Cobalt Arachne

This was a simple mistake. I disabled the conversion options, because we were moving them under Prometheus (due to the conversions being very cost ineffective, and thus being a potential new player trap). Things got busy getting Page 3 launched, and I forgot to remember to hook up the new dialog option. Since I never finished the change, it also missed the notes because it was still on a to-do somewhere. Those expensive conversions will be back next build, on Prometheus, under an option that says 'What can you do for me?'. By policy, we don't do stealth changes. If something isn't on the notes, it's because we missed it.

Since Silver Bullet counted 5th Column Warwolves, we made the transformed badge count either Council or 5th Column, the badges being linked is a nod to the link between the two groups.

Maybe so, lol; But that's less interesting as an opportunity for new content!😛

Maybe whatever's been preventing Arachnos from rebuilding the tunnel is still in there. 😱

Virtually everything but the Hami Enhancements (and variants) are on the Reward Merit vendor. Not a very strong point. No, Enhancement Converters exist. If I get a Control VR IO I can just convert it to Melee Damage IO. There is no loot in CoH that is 100% unusable. Except again, Hami Enhancements, but if that's the only existing case made, it's a non-issue because of how marginal they are. Not an intended method, no. That's a 'shortcut' to progression. How did the people you're trading with get their stock to sell? They can't sell you something they didn't obtain, obviously. If nobody plays the game and earns no rewards the entire premise of a player economy stops existing. You can't buy and sell nothing, and nothing is what every single player started with. So no, trading is not an intended method because it can't exist without you or other players playing the game the intended way. It's a dependency.

I'm not looking down on players? That's an incredibly odd take... I'm talking simple economics. Supply & demand. Supply comes from players who generate stock by playing the game. Demand and the subsequent 'player-set' prices comes from impatient players who want to use their Influence to outright purchase the item they want from another player instead of playing game content to earn it normally. Players who just play the game get plenty of rewards. The intended way to gear up is to just play the game, not buy your entire build on the AH. You could enjoy playing City of Heroes without ever stepping foot into an Auction House or ever using /ah. (Anecdotal obviously but... I seldom use the AH in this game. I rarely have more than a couple million Influence cumulatively across my characters due to constant max level costume tweaks, but I do have 10+ maxed out Level 50 characters from just playing the game normally over the years.) Unlike other MMOs, (which often reward players things their character class can never use, to produce a surplus that ends up in the player market), in City of Heroes use of the Auction House and engagement in the player economy is completely avoidable by simply purchasing what you need outright for Reward Merits, a currency that you accumulate from playing regular content offerings and never paying the Auction House premium for convenience. Nobody started this game with giant Influence reserves to outright purchase finished builds (again, unless somebody was being extremely generous with their own Influence and giving it away).

The price on that specific Enhancement is because wealthy min/maxers want to squeeze the ABSOLUTE most out of their build, and that specific one lets them get a LITTLE more % out of a slot. Let's not pretend like that Enhancement is a normal necessity for anybody to play this game. You can run a pair of 50+5 generic Accuracy and Recharge IOs in two slots to get very comparable performance. So no, others having the money to buy fancy special Enhancements does not significantly impact anybody's gameplay experience. You can use a cheap very easily obtainable alternative for ~90% strength. Also another good example of "tax the rich", they want that Enhancement badly, and it can't be obtained doing Architect Entertainment farms, so of course it became an Influence dump luxury purchase.

The plan is that Levels 55+ will get increased rewards, even if it's not ready immediately at Page 3's launch. For now we're working on untangling spaghetti code to make these things even possible, a lot of changes going on under the hood.

The difficulty increase from a difference in Level is not trivial. I wager most AE farmer builds will not be able to just casually turn things up to +5 without major tweaks to their build. +There's no meaning in CoH to relativistic wealth. Another player having more Inf means literally nothing to your gaming experience unless they plan to give it to you. We also do tax the rich by way of forcing them to buy all their Prismatic Aether from other players because they can't be farmed in AE.

A sound Zoe makes when she's annoyed/frustrated, a verbal tic. That is intended, Nemesis Automatons often glitch and say the raw variable names incorrectly, this was a feature present in older Nemesis content, so kept it here.

This one. It revokes the power entirely.

Minotaur scales down to being killable with as few as four people, he's hardly a difficulty beyond the process of gathering Level Shifts for him.

The Tests of Combat repeatable missions added to the Labyrinth in this update can be solo'd at -1x1 Difficulty for full Obol rewards. No risk of being left behind. There's nothing intended to be locked or gated. The costume unlocks are just fancy alt versions of parts you DO have at creation. One purpose of unlocks was to help advertise the new zone's content and give players who a participated a memento for their time. You'll notice the Obol cost for costume pieces is set intentionally very low. This isn't meant to be a grind, it's a content participation check.

stuff

Happy Halloween 2025! Hope everyone got their fill of trick or treating! 👻