Cobalt Arachne

This badge is bugged, an issue was identified when the script rolled onto the next mission; Will be fixed next patch. Thanks for the report; Should be good soon! 💙

If suggesting to a new player that a Blaster is a better pick than a Defender on teams for somebody who wants to be play Ranged Damage (which is an objective fact) is "forcing a particular plastyle" then there's not much room for discussion. That's not us changing the game, that's just literally how the game works. It's a rather odd take on the goal of trying to better passively educate players that certain ATs are better choices for specific team roles.

We're not, and many are looking at this the wrong way. Also worth noting, as it's something many people are getting wrong in this discussion: Your chosen playstyle is not the same thing as your AT's primary role on a team. Because the game allows players to run anti-meta builds, like a Defender who's specced into a taunt and fights only in melee, but that is choosing a playstyle. That does not make it that Defender's role on the team to tank enemy aggro. If I invite a Tanker to my team completely blind without looking at their powersets at all, what should I expect them to be contributing to my team? My answer would be that the expectation is that they are going to be the ones first into enemy groups and tanking their aggro alpha. If the Tanker instead sits at the back of the team using only ranged attacks and never taunting, they're choosing a playstyle that does not suit their Archetype, which is allowed, but it does not mean their Tanker is fulfilling the role of Ranged Damage. In-fact, by doing so they're contributing very little to their team, so even if it's technically allowed within the game, it's not behavior we are going to reward. It would be more productive if that Tanker who loves playing Ranged Damage instead was on a Blaster, as they'll contribute far more to that role while retaining the same playstyle. The distinction will hopefully lead players to play the ATs that are the strongest choices for the playstyle they enjoy, while also acknowledging the role they are expected to fulfill when on teams. This is the knowledge we're hoping to impart to new players with these more defined roles. The character creator even refers to this selection as 'Playstyle':

I'm gonna blame this one on the Rikti... I'll look into recovering that building, Striga has enough problems as it is. Thanks!

The new Vanguard compound was setup using vistrays so that if you're not currently inside of it, it doesn't render, so players doing Mothership Raids should not notice any performance impact. However, as always, if anyone notices anything suspect, do let us know!

Probably not, instanced zone maps are taken as copies from the original zone at the time of their creation, all zone functions stripped out, and then modified into mission maps. Adding the new sections to the instanced maps would essentially mean redoing them entirely from scratch. It's too much effort for what would change almost nothing for the missions on those maps. As for outdoor maps... The AE building shouldn't exist in those old outdoor maps because Rikti War Zone content was from Issue 10 and the Architect system wasn't added until Issue 14.

We've investigated this issue, which is a result of Blasters having access to 5+ possible weapons from sets and players only having 4 total weapon slots on their costume's data format, so this has now become a hard-coded problem requiring some involved adjustments to resolve. I can confirm it's on our radar, and we're looking into it, but this won't be fixed in time for Page 7 unfortunately, it's not possible to resolve with things setup as they are currently. This issue is due to a weapon slot overlap, it wasn't caused by any recent sheathed/holstered changes, just made more visible.

They would have earned less Aether over time if we changed non-epic ATs to qualify for more than one role per the character creator. Not every team is going to be lead by somebody who cares about getting the bonus, leaving more chances that could be swayed by the AT you yourself play which would lead to reward imbalances inherent to certain Archetypes. Example: If you played a Warshade, you automatically fulfilled 3/5ths of the criteria by yourself and only needed two other roles on the team to qualify, making it easier to earn the bonus regularly without trying for it. That being said this thread is about the current feature, so we'll let that get back on track.

Simplicity and fairness primarily. One AT, one primary team role. Example: Stalkers would only qualify for Melee Damage... No matter how creative you want to try and be with it, their main advantage involves using stealth to drop aggro at any time (opposite of a Tank's job), and doing critical melee attacks for massive damage. How would it be fair to Stalkers that they get to just naturally earn less Prismatic Aether than everyone else? Because other multi-role ATs would qualify for the bonus more often and thus earn more over time. Since some ATs would only be able to qualify for a single role, for simplicity and fairness, we went with everyone's one primary role. (Not counting the Epic Archetypes.) Fairness was weighted far more heavily in the design considerations earlier for the previous feature due to that reward involved.

Reiterating on what Jimmy said, this new feature is the response to the feedback. There were concerns brought up that adding continual currency incentives to the team assembly process would pollute the inclusive spirit of City of Heroes where you can join almost any team and have no idea what will be on it, but can still complete the content without issues. To that end, we shifted to a reward that simply represents that you've done it once, instead of requiring on-going, continual team composition management to maximize your rewards. Personally, this was the argument that resonated most with me, and prompted discussions on alternative solutions. This feature originally arose from the added capability to run Lua scripts through the challenge settings feature automatically and we used it to write scripts that can check the team's composition, which wasn't previously possible as a criteria check for rewards. AT Duplication was added as a foil to the AT Diversity. While educating new players on team role dynamics was one of the goals of the previous feature, there were several issues with the reward delivery and incentive consistency that made us determine it would not be the best idea for the game. We decided that it would be healthy to also establish that you can take a team of all duplicate archetypes and still clear most content. This way all team configurations remain 'valid' in the eyes of the players as far as badges are concerned, and nobody loses out on rewards for prioritizing playing the game how they prefer over the team's composition.

I'll look into these. Thanks!

Hero 1 has a power that is essentially that already, he even mentions the Fae with the power's activation dialog, it's just not explicitly called 'Aid from the Fae'. Could rename it though... Honoree would not have access to that power as explained by their inability to wield Excalibur anymore after their transformation.

This is correct. The badge is for the entire team all being the same AT and having at least 4+ members on it. 7 Defenders and 1 Tanker on a team = does not qualify 7 Defenders on a team = qualifies 3 Defenders on a team = does not qualify 4 Defenders on a team = qualifies

Known issue with K'ong in Build 2. Syntax fumble with the Lua script; it will be fixed next build, please use /completetask 0 on Brainstorm to bypass that mission for now if you're testing the Advanced Mode of Lady Grey's Task Force. Thanks to a hot fix, Lady Grey should be fully testable again on Brainstorm!

They're tuned for level 50 + Alpha Shift as that's the state that max level character's spend the majority of their tenure and how they would be running tests.

That's a little different, if they're not there that's due to players being nearby when the zone loads. They won't spawn in that situation until all players have moved far enough away to unload the spawn trigger. (This won't happen on live servers because all zones are loaded before players are allowed in) If you destroy a living dummy/pylon it should re-spawn immediately once the spawn is set to active; If you just destroyed one and it doesn't respawn quickly (10 second timer), let me know.

Which body type? Weapon FX are separate per body type so I'll have to look at the specific ones.

This is currently a technical engine limitation, unfortunately. Back items don't take scaling, so the weapons are not able to be aware of any body slider changes. If that were to change in the future with code improvements, I'd redo all the weapons to take advantage of it, but at this moment not something that's doable.

For balance changes, yes. For pet recipes, no; Mostly because there is an existing pet that is basically a mini Winter Lord already.

I can look into this; You mentioned it's just the Minion-class Vanguard costumes that have this issue?

What I'm reading is more that many players take issue with there being any kind of bias towards a defined team structure at all, not the requirements or rewards.

If the consensus here is that this change will be a negative for the game, we can simply remove the free bonus and drop this feature. The sense I'm getting from reading feedback is that many feel like any attempts to influence the nature of team assembly is antithetical to the nature of City of Heroes.

I don't believe that the x2 Boosters are the ONLY cause of the imbalances, just one of the various factors, it's a complex game with many facets. The team has been having on-going discussions regarding the difficulty of maintaining an SO build while leveling due to various factors. A bit off-topic now, can't say much else yet because decisions about that aren't made, but we're absolutely aware of that Influence deficit and are looking for solutions.

Disagree, that is not an alternative suggestion because it does not achieve the same goal. ATs are not roles. Simply bringing 5 different ATs does not promote healthier team composition balance because all five could technically be the same one or two roles.

If you've got alternative suggestions on any names that communicate the bonus's goal and function, I'd love to hear them! The name can be changed effortlessly, it's a single string to adjust; If somebody has a better sounding idea, please let me know. 🙂