Apparition

We need a "Groan" reaction... 😛

Why would you do that? I think it's refreshing that a MMOG gives the player time to get up, take a break, make hot chocolate, sit down, read War & Peace, and then come back to gaming. /s

Yep, the last western MMOG that came out was WildStar IIRC, and well... Now the surviving western MMOGs are all ten to twenty years-old. Now it's all survival games and Battle Royales. Bleh.

Out of curiosity... Is there such a thing as a well programmed MMO? 😛

The beta patch notes stated that the Rikti Priests were added back to the zone mothership raids. Now that I thought about it overnight, I think I recall Rikti Priests having a super-long reach heal. I think I remember a couple of times when there were no Rikti Priests in the bowl, but the ones on the rim were healing U'Kon Gr'ai. It's been at least seven years though, so I may be misremembering. I agree that they add a nice mechanic to the U'Kon Gr'ai fight. It was mostly just a matter of facing them for the first time in several years and only having six people in the raid. I think the raid trial will help a lot with the DCs, actually. The map is smaller than the zone, so there's less stuff that needs to be loaded up in your computer's memory. And, your computer regains memory when the trial ends and you rezone back to Pocket D or wherever. So that will help fix the memory leak from running multiple mothership raids.

I don't use AVG myself, but it looks like it just doesn't like the midsreborn.com domain name. Follow the instructions here and add http://midsreborn.com/* and https://midsreborn.com/* to the exception list.

We held the second Rikti mothership raid trial test this evening. Unfortunately, only five others showed up for a total of six people. However, we formed a league of two teams of three people each, and gave it a test thanks to the LFG queue system change anyhoo. 1. Confirm the presence of Rikti Magi, Chief Mesmorists, Headmen, and Rikti Priests (!) Rikti Magi, Chief Mesmorists, Headmen, and Rikti Priests were all found and accounted for. 2. Confirm that the minimap works. This was the biggest issue. Yesterday afternoon after the latest beta server patch landed, I made a level 40 Blaster and did a Rikti mothership raid trial all by my lonesome, just to test that my level 40 Blaster's combat level would be adjusted to level 50. It was. I pulled up the minimap, and it showed 20 Pylon dots. It didn't have the Pylon numbers next to them like the regular zone map, but good enough. Tonight, we loaded into the Rikti mothership raid trial instance. I opened up the minimap... and there were no Pylon dots. I used the Reveal power, and it showed the map, but still no Pylon dots. All it showed was the mothership itself. I checked with everyone else. Three of us had no Pylon dots at all, just the mothership. Two had the Pylon dots. One had the Pylon dots, with the Pylon numbers next to them. The three that had no Pylon dots at all were two Corruptors (including myself), and an Arachnos Soldier. The ones that had the Pylon dots were a Brute and Defender. The one that had the Pylon dots and the Pylon numbers was a Brute. It made no sense to me why I could see the Pylons on the map yesterday but not today. The only differences for me were archetype and alignment. So I noted everyone's alignment as well. My Blaster yesterday is a Villain. My Corruptor today is a Rogue. The other Corruptor is Vigilante. But the Arachnos Soldier is a Villain. So that seems to discount the alignment idea. After the Rikti mothership raid trial ended, out of curiosity I queued us again. Everyone could see the Pylon dots, and the Pylon numbers. So it seems to have been random that half of us couldn't see the Pylons on the map at all the first go around. Odd. 3. Confirm that the timer works. The timer does indeed work! As does the active Pylons counter. After time ran out, an extra twenty seconds or so was added to the timer, but that was expected. 4. Confirm that NPCs have movement. Both Rikti and the various pets moved. Confirmed. 5. Test to see if people far out from the bowl receive Vanguard merits. Everyone in the instance seems to receive all Vanguard merits. When we were about to take down Pylon 1, one of us moved to the far southern end of the map, and still received the Vanguard merits when we took it down. During the bowl phase, a couple of people moved far out and still received Vanguard merits the whole time. So I'd call that a success. 6. Confirm that everyone is combat level 50. As I wrote above, I made a level 40 Blaster and tested this myself yesterday. My level 40 Blaster had a combat level of 50. So I'd say this is confirmed. However, that said, this seems to have possibly opened up another issue. I don't know if this is intentional or not, or related to the combat level 50 sidekick or not, but everyone was equipped with at least a Tier 3 Alpha, and all of the mobs still conned +4. The Incarnate level shift from the Alpha seems to have been negated. 7. Other issues and notes. This may be normal because we haven't done any Rikti mothership raids with Rikti Priests since before sunset, but U'Kon Gr'ai was a resilient bugger. We got him down to about half health, and all of a sudden he was back at full health. U'Kon Gr'ai was healing faster than Wolverine. :D We only noticed one Rikti Priest nearby. This may be because we were only a league of six people, and/or we may have missed a Rikti Priest or two, but if it was indeed only one Rikti Priest that healed U'Kon Gr'ai back up to full health in one hit, that may need to be looked at. It may also be possible that the Rikti Priests may have super-long range healing if it was more than the one Rikti Priest we spotted healing U'Kon Gr'ai, which also may need to be looked at. In any case, at some point U'Kon Gr'ai stopped receiving heals after we killed the Priests in the area, and we took him down. The mothership's shield never displayed to anyone, but a couple of us intentionally tried to bump into it, and sure enough, the shield was there. Well, at least until the Pylons were destroyed. ;) That's also an occasional issue on the regular servers though, so nothing in particular to the trial. The shield did display in the trial when I did that test by myself yesterday. There were plenty of Rikti all over the ship, and my team of three had about 600 Vanguard merits each at the end of it, so I'd say that "rumor" of the Rikti mothership raid trial only "spawning a few Rikti" is squashed. All in all, it was a good and fun test. One definite issue with the minimap sometimes not showing Pylons, and two possible issues of the Incarnate level shift from the Alpha not being applied and Rikti Priest super-healing. Thanks to everyone that came out and gave the Rikti mothership raid trial a good test!

It's true that a trial instance jumbles the league order (which is why level 35 through 49 characters will have their combat level boosted to level 50), but that's only a minor issue, IMO. There's been a ton of unlocked leagues running iTrials over the past four months, and they've all handled it just fine. Even, for some reason, that you are not the league leader upon zoning in and the person with the star won't hand it back to you, you can still issue directions. It's a trivial issue IMO in comparison to the zone Rikti mothership raids where you have to continually make sure that every team is lead by a level 50.

On the first point, I limit my mothership raids to level 30+ at the bare minimum, and usually have mostly level 50s, so I don't see that as an issue. Secondly, the first mothership raid trial test had several missing Rikti types - Magi, Chief Mesmorists, Priests, etc. The Rikti were also unable to move, so they couldn't be pulled. The missing Rikti and NPC movement were patched in this morning, so that shouldn't be an issue either. Even then there were still a ton of Rikti during the test... so many so that they were literally piled on me at one point. My team had 1,533 Vanguard merits at the end, with a team of seven. So I have no idea where you're getting the information that the Vanguard merits are "inferior," in the Rikti mothership raid trial, but it's incorrect. I will be holding a second Rikti mothership raid trial test tomorrow at 7 P.M. ET/4 P.M. PT which you are more than welcome to join.

I will host a second Rikti mothership raid trial on the Pineapple server tomorrow, Sunday, September 22nd, at 7 P.M. ET/4 P.M. PT. This is, of course, for testing purposes of the new Rikti mothership raid instance trial. Minimum level requirement is level 35+, which should not be a problem. :D We will meet up in Pocket D. Once the league is nice and settled, we will queue up. Objectives: Confirm the presence of Rikti Magi, Chief Mesmorists, Headmen, and Rikti Priests (!). Confirm that the minimap works. Confirm that the timer works. Confirm that NPCs have movement. Test to see if people far out from the bowl receive Vanguard merits. Confirm that everyone is combat level 50. We only had eleven people show up for the test last weekend, and I'd really like to see more tomorrow. A couple of taunters (Tankers, Brutes, what have you), would be nice, to confirm that they'd get Vanguard merits while pulling. Hope to see y'all there.

The Rikti mothership raid trial will be the only way to go once it hits the regular servers, IMO. Something was omitted from the beta server patch notes today that Leandro mentioned would be in the patch on the Homecoming Discord. So I made a level 40 Blaster on the Pineapple beta test server this afternoon, and queued up a Rikti mothership raid trial all by my lonesome. I'm in it right now. My level 40 Blaster's combat level is level 50. Anyone from level 35 through level 49 that does a Rikti mothership raid trial will have their combat level automatically adjusted to level 50. So there will be no more shifting people around in leagues so that every team in the league has a level 50 leader. Everyone will be at least combat level 50. Still, it is odd though that one server's zone mothership raids are experiencing these disconnect issues while another server's is not.

Since the patch went live in the wee hours of the morning, I will host a second test tomorrow at 7 P.M. ET/4 P.M. PT in Pocket D. I hope to see some of y'all there.

Very strange. I haven't experienced any crashes during Rikti mothership raids on Excelsior server, nor have more than one or two people I've raided with (none of which have been team leaders), and I normally run two back-to-back. Hrm. Which Homecoming client are y'all using? 64 bit, 32 bit, or legacy?

I like my Dual Pistols/Temporal Manipulation Blaster for tanking.

Philadelphia only seems dull and boring because it's across the river from fun and exciting Camden, New Jersey.

Besides from testing, the instance Rikti mothership raid trial is mostly complete from what I understand. And the trial instance prevents even more griefing as you would be able to get in without being locked out, and those that grief (like the person that spawned the team teleporter in the middle of the mothership bowl last night), can be more easily dealt with.

Programmers have different specialties. C# is not HTML and CSS, and vice versa. Plus, to be blunt, macOS and Linux users are a tiny fraction of the player base. The vast majority use Windows, where Mids' works fine.

Thanks to everyone that showed up last night! Hope to see y'all next week!

As I posted in that other thread: The only zones with a 50 player cap are The Abyss, The Hive, and Rikti War Zone. Most zones are capped at 100. Atlas Park, Kallisti Wharf, and Pocket D are capped at 200. I held a test of the Rikti mothership raid trial in Pocket D on the beta server last weekend because I figure that's where many will form up on the regular servers as it is one of the two co-op zones with a 200 player cap and many people already use it to form Incarnate trials in.

The only zones with a 50 player cap are The Abyss, The Hive, and Rikti War Zone. Most zones are capped at 100. Atlas Park, Kallisti Wharf, and Pocket D are capped at 200. I held a test of the Rikti mothership raid trial in Pocket D on the beta server last weekend because I figure that's where many will form up on the regular servers as it is one of the two co-op zones with a 200 player cap and many people already use it to form Incarnate trials in.

Catalyzing purples gives you no advantage. You definitely want to boost them.

Just a reminder that I will host two back-to-back Rikti mothership raids tomorrow evening at 8:30 P.M. ET/5:30 P.M. PT. Hope to see y'all there.

Oh yeah, tell me about it. My SG ran a Praetorian lowbie team. One night, a friend played a Thermal Corruptor and I played a Sonic Resonance Corruptor. We were the only support. What was our one hole between the two of us? Psi. What did we fight? The Awakened. It wasn't pretty.

The same way that I coordinated the first. Have everyone meet up at Pocket D, see who shows up, invite them to a league, and queue up when we're ready. If the patch lands on Pineapple this Friday, then the second Rikti mothership raid trial test will most likely be Sunday at 7 P.M. ET/4 P.M. PT again.

I lead Rikti mothership raids on Excelsior concurrently with the Hamidon raid last Thursday, and there was no issue with getting enough raiders to fill the Rikti War Zone the same time as Hamidon, the vast majority of which were level 50. That's one night of the week. So they're definitely available. Now willing, I grant you may be an issue. But even then, I didn't mean to imply run a second Hamidon raid concurrently with the first. There are other times of the day to give it a try. A Sunday afternoon or something. Sure, you could raise the zone cap to 75. But then what happens when player #76 wants in? Raise it to 100? Then what happens when player #101 wants in? You're right back where you started.