Faultline

It says "Paragon".

Jimmy is busy, but yes; Pocket D was updated, the Weakened Hamidon Buds spawn at level 45+ and Arcane Power won't charge with toggle powers (for real this time).

Once again: different people do different things. I can edit a map, but I'm not a writer nor do I know anything about power balance. The story arc writers are focused in story arcs, the powers people are focused on power changes, the map editors are focused on map editing. Page 1 had the Freaklok and two new arcs. Page 2 had the Tour Guide missions. Page 3 will have [redacted] and [redacted]. Content is not being neglected.

I spent a while redoing the lobbies and minimap to add Nova, Atlas and Mercy without removing existing exits. That will be on the next patch.

I don't think that was ever the case, it's just what people assumed based on the TF being level 35 minimum back in Issue 10, even though the briefing text already said level 45 minimum. The i24 data files have the minimum level for the task force at 45, and the minimum level of the contact at 45. There's no mechanism I know of that would let you ignore the minimum level for a TF, or apply it only to the team leader.

I'll add it to the bug tracker... There's lots of small things like that which we're simply not aware of until someone brings it up, a dev sees it, and it gets put on the tracker.

This wasn't an intentional change. Added it to the bug tracker. It should drop a Pool B recipe. I vaguely remember the commit that caused this, it had something to do with some missions not dropping recipes on completion because the reward was In the wrong table. The Cavern trial is calling that table, which no longer has recipes on it.

This. The first version of fast snipe was internally 80ft, I don't know if that ever made it to Brainstorm but it was decided to leave it at 150ft for initial release. After looking at performance metrics, it was decided it didn't need the bonus range after all. I know a lot of people scoff at power balance based on spreadsheets and logs rather than feel, which is why there's not a lot of discussion on decisions based on that; it's not something that players who "feel the nerf", even if the numbers say the effect is negligible, will ever agree with.

In general I agree with removing ambushes from deliveries if the delivery target is in Atlas or Mercy. The phasing volumes in those areas don't interact well with ambushes and the mobs can easily become invisible to players while still being able to attack them. At some point we need to review and redo the arcs that use those phasing volumes; it's a neat trick but it has problems.

Character name and server, please.

Feel free to name specific arcs and missions for review.

In this case, it really is impossible. Veteran levels are a badgestat - it's the same thing that tracks how many times you've been to the top of the Atlas statue, or how many Paragon Protectors you have defeated. There's literally two places in the code where that badgestat is referenced: The level up function, which already grants you all the inspirations when you level up, checks if you're level 50 and increases the "overleveled" badgestat by 1. The "display player's infobox" that queries it to show the number. There's simply no way that the "overleveled" badgestat could do anything at all to interfere with rewards; the rewards code is just not aware of it. Spaghetti Code only applies to systems that actually interact with each other, and these don't. I know the next question: "but veteran levels give you rewards". Well, strictly speaking, no, they don't. Those rewards are handled by badges. Every 8 seconds, every badge in the game checks its own requirements to see if it should award itself. The Veteran badges just have a requirement that the overleveled stat be >= their given number in order to award. Badges can then trigger a reward table to grant you other stuff, which is how you get the Empyreans in veteran badges, but also respecs and costume changes in level up badges and a bunch of others. The veteran badges stopping at 99 is irrelevant, it just means that there's no badge that checks if the overleveled badgestat is higher than that. If there was anything that caused badgestats to affect reward tables, we would be seeing all sorts of problems everywhere, because there's almost 3000 badgestats that track different things; overleveled is the badgestat number 2824, sandwiched between 2823 visits.Cimerora2 (for visits to the Battle Hardened badge) and 2825 kills.TheFamily.Lieutenant (for killing Lieutenants of The Family faction). There's nothing special about it.

No, I'm not. This latest test was in Echo Plaza (no enemies around, easy to set up) using the same Rikti critters used in the RWZ raid. The rewards code doesn't know anything about how a critter was spawned, so the fact that I spawned them with commands rather than via script makes no difference. Correct, because the drops are based on how many enemies you kill and get credit for, not how much time you spend in-game. In a ship raid in particular, there are lots of critters, but there are also lots of players.

The only data that would be useful is the character name and server so it can be copied off the database and tested to see what drop rates it gets. I did chat to the GM involved; they had their difficulty set to -1/x6 with no bosses, so going a mission without a non-common recipe drop under those circumstances is not unusual. Let's say the mission was composed of 100 minions and 30 lieutenants - that's 2.66 recipes from the minions and 1.6 from the lieutenants for a total of 4.26 recipes, each of which has a 75% of chance of being common. That doesn't mean you're guaranteed 1 in 4, it means you have 4 separate 25% chances for a non-common; the probability of getting one non-common is 68%, the probability of getting all commons is 32%. So running a mission with no bosses and getting zero non-common recipes is perfectly within bounds. I copied the GM's level 126 Mind/Kin that was used for that mission to a dev instance, repeated my 10K critter test, and these are the results: Minions: 104c 24u 5r 2vr; total 135/5000 = 2.7% Lieutenants: 139c 34u 8r; total 181/3000 = 6.0% Bosses: 126c 32u 9r 1vr; total 168/2000 = 8.4% Everything is within bounds. Rarity distribution: 76.2% common, 18.6% uncommon, 4.5% rare, 0.6% very rare. If you want to provide your character I'll repeat the 10K critter test with it, but after running this test three times, I am not seeing anything to indicate a problem with the drop rates.

No, I am keener to find the real cause of an issue instead of validating a rumor that could spread out of control and turn into a case of "everybody knows recipes drop less after veteran level 99". The issue of "drop rates seem to have an issue" is being investigated; so far, I killed 10,000 critters twice (all recipes enabled starting at vet level 6, no generics starting at vet level 108) and found no drop rate deviation in minions, lieutenants or bosses. The four hour video would be nearly useless, the only information of value in it would be the character name and server, so I can copy the character off the server, run the above test with it, and compare its drop rates.

A challenge to what? The issue as described is impossible. Veteran levels are purely cosmetic and don't interact with the rewards code at all; it's like saying the color of your character's hair affected the recipe drop rates. If a GM is validating that report, I need to know what they saw to track what the real issue is.

What GM took your report? The issue as described is impossible. Veteran Levels are a single integer field (meaning it goes up to 4 billion) and there's absolutely nothing special about it going over 99. The rewards code is not aware of veteran levels at all. If this is really happening, there's another cause.

Because their Idle animation status can't transition into combat animations without all sorts of animation breakage.

That's a different issue altogether, it may really be a DNS issue or it may be a transient network glitch. If it happens to you every single time, it is worth looking at your network settings and changing your DNS servers to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 which are public DNS servers operated by CloudFlare and Google respectively, much more reliable than most ISPs.

Maybe, however I believe @Number Six is making the Homecoming launcher use its own certificate store and crypto management, like Firefox does, in order to not rely on the Windows schannel library at all.

Yes, use the option to run as administrator. You should do that to check if it fixes the issue, and the next step depends on that.

Run Tequila as Administrator. If that doesn't help, you may need to add it to your Windows Defender whitelist.

I agree, but a quick revert to address the issue followed by a better solution in the future is probably the way to go, otherwise we'll have to rush a fix that may cause new issues. Better the devil you know.

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to update TLS support and security certificates on Windows XP. After following these steps, I can get Tequila to work on a bare Windows XP SP3 system just fine.

Why? Short version: you're running an old and insecure operating system. This will make it marginally more secure. Windows XP shipped with Internet Explorer 6, and TLS 1.0 support (disabled by default, to boot) and it hasn't updated the root certificates in quite a while. This means that if you try to visit any website that uses HTTPS, or download a file from them, it either will not work, or it will complain about invalid certificates. Even if you don't use Internet Explorer as your web browser on Windows XP, most "embedded" browsers in the operating system are an Internet Explorer component behind the scenes. For our purposes, this means that Tequila will fail to download the game unless you install these updates. All the files mentioned in this post can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/FaultlineHC/TLSonXP Step 1: Install Internet Explorer 8 Short version: run 001 IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe and follow the prompts to install IE8. Restart your system when done. If you already have Internet Explorer 8, you can skip this step. Otherwise, download Internet Explorer 8 from https://download.microsoft.com/download/C/C/0/CC0BD555-33DD-411E-936B-73AC6F95AE11/IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe or use the installer provided in the above link; it's the same file. Internet Explorer 8 is also limited to TLS 1.0, but unlike Internet Explorer 6, it can be upgraded to support TLS 1.2. Step 2: Mark your system as PosReady 2009 Short version: double click 002 Enable PosReady.reg and let it merge the keys with the registry. PosReady 2009 is the last version of Windows XP Embedded. This is needed in order to install the following updates, since Microsoft never made them available to retail versions of Windows XP. The included .reg file will change the one registry key needed; it has no effect on the system other than letting these updates install. POS stands for Point of Sale, not the other thing that you are thinking of, although that also applies to Windows XP at this point. Step 3: Install Security Updates Short version: run 003 windowsxp-kb4019276-x86-embedded-enu.exe, 004 ie8-windowsxp-kb4316682-x86-embedded-enu.exe, 005 ie8-windowsxp-kb4230450-x86-embedded-enu.exe, 006 windowsxp-kb4467770-x86-embedded-enu.exe and 007 WindowsXP-KB3055973-v3-x86-Embedded-ENU; let them finish. Restart your system afterwards. These are the updates that add TLS 1.2 support; they can be downloaded manually from https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=kb4019276 https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4316682 https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=KB4230450 https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4467770 and https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48214 or use the installers provided in the above link; they are the same files. Step 4: Enable TLS Support Short version: double click 007 Enable TLS Support.reg and let it merge the keys with the registry. This file sets up several registry keys to enable TLS support on system components, and allows Internet Explorer 8 to display the flags to enable them. Without this, the TLS 1.1 and 1.2 options will not show up on Internet Explorer 8, even if they're installed. This file will also add some WindowsUpdate URLs for updating security certificates. Step 5: Update Security Certificates Short version: run 008 Cert_Updater_v1.6.exe and let it finish. This will update the security certificates to the latest version and allow sites to load without root certificate errors. This file is a modification of the rootsupd.exe file from Microsoft in order to run on XP; details on how to download and create your own are here: https://msfn.org/board/topic/175170-root-certificates-and-revoked-certificates-for-windows-xp/#comment-1095349 Step 6: Enable TLS! Short version: Open IE8. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced. Scroll all the way to the bottom and check the boxes "Use TLS 1.1" and "Use TLS 1.2". After doing that, you should now be able to use Tequila to download updates again, and Internet Explorer 8 will be able to load most HTTPS websites. That said, don't use Internet Explorer 8! If you must browse the web on Windows XP, you should download and install Firefox, that still supports Windows XP and provides much better security.