Cobalt Arachne

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.

The justification for the Confuse limitation was because when you use Confuse you sacrifice part of your rewards, which is usually influence and experience. But in Advanced Difficulty content you're there to earn merits and Aether salvage, so in order to use Confuse you must pick a lower difficulty and sacrifice that reward. Testing demonstrated that these buffed-up enemies handedly tore themselves to pieces when confused. Confuse without a doubt would be the undisputed king of making this content trivial. Think of it like this: If a mobs arbitrary danger value is a 5, most mez makes them locked down, which reduces that danger value to 0. If we look at Confuse, it turns that mob's danger value back on themselves resulting in a -5. That's no problem in normal content but if the danger value is suddenly 500, then that same Confuse makes the swing to -500, which just far too strong to allow completely unmitigated and without any impactful limitations or penalties. If you want to abuse Confuse to its full-effect, you'll have to choose a lower difficulty and thus reduce the rewards you earn which is in-line for how Confuse works with rewards.

The hostless Nictus actually have designed counter-measures baked in for soloists. Defeated Cimeroran Traitor bosses and elite bosses play a very distinct sound and emit a visual cloud of odorous smoke prior to one of the hostless Nictus spawning. These hostless Nictus can't move from where they spawned, and after 45-seconds if they haven't possessed anyone, will wither and die automatically. Their initial range for the body hijacking chain is only 20ft, meaning a player can notice the Nictus is about to spawn, move away to be out of their range, and they'll die on their own. The fancy advanced difficulty mechanics like the Golden Brickernauts in the Aeon Strike Force always have a couple intentional methods added in which to deal with them, the Nictus have them too. You can either: 1. Move away before it appears, then either wait for it wither in 45 seconds or shoot it from outside it's range. 2. If on a team ensure you're somewhere they can respond by either killing the Nictus, or mezzing it (mag 6), which causes the possession to fail and leaves them as sitting ducks. 3. Be a Kheldian; the hostless Nictus can't possess Peacebringers or Warshades since they're already hosts to an energy being. The reward for killing the hostless Nictus (but not if they wither) is a PBAoE 45 second buff that increases everyone's damage by 50%, recharge by 30%, and 64-95% (depends on the level of the Nictus) resistance to Lethal/Negative which is likely to resist cap you for those 45 seconds. So they're not purely a nuisance, and swiftly dealing with them as they appear grants a really good buff to everyone nearby that is specially tooled to be effective against the ITF's baddies. Obviously, unlike the Brickernauts where you just die, failing to deal with a hostless Nictus results in the Nictus taking your body, juiced-up with their energy, to use your own powers against your team, so the benefits/penalties equal out.

It was originally, actually, but since it's meant to be the shallow end of the pool of the advanced difficulty we wanted people to have the freedom to play in it and splash around, so they feel comfortable enough to throw themselves into the deeper difficulties later on.

1. Back items don't scale with body size sliders, so the space has to be there to account for characters who turn the body scale up to max and pick torsos with layers like Jackets, otherwise the weapons would sheath into their spine. If the models were to get upgraded to support scaling back attachment points, I'd adjust the sheathed weapons to take advantage of it. 2. Needing to create countless extra models for actual weapon-fitting sheaths would have condemned this feature to not happening. Other MMOs don't do this either (World of Warcraft being the one that comes to mind) so it was given a pass. There were system limitations, but despite them, we still felt a large amount of the playerbase would appreciate this option.

Next patch the Aether costume requirements for the tiered badges will be lowered to 1/5/10 down from 1/10/25, reducing the minimum required Aether to get all three tiers and the accolade badge down from 300 to 150.