Faultline

Ripple Raider (the one for all the AVs) does not require Malicious.

Back when the Hamidon revamp happened, there was a persistent idea on the Freedom server that the new version would be impossible to do without massive levels of coordination that the server was incapable of. This persisted for several months; while other servers were running the raid just fine, Freedom just had a few failed attempts because players kept trying to do things the old way. It took players from Justice transferring over and leading several successful raids for Freedom to grow their own raid leaders, and then the new raid was no longer a big deal. This is the same. Yes, there will be players yelling loudly that the Worthy Opponent is "impossible" without Shivans and nukes, but it will only take enough people getting the badge with any of the many alternate ways for the mindset to fade away. You don't break an incorrect perception by appearing to validate it.

Not true. Team Inspirations and Vanguard Heavies will serve the exact same purpose, not even going into the myriad other options available in P2W such as Amplifiers and Signature Summons.

With the new challenge modes, we can easily add Master of badges to Eden, Hydra and Market Crash. They would be the "classic" Master badges, the style used in the STF/LRSF/LGTF/ITF: team locked to x8, no deaths, no temporary powers, no incarnate powers. These requirements were not exactly popular though, hence the poll to check if people even want those badges. The badges themselves would award a Rare incarnate component (all of the existing Master badges do this as of Page 3). For Eden and Hydra, it would also cause the Titan/Hydra enhancement at the end to drop at player level instead of -2 every time the Master of challenge is completed -- meaning, even if you already have the badge, the enhancement will drop at your level. Just to be clear, this is not a thread to suggest a bunch of extra challenges be added to those trials in order to use the "collect 4 challenge badges for the Master badge" system. That won't happen in Page 3. If the result of this poll is "No", the Master of badges will not be added for those trials for Page 3, and they won't be added in the future unless we heavily retrofit the old trials with a pile of new challenges, which is unlikely.

This may be a misplaced exit point for that door, will investigate.

Anything in https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=set_bonus.set_bonus and https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=set_bonus.pvp_set_bonus

It just so happens that it was a very easy change to make, took 25 minutes including internal testing and bugfixing. Most other proposals are nowhere near as straightforward.

While we can move all the rewards for killing AVs and such to the end of the TF so you get the dopamine hit of seeing "300 merits", that means that if you fail to finish the TF, you get no rewards from the AVs you defeated on the way to the end. Players may need to de-program themselves from expecting the bulk of the reward to be in the end-of-TF dialog, because being incremental during the TF is objectively better.

The last one, with the giant Warhulk robot in Steel Canyon.

I'll see what happens if I make it possible to Dismiss your Detective contact. It should assign you a new one when you re-enter the zone, and if you're lucky it will be a different one, but it may take a bunch of retries. Adds a way to switch Detectives for players who care without impacting anything else. Edit: done, will be on today's patch to Brainstorm.

No, it has always been the case that task forces cannot be alignment-locked without trouble; if a hero finds itself in the rogue isles, they can start a TF too. It's why the Ouroboros TFs were converted into Story Arcs when the zone was made co-op, because Story Arcs can be alignment-locked. Also the reason why villains don't have access to Striga already, which is a low-hanging-fruit zone for co-op access, being the original proto Rogue Isle; the Moonfire TF is very heroic and without being able to alignment-lock it, it's bad to have it in a zone that villains have access to.

Last year was "Snowbound" since everybody was stuck at home. This year, I have no idea. What are yours?

The whole challenges system has been rewritten for Page 3, that is currently on internal testing. When that goes live, the badges will be awarded based on the arc's maximum level (what you exemplar to, which matches the bucketing in the crystal) for any arc that awards at least 5 reward merits. That should make the requirements consistent and remove the need to track the Stature Level of arcs, which is what's currently used to award those badges and isn't visible to the player anywhere and has individual exceptions for arcs that aren't consistent.

General The Halloween Event is active. Added the badge Sinister Summoner for defeating the Black Whip. Fixed the Brickstown Prison Break event, which wasn't spawning enough Prisoners to complete.

Re: enemies, there's a thread to collect those: Re: maps, it really depends on available time vs. how much a map is wanted; most newer maps aren't set up with generic spawn points that AE can understand and all the spawn points need to be re-placed from scratch in order to make them available.

No critter power is the exact same as a player version, because players get enhancements and critters don't. I should have said "it's most similar to" Phalanx Fighting, since the critter version also has Mez resistance. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=brute_defense.shield_defense.phalanx_fighting https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=romans.praefectus.energized_shield Numbers are confirmed to be the same they used to before the power was removed from the critters; the power itself was there and hasn't changed, but the critter definitions weren't using it.

General This is a support patch for the Cimerora Contest for Mission Architect. Please check that thread for more information! Mission Architect Map changes: Cimerora - Battle Map: split into front, middle and back regions. Cimerora - Castellum Quarter: newly released map. Cimerora - Sybil Temple: split into front, middle and back regions. Cimerora - Vespillos Pass: newly released map. Added the following critters and enemy groups to Architect: Angry Citizens (1-5) Cimerorans (35-54): Immunes Surgeon, Peasant, Sybil, Marcus Valerius, Sister Airlia, Sister Valeria Cimeroran Beasts (35-54): Minotaur (four versions), Cyclops (four versions) Cimeroran Traitors (35-54): Immunes Surgeon Cimeroran Traitors (50-54) Civilian (1-54): Alexis Cole-Duncan, Emperor Marcus Cole Decaying Eidolons (29-54) Diabolique Spirit (50-54): Shadow Lord, Shadow Mistress, Shadow Demon Pandora's Might (40-50) Praetorian Police (1-24): Cole's Clone (two versions) Prisoners (30-38) The Cabal (25-34): Sprite Tyrant Follower (50-54): Olympian Guard, Tyrant (50-54) UPA (30-54) Added contacts from Dark Astoria: Captain Nolan, Dream Doctor, Ephram Sha, Heather Townshend, Maharaj, Max, Midnight Loremaster, Mu'Vorkan, Praetor Duncan Added contact from Cimerora: Sister Solaris Renamed "Carnie" enemy group to "Carnival of Shadows" for consistency with "Carnival of Light", "Canival of Vengeance" and "Carnival of War". Made some changes to the arc validation to prevent published story arcs from being invalidated by these changes. Arcs that have not been published yet may still become invalid, or have certain parts of it change; please double-check your arcs before publishing. Powers The power "Energized Shield" that most Cimeroran critters should have was accidentally removed during a previous patch. It has been restored, with a bit of a naming shuffle: "Energized Shield" actually had the effects of the power "Phalanx Fighting" from Shield Defense, so it has been renamed to match that. Cimerorans also had a "Phalanx Fighting" power which was just a basic self defense auto, so it has been renamed to "Roman Armor". There were no changes to the actual powers, just the names. Cimerorans have the exact same powers they had from their release until Issue 24, besides the name changes.

General This patch is being fast-tracked to Live to support the Cimerora Contest for Mission Architect. Please check that thread for more information. Mission Architect Map changes: Cimerora - Battle Map: split into front, middle and back regions. Cimerora - Castellum Quarter: newly released map. Cimerora - Sybil Temple: split into front, middle and back regions. Cimerora - Vespillos Pass: newly released map. Added the following critters and enemy groups to Architect: Angry Citizens (1-5) Cimerorans (35-54): Immunes Surgeon, Peasant, Sybil, Marcus Valerius, Sister Airlia, Sister Valeria Cimeroran Beasts (35-54): Minotaur (four versions), Cyclops (four versions) Cimeroran Traitors (35-54): Immunes Surgeon Cimeroran Traitors (50-54) Civilian (1-54): Alexis Cole-Duncan, Emperor Marcus Cole Decaying Eidolons (29-54) Diabolique Spirit (50-54): Shadow Lord, Shadow Mistress, Shadow Demon Pandora's Might (40-50) Praetorian Police (1-24): Cole's Clone (two versions) Prisoners (30-38) The Cabal (25-34): Sprite Tyrant Follower (50-54): Olympian Guard, Tyrant (50-54) UPA (30-54) Added contacts from Dark Astoria: Captain Nolan, Dream Doctor, Ephram Sha, Heather Townshend, Maharaj, Max, Midnight Loremaster, Mu'Vorkan, Praetor Duncan Added contact from Cimerora: Sister Solaris Renamed "Carnie" enemy group to "Carnival of Shadows". Made some changes to the arc validation to prevent published story arcs from being invalidated by these changes. Arcs that have not been published yet may still become invalid, or have certain parts of it change; please double-check your arcs before publishing.

I'm building it for Staging today, live on Tuesday with the weekly restart.

This may have to go live as-is because after poking at it for over a week I'm no closer to figuring out why it's happening. It may be a quirk of outdoor maps and the fake "rooms" used to split it in front/middle/back, but at this point I'm out of time to find the solution without impacting the Cimerora contest a lot. I hope to have it fixed by Page 3 release.

This appears to be common for outdoor maps; both City 01 and City 01 Council had no icons when I tested the problem. If you have an example of an outdoors only map that shows those icons, I can take a look and see what's different.

That would explain why I can't repro on my end. Can you confirm you get all the regular objectives if the defeat all is removed? The screenshot for the contest post was made on the CQ map with the minotaur and cyclopes taking the three boss slots with no issues.

This isn't new, try it on Live by setting the mission group to something like Crey (30-54) and add a Release Captive objective with a Coralax Blue Hybrid (Lieutenant 1-9) and the misison will give you the exact same error. Added it to the issues tracker as something to look into in the future, but this is not a beta bug.

So now that this patch is up on Brainstorm, I'm going to explain why some critters didn't make it in. Here's the ground rules, as discovered through much poking of the Architect data files: While Architect defines villaingroups which contain specific critters, it still validates them using the original enemy groups. I can't make an enemy group called "Praetorian AVs" that include Diabolique and Tyrant, because the former is in the "Diabolique's Spirits" enemy group, and the latter is in the "Tyrant's Followers" enemy group. The critters have to go to the original enemy group they belong to. I did make some effort to change this, but it's so deeply ingrained that I gave up for now; may revisit in the future. Some critters are set to not spawn by default, and adding them to an Architect villaingroup doesn't change that. The "Demons of Diabolique" group is actually composed of three critters in the "Diabolique's Spirits" group (the different name is just visual) that are set to not spawn by default, and are instead spawned manually in the specific mission that uses them. So while they have been added to Architect, in order to use them you will still need to create a custom villaingroup and add those three critters from "Diabolique's Spirits" in. Enemy groups must contain at least one minion, lieutenant and boss in the range, that can spawn by default. Some of the requested villaingroups fail this; Cap Au Diable Demons is only minions (and only two types, which only vary by a power) so those are out at the moment. A villaingroup can be defined to be treated as a "Bosses Only" group, in which case it doesn't need to have all three ranks, but it doesn't accept minions and lietenants in it - so that's out for the Cap Demons as well. I'll look into extending the "Bosses Only" groups to take also minions and lieutenants, but that may break things so I shelved it for the future. Some critters have powers or mechanics that only make sense as part of a scripted trial, so they can't be added. Angry Citizens exists at level 50 as part of the TPN trial, but they are scripted to only run to specific markers that only exist in the TPN trial, so they're out. Having said all that, there are more critters on the first post that can and will be added, they just didn't make it for this patch, which is being fast-tracked to support the Cimerora contest. More will be probably added in Page 3.