BillyMailman

It's new as of today. International Talk Like a Pirate Day stuff happening. There's treasure chests to open where the Xmas gift glowies spawn, they give piratey messages and/or spawn spectral pirates.

The discord bit is just: But a more accurate version would be something like A small patch has been deployed to prepare for future events, including International Talk Like a Pirate Day. It's currently ITLaPD, and there's a pirate event thing active where treasure chests pop up in the places the Xmas gift glowies do, and the chests so far seem to either give old base building salvage, or else spawn spectral pirate enemies. Editing to add: A GM has just confirmed no badges or anything for this event.

Pinging @UberGuy that we've had an update and need City of Data updated. Also: You still okay with being the lone person on this project? 'Cause like, it's obvious you're putting less time into this now, and CoD is a massively useful resource. As one of the people who uses the damn thing basically daily; you need any help with this thing?

So, part of the overhaul seems to be that the zone's neighbourhood/etc. markers on the map got updated. I've found a couple of problems with that. First, Vanguard Headquarters' map marker is tagged as a Gate, a transition to another location. It isn't. The only clickable thing anywhere on that building, is the access door to the roof with the helicopter/V Merit Vendor. Same applies to Crey Towers, and probably the Langston Corp Factory as long is it's not enterable. Plaza Tower and Abandoned Lab are fine still being Gate, since they actually do have transitions to inside the buildings, which Gate gets used for in various places. Second, the actual neighbourhood marker for the park got moved about a hundred feet south, even though the boundaries of the neighbourhood don't seem to have changed. And yet, it's still just pointing at random rocks. If this is gonna move, probably it should point to either the fire or the actual memorial right next to where it's now located. Also, related to the boundaries, I found out today that apparently the zone starts on the far side of the street to the North, but the near side to the East/South, which is very silly, but also very minor. Also, one last thing. I don't know if it's an EB rebalance thing, the specific enemy, or what, but I ran into one thing while exploring Kallisti, and am gonna post it here for lack of being entirely sure which Feedback thread it properly belongs in. The new EBs that are just standing around in Kallisti, definitely engage players from a further distance than normal. I had one attack me while I was a full eighty feet away, much more than the usual 54' distance enemies normally engage at. This happened whether or not there were Phantoms nearby, who are the only enemy the patch notes called out anything perception-related with. If there are going to be stray EBs accosting players from what I've now tested to be an 85' aggro radius, that should probably be called out somewhere.

Haven't loaded up Beta yet to see if it's an in-game issue, but I noticed this going through the patch notes and figured I'd mention it: Gravity Distortion Field needs an icon update, same as Paralyzing Blast/Tesla Coil got, to use the location-targeted outer ring thing.

Until the new page hit beta today, July 2024 was simply the last time a major update dropped.

Holy crap, CONGRATS! Seriously, we haven't been on at the same times in a while, but I've occasionally been wondering if you were still playing, and if so, how the Humiliator was going. That mission's a pain on many regular toons, so doing it with nothing but Brawl is massive.

Posting here to ping @UberGuy that today's update includes new stuff. There's gonna prolly be new entity definitions for the stuff in the new mission, but more importantly there's a new enhancement set that'll need added to the various boost-related pages.

Level listings tend to be a mess. I think most of it's been cleaned up in-game, though, but I found a couple by just quickly skimming the list: Summer Blockbuster claims it's levels 15 to 50, but it's actually 15 to 29. Both versions of SSA 1.1 (Alastor's or Theoden's arcs) claim they're from levels 1 to 120. Might be worth double-checking the Christmas and Hallowe'en ones while you're looking at them, since they can't be viewed in-game right now, and could get missed.

Gather 'round, friends, and let me share with you the story of Pinnacle Server's best toon, the great Brawling Humiliator. Back on Pinnacle, Brawling Humiliator was a toon by @houtex. A War Mace/Willpower Brute. War Mace was chosen solely to draw it, and have Brawl use the mace. But that wasn't enough - the character was meant to humiliate the enemies, and that meant suffering utterly but still being better than them. So, the Brawling Humiliator levelled entirely from 1-50 on solo Street Sweeping. Near shutdown, when the devs were doing various invasions (Captain Mako Week, plus I think there was a Nemesis one?), BH was the toon us folks on Pinnacle wanted front-and-center, "tanking" everything. And he did! Hell, several of us put a lot of work into trying to figure out how to tune the Humiliator's build for the upcoming PPM proc changes, which sadly never came to be. And then Homecoming happened, and people came back. And all us old Pinnacle regulars remembered the Humiliator. And so, tribute alts started happening. @Bill Z Bubba made a whole thread about his, though it was Swipe-only, because it's Bill - gotta be a Claws/ Scrapper. I made a Spines/Dark Brute with no enemy-affecting click powers other than Brawl, named the Toggling Humiliator. Levelled him to 50 (and even unlocked incarnates via vet levels) entirely off solo street sweeping - if I'm on a team or in an instance, I turn XP off! That toon managed (with a handful of purple insps spaced out across the fight) to solo AV Infernal in the one Maria Jenkins mission. It took twenty minutes, but Brawl and toggles slowly whittled him down. And then the OG himself showed up! Brawling Humiliator lives on once again on Excel, and has been street sweeping ever since. I haven't talked to houtex in a bit, but the character is alive and kicking once more. If you go check that thread of Bill's, houtex even commented on it once we all found out he was back. He was astonished we'd remembered him, let alone made tributes to the insanity of his character, but of course we had - Brawl only, solo only, street sweeping only is a ludicrous combination. And he remembered some of his own best kills back on live. +3 Elite Boss Chimera with no help whatsoever, no other sources of damage, just Brawl. So yes, all a toon really needs is Brawl. You don't need teammates, you don't need all those toggles I took on my Brawler, you don't even need instanced maps to make it work. You just need Brawl, enemies to punch, and the ability to wait as your enemies slowly die a very humiliating death. And all us former Pinnacle folks will always remember it.

A variety of things worth adding, that are in the data files to this day: - The Devoured EAT's inherent still exists. In three parts. Basically boils down to a copy of Brute Fury. - The Hyper-Advanced Clockwork AT has some powers in the data. They got a self-rez inherent, alongside their main inherent, Android Form. Also, that seems to have been the name they settled on, "Hyper-Advanced Clockwork", to explain why player Praetorian Clockworks were, y'know, fully sentient. - You entirely missed the Primalist, which was basically entirely implemented, though I dunno how much (if any!) lore we ever got for them. The two parts of Primal Energy (1, 2) exist, as do the powersets of Feral Might and Primal Gifts. It was yet another shapeshifting AT, but with mostly the same powers per form, just that they'd mechanically change like how Bio/Staff/DP/etc. can change their powers with different toggles. As the Wiki points out, Posi confirmed at shutdown that the AT was scrapped mostly for being too complex - bits and pieces of it got repurposed into Beast Summoning, Savage Melee, and I think Bio Armour. So yeah, several of the scrapped EATs actually made it partially into the game, even if they never quite saw the light of day.

Yeah, what Maelwys said. The damage component partway down is marked correctly, but literally the very first overall effect says it damages the primary target, whether they're foe or friend or whatever. And then it also says it buffs them, too, even if they're an enemy. That's definitely not how the power actually works.

Hey, Uber. Found a power from Marine Affinity that's doing weird stuff that your code isn't parsing correctly. Rising Tide, from Marine Affinity says, in CoD, that the main target takes 20.8ish points of cold damage, and gets several buffs (see the second top-level effect group). Thing is, there's something in the actual power that makes it so that that damage is only taken by enemies. Heck, I don't have a Marine toon myself, so I'm not even sure that that damage is really taken by enemies, so... some new feature is likely getting used here, and isn't being parsed up properly.

CoD doesn't have such an option, no. The data's all there, but there's no page that displays it in reverse like that, just powers listing which enhancement sets they take. And honestly, I don't know that such a thing exists anywhere - neither the Wiki nor Mids have it, either.

Yeah, there's definitely somewhat of a communication disconnect here. Don't get me wrong, I didn't go in expecting to be able to solo lots of groups, or to be able to meaningfully do anything to the Minotaur. But like, you're using the word "raid" a lot, and this just ain't that. Raids have an end boss and some kind of goal - U'Kon Gr'ai, Hamidon, the Crystal Titan, the Hydra Head, Aspect of Rularuu etc., but the description of this content is that the Minotaur isn't some final boss you work up to. He's pretty clearly described not as the end goal, but instead as a nuisance that players want to get rid of (see, e.g., language like "allowing people to adventure and battle enemies within without danger.", and also just the fact that he doesn't have any unique drops like 4/5 of those other raid bosses I mentioned). The zone instead just doesn't have (at least from the description in the notes) any actual end goal boss with unique drops, no sense of "clearing the raid", etc. So the actual zone description reads more that it's a place to go farm for XP/inf, a la AE farming. An alternative to that, with actual mechanics and less AFK abuse of the Fire damage type. Something groups and leagues can use to farm cool rewards. That's fine, and honestly, we already have places like that. They're called Hazard Zones, and the existing implementation kinda sucks most of the time, but the idea's sound. A tougher zone, where street sweeping scales up for larger teams. And that's the expectation that kinda made me feel like I'd be able to accomplish something in the zone - Hazard zones aren't pure x8 groups, and a top-tier build at an appropriate level can in fact solo them, albeit with some difficulty. I can take my main into the max-level areas of the Storm Palace, Dark Astoria, or RWZ and get some work done, avoiding the enemy groups that would flatten me, and engaging the ones that I can handle. So that's sorta the expectation I had going into this, and the twisty corridors of unavoidable max-size fights really didn't align with that. The Malevolent Fogs definitely do need an HP reduction or something, yeah. Honestly, anything that's gonna outright con as "Pinata" feels wrong to have a second hit point anyway - the entire expectation of a pinata is that it's easy to break open once you land a good hit on it. Maybe lean into that, give 'em scaling defense or something? I dunno, it definitely felt very un-pinata to sit there hammering the thing for long enough that the Minotaur showed up, and still only have about 2/3 of its HP gone, all on a fairly well-built Blaster. Separate from all that, and coming back around on the stealth thing, I definitely was using Celerity:Stealth while trying to explore the place, but it consistently felt useless. There's anti-stealth enemies in most groups, but even without those, I felt like I was just required to spec into either Speed or Stealth pool to have any chance to poke around for secrets on my own, which stung a bit. Maybe the zone needs something to help out with that. An NPC at the entrance (maybe one of the gladiator things? Or someone back in the mansion) who can help players out by giving them a stealth effect that either only works while solo, or scales down by team/league size or something. It would give players a way to stay beneath the notice of the Labyrinth, but only if they're alone and inconspicuous. Maybe even have it include some degree of like, the Minotaur will see you, and he can still find you, but he's less likely to lock on? If it's implemented as a temp that passively does its thing and revokes itself if you do anything aggressive, you could probably also it have a time limit, so people have to keep coming back to the hub area to refresh it. That would then mean that the zone still puts pressure on a solo player. It should be possible to find some sort of balance where a solo (maybe even duo?) player can explore the zone, but you still gotta keep an eye out for which enemy group is where (Rikti Drones are Rikti Drones, after all), there's still a looming threat, and overall it doesn't meaningfully change the experience for a large league. Oh! And separate from this, I have a general complaint that the Gladiators are very unintuitive. Normal NPC behaviour is that they do stuff if you click on 'em. I genuinely thought they were bugged and accidentally unclickable, until I read the patch notes very carefully, and saw that "Standing next to one will prompt the Gladiator to respond.". The two I found, didn't seem to be doing anything useful other than normal NPC chat stuff when I got nearby, which I think just means I got the "Respond with hints/tips/lore dialog about the Labyrinth." result on their random table. The problem is, that there's no feedback whatsoever that I did anything useful. Like, talking when a player is nearby is just something random NPCs on the street kinda do, and given that I couldn't click the Gladiator at all, and got no message about rewards, it very much felt like something had gone wrong. I'm sure that if I'd gotten the drop, I'd have at least noticed it did something, though I'm not even sure if that'd work if I was in a large league and other people were fighting and I couldn't really identify why I got an inspiration. So yeah, the Gladiators probably also need some improvement on the feedback in-game, so you know that "Hey, you just did a good thing and got a thing for it; do that again whenever you see one of these!". Right now, it's very possible to do as I did, get the lore/info reward twice, and just not understand what's happening with them at all. And all that, even having read the patch notes.