the team and have finished every one I joined. Granted, it is anecdotal and none of these were on anything above Malicious, but there should not be any hard stop obstacles as long as a team doesn't overshoot their capabilities on the advanced difficulty modes. That being said, I'm not sure where your statement is coming from, but feel free to elaborate on what teams seem to be finding impossible to complete. The only places I could see this happening is if players ignore the summons that Ripplesurge creates to heal himself or if they don't drag King Midas into a cauldron to make him vulnerable to damage. Both were made to be as intuitive as possible and neither are mechanics that kill/punish players. As mentioned, severely under prepared teams having problems on Relentless difficulty is not unexpected, as the difficulty was tuned/balanced around tier 4 Incarnates using full set IOs. However, that difficulty mode is entirely optional and again, has no badges tied to it, it's there for players who enjoy that kind of gameplay experience. There will be a bit of a learning curve regarding the advanced difficulty modes and team leaders abilities to gauge the capabilities of their group to decide what mode they should choose to play the content on. Majority of the existing content that featured advanced mechanics did not explain themselves transparently, and current player familiarity with them is only due to their existing for so long and people having learned/documented them over time. Apex/Tin Mage/Incarnate Trial mechanics were much the same way as the ASF on launch. What they did and how they were dealt with was not immediately apparent when the very first group entered them for the first time ever. That being said, for those who wanted to know, the AU-Rifters Dimensional Distortion produces a purple effect near them in addition to the beam, anyone close enough when their power fires is pulled closer to them and then hit with a mag 50 Immobilize. Similar to the War Walker's Orbital Lance, they fire this independent of player interaction so a warning pop-up was warranted vs. the Brickernauts who blow up only when players drop their health to 25% and are thus triggered by player interaction. To the contrary, all the decision making with the ASF was done to be as inclusive as possible, not exclusive. That these new options exist in content that some players would rather opt out of does not exclude anybody unless it's a self-made decision to be entirely excluded. I've seen ASFs recruiting in LFG for all styles of play... Some running badges, some running on higher difficulties, some running sub-50 for experience gain. There are more ways to play and enjoy the ASF than any other existing content in terms of variety of options and modes. Inclusive works in both directions, some players like the game easy, some like it hard. If there are no hard options, then those players are excluded just as much as the reverse scenario. The badge requirements were set at the lowest they could be, where the mechanics to earn them are present but the higher difficulty challenges are not. If any of the badges were locked to Relentless, I feel like this statement would have more weight, but this is not the case (by design).

Totally okay! 🙂 There's no single piece of content that can hit all the notes, so always about options and variety. There are more shorter/simpler TFs currently and fewer longer/elaborate ones, so we opted for what would help diversify the available content offerings.

Becky was originally found in Vernon von Grun's Von Grun's Redemption arc in Grandville, specifically the 'Investigate Devouring Earth attack on Arachnos base' mission. She was a very memorable character and I thought she was a fun choice for inclusion in the ASF.

Hello Homecoming! It’s so exciting to see that in 2022, City of Heroes is thriving and there are still so many passionate players invested in the game that’s so beloved to us all! Now that the Dr. Aeon Strike Force (ASF) has been out a little while and I'm guessing that most people who were interested have given it a spin, it's time for a little look into the cogs that spin to turn ideas and stories into playable content for you guys! This dev diary will be a bit of an insight into the development and thought processes behind why we did what we did. Obviously, if you haven’t played the ASF, this post may contain spoilers! You’ve been warned! 😱 New Dev, Who This?: For those who are unfamiliar with me, I’ll introduce myself: I’m Cobalt Arachne, I was the primary designer behind the Dr. Aeon Strike Force! Before that, I was authoring a City of Heroes fan webcomic and became a writing contributor in late 2019 when I wrote the Tour Guide tip missions that were added with Issue 27, Page 2. Afterwards, I formally joined the developer team in early 2020 to help design and create new content. My previous experience working on video games is mostly comprised of unofficial mod work… Extensive map editor work for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, texture work for Unreal Tournament 2004, and scripting mods for Starbound. Random Fun Fact: I was working on a (now shelved) City of Heroes-themed Starbound mod when Homecoming launched! City of Heroes has served as a crucial creative catalyst for me in my life. It is truly humbling to have the opportunity to help give back to the game that has given me so much since I first played it nearly 17 (Wowza!) years ago! But enough about me, let’s talk about the primary topic at hand… Dr. Aeon’s Strike Force! Concepting the Content: "There's got to be some narrative intrigue hiding around here somewhere!" Around November in 2019, @Piecemeal asked me to pitch some ideas about a new villain-side Strike Force, as there was a noticeable gap there and Homecoming had been wanting to fill. City of Villains has more than a few potential unresolved threads, but what immediately jumped out to me was the opportunity to finally bring King Midas into the game. He maintained a heavy presence throughout the mission arcs in Cap Au Diable, and the Gold Brickers are a fun but underutilized villain group. As an adolescent, I often wondered about why we never got to face King Midas and what he’d be like if we did. I can say it’s quite surreal to be the one answering that question myself over 15 years later! I spent time studying the existing lore/details surrounding King Midas and his Gold Brickers, which elements were outstanding and made sense to utilize in the narrative, and then crafted my pitch. It went through a few revisions and rewrites with input from some of the other developers and then sat until after Issue 27, Page 2 was live. Around March, I was brought officially onto the team and was tasked with creating the ASF as my first project. Building on the pioneering work @Piecemeal did on suffering through unraveling the mission code and his mentorship/tutelage, I set off on learning the tools and building the content! Assembling the ASF: "You want to do WHAT now?! Well, I guess if AeonCorp is footing the bill..." One of the primary goals I had for the Dr. Aeon Strike Force was to subvert expectations/conventions while being a piece of group content that would cast a wide net on allowing you to choose how you played it… This included the creation of the Advanced Difficulty Settings (more on those later!). The first mission was built together with @Piecemeal’s oversight. It was the starting point of the ASF, but also his training me on the nuances of the City of Heroes map editor and scripting missions. His guidance, mentorship, and tutelage were pivotal in my getting up to speed as a developer. "The wisdom of Piecemeal-sensei's guidance." Things like fan-favorite Becky, the contestants at the Smelting Cauldron entrance, the Crey laser tripwires, or the alternative objectives in the Golden Roller ripples, etc. These types of mechanics were aimed at letting a team have some control over how they tackled objectives, allowing them to move faster or face an increased challenge depending on their preferences. We wanted to craft an experience where teams speeding through (and thus are often more experienced players) could face a challenge better suited to their level more organically within the mission itself by the style they played. This design philosophy influenced much of the decision-making, but we also looked at other elements found in popular content to see what it was that players enjoyed about them to attempt to craft something that hits those same high notes while maintaining its own identity and flavor. Things like: Lots of AVs to fight, big groups of enemies, or grand stages upon which to do combat... We gave thoughts to each of these, given the time and effort to create a truly worthwhile experience, we wanted it to be something everyone could find enjoyment in. In those regards, I like to believe we managed to create something that, while imperfect (no content is or can be), does deliver the experience it was designed to be. More grand and complex, worthy of the moniker of Strike Force. Making the Maps: Personally, one of the best experiences in City of Heroes is entering a brand-new mission map, and not knowing what to expect and the joy of discovery in seeing new sights. Due to this, it was a personal goal of mine that excluding the first mission, every other mission map on the ASF had to be hand-crafted and avoid the use of any stock maps. Random Fun Fact: The entirety of the Smelting Cauldron arena encounter found in Mission 2 was originally inside Princess Zoe's cargo ship in Mission 4! This was not without its costs, however, as quality map making takes a lot of time, and a good portion of the ASF’s development was spent on creating the new locations that players visit during its runtime. Mission 5's ripple dimension sub-missions expanded in scope rapidly during development, causing the time investment to explode as well. The first map created was the Gold Bricker cargo ship map featured in the Homecoming anniversary teaser post. Most of my learning/experimenting with map creation was done on that mission's map, and where I quickly realized the freedom of the City of Heroes map tools included the freedom to make costly mistakes that could undo hours of work! Save often! "I swear if this map editor eats my work ONE more time... Grr..." The map tools include a real-time triangle count performance evaluator, which is utilized to ensure all mission maps can perform without issues on any machine that run the game. The initial version of the cargo ship had to have its detail work scaled back as we must ensure that City of Heroes remains a game that is as accessible as possible in terms of performance. "It has to run on EVERYTHING? Even the toaster?!" Aside from performance, I wanted to bake as much detail and love into these maps as I could. This includes things like the in-mission zone names/music, various clickable objects with flavor text on every map, and little things that players might not notice on their first run. As repeat content that would be run more than once, I wanted there to be things players could discover even after their first experience with the ASF. "Lots of hidden clickables throughout the ASF to be found for bonus flavor!" Each map was created by starting with the question ‘what kind of atmosphere should this environment convey?’ and built towards that goal. Later maps aimed to be chaotic and unstable as the dimensional craziness escalated and reached its climax. I've always been a believer that the identity of a villain group is just as much tied to their lairs as it is their members and so it was crucial to imbue soul and identity into the maps that these foes were faced on. "The 5th Column claim the moon zone landing was faked... Seems kind of suspicious to me..." As development progressed, we also implemented some advanced tech onto the later maps such as dynamic geometry phasing and collision (Big credit here to @Number Six and @Faultline!). This really helped sell the ‘unstable dimension’ vibes we wanted and are most noticeable on the finale map. If you haven’t seen them yet, go check it out! "What madness hide behind the curtains?" Everything was also designed to be as future-proofed as possible (this is a philosophy we apply to everything we do) so that the quality and capabilities of future content will be able to take full advantage of the efforts the ASF pioneered. Building the Brickers: "Stay in line bub! Who was up next for their powerset design?" As the content would range from level 35-50, it also meant that the Gold Brickers would need expanding, both visually and functionally to become a group worthy of max level and appropriately threatening. The approach taken for this was to evaluate what the Gold Brickers did well (stacking -resistance debuffs), what was their primary obstacle to doing this (high defense from players), and adding conditional assistance (-defense grenades and Smelter +tohit support) that the players would need to manage in order to maximize their odds against these flying foes. The goal was that the best way to foil these new foes would be via active counterplay, either by moving out of debuff fields or focus firing the dangerous bosses. The group was also lacking in damage type diversity, so the teleporting AU-Bricker enemy subtype was implemented with inverse energy attacks that inflicted Negative Energy damage. Designing these new units, they were given cues to visually connect the high-tech thieves back to Dr. Aeon, such as the Brickernaut elite bosses using jury-rigged versions of Aeon's own power suit. Princess Zoe: Early in development, I also knew I wanted to incorporate a female member of the group, and so I designed and added Princess Zoe. The Gold Bricker's princess is based on the historical daughter of King Midas that was turned to gold from the myth/legend. She became the technological elbow that justified the group’s advancement in technology, a prodigy to rival Dr. Aeon himself in the engineering space. King Midas: King Midas’s design goal was to capture ‘regal’ while maintaining ‘sleek and modern’; Drawing some cues from Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, he was given a large stature and ornate coat, but would shed it when he entered battle with the players. Early versions had him enter a unique golden Granite Armor form when he was invincible but this was dropped early on as it was less visually interesting than his final look during the finale battle. Mr. Rodney: Mr. Rodney also got an updated look for the ASF! He was one of the few notable Gold Brickers prior to the ASF. He was previously using a generic lieutenant model, so his new look was built using the unique pieces from his enemy group. Boss Encounter Mechanics: It was important to ensure that our first new endgame group content had exciting encounters with ways to stand out, especially compared to the quality of content the game saw later in its life. Arch-villains that stand in place until they’re defeated was too low a bar, and so we set out to create memorable battles against the major confrontations in the ASF with unique twists and advanced mechanics. This was made possible with the support of our team's lua/code developers, giving another round of props to @Faultline and @Number Six who were consistently lending their expertise in coding solutions to make every crazy idea I had possible, rather than ever insisting we rein in the scope of the mechanics. Crafting a Challenge: "Yowch! I'll remember to focus-fire those Shimmering Effusions next time..." The other major goal I had with the ASF was to deliver a new system of difficulty that could be widely applicable to other existing content later, as one of the most common complaints about the game in its current state was that no content was tailor-made to push a group of maxed out Incarnates using IO enhancements. It needed to be more engaging however than simply throwing stats around or reducing the players in any manner… One of Homecoming’s greatest strengths is its accessibility. For those who did not play the retail version of City of Heroes, the time and resource cost to build a character in the game was magnitudes higher than it is now (as is not uncommon for retail MMOs), and the game’s overall difficulty was generally tailored to the median power level that was achievable by most characters without extreme investment. With a different environmental context to design for, we needed to deliver an answer for the stagnant endgame that was unable to provide the desired degree of engagement for veteran players using characters built to their absolute strongest. The answer for this was the Advanced Difficulty Settings, which beyond just increasing the strength of the enemies, also gave them new powers and behaviors to truly make the mode more than just a stat race. It was a pioneering effort and one that we’ll be continuing to improve and tweak as we move forward into the future. I’m sure by now many of you have experienced the terror of the exploding Brickernauts! 😛 "I suppose I deserved this." The crux of the design for the ASF's challenge mode was to ensure that the experience changed enough that it felt distinct from the standard mode, and that players who chose the higher difficulty were sufficiently rewarded for the increased challenge. I believe that for a first new voyage into a post-shutdown endgame, the results we have achieved are a great first step into the future for the game. Originally, the advanced difficulty modes were triggered by spawning the enemies at level 52 or higher, but thanks to @Number Six’s rewrite of the entire challenge settings code, we were able to deliver a highly customizable experience that allows players to choose much of the nuance in how they play the ASF at max level. If you think the game is too easy, go toe-to-toe with some Relentless Gold Brickers and see if they’re more engaging for you! 😉 For those who have enjoyed the ASF in its higher-difficulty incarnations and want to see options like it on other content, stay tuned! Facing the Future: "What new exciting things lie in store I wonder?" I am truly humbled by the positive reception and excitement surrounding the Dr. Aeon Strike Force; It has exceeded my every expectation. Hearing the kind words of players who’ve enjoyed the content has been truly uplifting and I want to thank everyone who’s played, tested, and provided feedback to help us make this project the best it could be! Now that Issue 27, Page 3 is behind us, we’ll be looking towards the future, striving to do our best to continue delivering the best content we can for you, the players! Of course, that doesn’t mean we won’t continue to adjust/fix the ASF as needed to ensure it’s as great an experience as possible. Here’s to another great year of City of Heroes! -Cobalt Arachne

Nothing has changed with the fight that I'm aware of, the dev team is on break for December. Due to some streams being crossed by mistake, Dark Watcher does unintentionally have two of Hero 1's resistance powers right now, meaning he takes a little longer to kill than designed. That will be fixed in January, so the fight will become slightly easier, but Gaussian has always summoned Vanguard Sword reinforcements once he becomes active, and continues to do so periodically even if not engaged with players.

There's no fall damage at all on Mission 5, 6, or 7's maps (this is controlled by a per-map variable), so no cause for concern. Rippled does like 6 damage and is just a flavor effect to demonstrate the AU technology is not clean like something Portal Corp would use and it stings a little bit to use it (AU Gold Brickers are damaging their atoms slowly using this incomplete tech). I'd recommend doing this badge on the Reichsman TF/SF as they can spawn two per mob (one boss and one LT) and it's generally far faster/more consistent. That defeat badge is not ASF-exclusive. Plenty of people had this idea previously or that the Golden Roller WAS King Midas himself. Him being a driver doesn't contradict lore anywhere and the Gold Brickers having a fully self-aware and sentient AI car, years before Zoe had joined or even Arachnos themselves had such tech, would've been far more lore contradictory in my opinion. He's one of the few ASF NPCs who 100% always survives, and that was intentional. Don't expect any ASF retcons. We thoroughly did our homework on the pieces of existing canon it touched.