Cobalt Arachne

Neither did I honestly! But it turns out with how flexible Lua is compared to SZE / hard coded scripts, that converting the existing Labyrinth script to run on LFG was actually a lot simpler than expected. That being said, the LFG version required numerous elements be pruned in order to function / load at all, as instances have less system resources than dedicated zones, and the Labyrinth of Fog pushes the CoH engine to it's upper limits. I will fully detail the LFG Labyrinth when it goes to test, but many of the non-raid / exploration elements (motes, secrets, gladiators, orange floors) had to be removed from the zone to get performance up so it could run on LFG, something that raid leaders might argue makes the instanced version "superior" specifically for raids, as all those non-raid-related distractions will be gone, and all Influence/Experience earned will be zone-wide. Reward Merits will instead drop as a lump sum from the Minotaur, with Malevolent Fogs serving solely as level shift points in LFG. The goal was to provide the raid experience in LFG, and I'm feeling optimistic it should deliver.

I'm reading all the feedback, and will be making a plethora of potential adjustments, many aimed at helping larger leagues. - There's a new area being added that's more tailored to infinitely grinding EBs after the Minotaur is defeated; This wider open space is aimed at bigger league sizes (3+ teams). - An Incarnate salvage roll being added to the Minotaur reward table, for those with no interest in Aether. - A method to track which Minotaur weapon defeats you have. - Balance wise, some adjustments towards making it easier to acquire shifts from fighting enemies. There were several elements we had limited test data for in beta when it came to large league performance and rewards, simply due to the larger effort of organizing them on the test servers, and thus they went out undertuned. Otherwise, I've been in lots of live Minotaur clears myself, and have been hard at work making changes aimed at improving things based on what I've experienced. Additionally, I'm intending to do a Dev Diary regarding the Labyrinth's design and creation and that should help clear up a lot of the reasoning behind XYZ. Lastly, I've prototyped an LFG version of the Labyrinth that's aimed for Issue 28, Page 2 that should give raid leaders more tools, including advantages such as zone-wide defeat rewards that instanced content receives. This instanced version will work a little differently from the zone version, but should improve the content's availability. I'm intending to continue supporting this feature, so expect on-going improvements! 🙂

If I'm recalling, time spent in zones is tracked for all players and all zones, though only a couple of badges use it (those examples being some of the few). Most of the current instances of those stats being called into dialog (like the various pedestrian click strings or kiosks) are hard coded, which is why a solution that's more flexible is probably worth doing here with our modern usage of Lua.

1: Definitely doable! I'll work on a Null-like solution there that shows which Minotaur weapons you need. 2 & 3: Probably doable... eventually. We don't have a function written in Lua currently that can query badge stats, we'd need that added before we can do anything fancier than a binary yes/no check, such as providing exact numbers.

Orange's secret isn't quite accessible yet, but will be added in an upcoming patch. The original plan for Orange's secret was changed slightly (it was just going to be the secret Minotaur door) but then I decided it deserved a proper secret, and the idea that I came up with was a bit more ambitious than just a cool set piece. The new secret will be something the whole raid can participate in, stay tuned!

There's a bug where the Mark pet is being accidentally scooped up by the Lua teleport functions (which grabs you + all your pets), but I should have that fixed in the future by having the destination of the teleport be the original coordinates where you summoned the Mark, not the invisible Mark critter's current position. Lua scripts in CoH have to be "owned" by something; Either the map, an arc container, or a critter must host it, the player can't host Lua themselves, which is why this accolade uses a pet setup to host it.

They do; Anything Boss rank or higher! 🙂

The consensus from the PvP players was that the freedom to customize their visuals in PvP was not disruptive, so they were made allowed in Issue 27, Page 7, with the exception of Mini Mode which impacts nameplate visibility.

I have not seen anybody report yet of having found green's secret, it's not a DE spore map.

The reason that ended up going undocumented is because it was an unplanned side-effect from a different fix, that was addressing Level 54 enemies running up against an internal hard-cap on single mob drop rewards if a bonus was being applied on top (such as Advanced Mode), meaning players were not being rewarded the full amount of rewards for their efforts. In order to fix that, the reward table's spectrum had to be very slightly pushed out to allow those modifiers to work at Level 54 so that the influence/experience numbers would reward the full amount without running up against the internal hard cap. After that change went live, people later noticed there was a small discrepancy as a result of that value range extension. On the other hand, players who run Advanced Mode content should notice their rewards looking as good as 40% better after that change went live. It's not ideal that it slipped through, but it would be more accurate to categorize it as a bug, not intentional; It's just a bug that didn't warrant the original fix be retroactively pulled/reverted.

Fixed that this morning; It shouldn't work to prevent that Hoof Stomp's KB next build, be aware, it will send you flying into spikes potentially. It will work for avoiding the Sand Vortexes (mag 11 KB), but not Hoof Stomps.

The stomp makes you vulnerable to the majority remainder of the Minotaur's other attacks. The Minotaur's weapon attacks (in this scenario his archery attacks) all deal 100% Negative Energy damage only. Netted Pilums deal Lethal, Unholy Plague Howl deals Toxic, and Hoof Stomp deals Smashing; These attacks won't be impacted by the debuff, but the rest of the move pool should. Edit: The stomp is also supposed to be doing unresistable KB that should send those hit flying into spikes; But might be bugged; Checking things now.

Giant Monster mini pet recipes (rare quality) will be vendor-able for 100,000 Inf, starting with Issue 28, Page 1.

Unsure, if I knew how to reproduce it, I wouldn't need to ask. That's what's difficult; There's no HP thresholds activation AI, it's an auto-power that fires automatically when the Minotaur goes below 75% HP at all, that governs the arena teleport and it activating at all revokes itself, so it activating at 50%/25% makes no sense because it's not possible with how any of the Minotaur works. If it happens again, let me know, maybe new details will come to light that will explain what you saw. No other reports, I can't get it to happen in my dev box, and it doesn't line up with the code I wrote, so unfortunately there's nothing I can do with this; What you're claiming happened shouldn't be possible, and I can't reproduce it. 😥

Will look into this; Shouldn't be firing more than once ever. Update: I can't get this to happen locally... As soon as I accept the prompt, the power that creates it vanishes from the Minotaur's power list and doesn't fire again. If this is still happening on Brainstorm's release candidate build, I'll need more details, as I can't reproduce it to test for causes.

Blarf has anti-stuck safety, if he hasn't changed position in a few minutes, it will automatically reset him, so that issue should resolve itself on it's own.

😄

Happy to hear somebody appreciate the extra map efforts haha, a large amount of preventative work was put in-place to ensure the zone's functionality remained intact and consistent as much as possible. The zone was designed to run cleanly and automatically and be able to account for things like the Minotaur trying to hunt somebody out of bounds or getting permanently stuck in the geometry. Hiccups may happen, but the zone will always correct itself in short order (between 3-15 minutes depending on what happened). It was the biggest hurdle with the Minotaur being a moving, persistent entity and the focus of the zone, with how quirky (like to lodge themselves in walls) City of Heroes NPC behavior sometimes can be with path-finding; It needed to be a zone that would never need GMs to come reset it if the Minotaur got stuck untargetable inside a wall, for example. Sounds like potential new speed-runner strats to me! 😄

Not sure how I've never come across this suggestion before; It's fantastic. O: I'll look into that for next wave's costumes!

It's meant to be engaging, but not difficult/challenging per se... If it's so easy it's boring that's not fun, but neither is so hard that raids can waste huge amounts of time by failing/not clearing because that's also not fun. It's not Advanced Mode content, so it's not going be inherently cut-throat about things. Reward abuse is gated by the timer, but since the Minotaur is up on an hourly rotation, they're meant to be regularly consumed by players rotating in and out of the zone throughout the day, which is why he scales, so they're doable at times that aren't raid prime times. If you can organize a whole 50 players together then this should be a very-consistent raid just like Hamidon or Mothership raids. The current idea was melee should be having to maneuver around Hoof Stomps, while range/control deals more with the Sand Vortexes that will cut through their positioning. That wasn't the original idea, but there were many colorful and lengthy posts about how much melee disliked the idea that their positioning success would have to be dependent on control locking the Vortexes down for them.

Looking at the following prospective tweaks for next build:

Nerf Shoes power that does the Eagle's Claw animation for no damage and a squeak on allies?

Super appreciated! The HP was less about difficulty and just making sure he survives long enough to feel like he mattered; Did it accomplish that? More difficulty is like, you mentioned, probably going to be around making Hoof Stomp and the Sand Vortexes more dangerous... Will consider options. Hmmm; They originally were non-resistable KB, and had to be Mez'd in order to manage them, but we got constant complaints about it from melee players. I could revert that but I'm sure they would complain again. Not sure what to do there that makes them more threatening but not annoying. Open to thoughts and feedback here. This was added as something extra after everything else was done for explorers to find, it wasn't really a part of the raid per se, just something extra I threw in so that explorers had more meat to sink their teeth into in terms of things to find and lore to reveal. Sounding like I should start adding alternate Nerf Bat powers to everything, they're quite popular it seems. 😏

Will look into this. Update: Will be fixed in the next build.

I'll look into playing around more with the Goop FX later; There's some things I haven't tried, that might be worth figuring out to use here. I'll check on this too.