VeiledOwl

In the character creator, the animation previews for Dual Blades aren't working properly - the character draws their weapons and stands completely immobile while the sparks and slashing fx triggers. The only exception appears to be Typhoon's Edge, which has the character flinch back like they've been hit, then stand there and continue to do nothing. The powers are activating properly in gameplay when I tested it on my stalker, though.

New robot arms that look like normal human arms, but have the same options as Chest, allowing the player to pick different patterns for their torso and arms. Rough, cobbled together examples made from some image editing/layer manipulation: Robot arm 1 and 2, using Diamond Blend and Flames: Non-blending example between arm/chest pattern, using Fire Stripe and Widget: Highly unlikely to happen (I can imagine the sheer number of chest patterns and their subcategories would make this a nightmare to port over/implement), but it could open some cool new customization options if it did.

In Eden, you can find Nemesis soldiers and the Devouring Earth fighting each other: the Nemesis soldiers are spouting/sharing Devouring Earth dialogue. Some examples from different mobs: [NPC] Fusilier: Your time is over! (when attacked) [NPC] Fusilier: Die, human! [NPC] Grenadier: We grind you to dust! [NPC] Quartz: We grind you to dust! (when attacked) [NPC] Grenadier: Filthy human! Begone! [NPC] Lancer Surgeon: We grind you to dust! (when attacked) [NPC] Quartz: You must be destroyed! [NPC] Lancer Surgeon: You must be destroyed! This was over by the door to the Hive, if that matters at all.

I did a Kings Row mayhem mission today and got the Jailbreak side mission (which typically isn't worth it, since Echidna almost always offs herself by killing cars as soon as we exit the precinct, which then explode and kill her, but I usually do it anyway). Went down the elevator to kill the guards/smash the door, and noticed something odd when the PPD Captain summoned backup: the reinforcement PPD Cops have been completely recolored. The normal PPD Cops throughout the mission (and the minion also guarding the cell before I attacked) were regularly colored; it only seemed to affect the ones specifically summoned by the Captain.

My only comments on problems in mission one have already been posted, so skipping to M2. Mission 2, breaking out Golden Roller: After defeating the Weave Spider Judicator, the compass waypoint shows the wrong location - it's 43 yards away from the computer you need to interact with. It's at [2803.9 -1374.0 -1994.6] , which is on the right ramp up to the level it's on, instead of its actual coordinates at [2831.6 -1361.5 -2126.0] . Minimap shows the correct location, though. Calystix: When released, he says: 'The Leviathan hungers for fresh blood... Your's will do nicely!' 'Yours' shouldn't have a contraction When defeated, he says: ' You worthless landwalkers... Will all inevitably bow to the Coralax.' Subjective, but I feel like 'will' shouldn't be capitalized here. Also, goodness is it annoying when Dehydrate hits; he was healing for 777 HP per tick, completely wiping out the damage I was doing on him. Probably less of an issue on teams, but I was soloing the arc. Good thing that character has Barrier as their Destiny power. Not sure how much Tidal Power Calystix had at the time, but it was likely a factor. Golden Roller: Zoe's caption says: 'Finally, there he is! Oh, wow... Umm, the Golden Roller has made some 'interesting' personal life decisions since we parted ways...Long as he's got his head, doesn't matter, grab him and get out of there!' There's no space between the ellipsis between 'ways' and 'Long'. t3H g0Ld3n rL0L3R's description has the line: 'Unfortunately, with their strength diminished after losing the Freaklok seperatists' - should be 'separatists'. Mission 3: The Supa Miner outside the mission entrance's second paragraph of dialogue is formatted like this: 'Security clearance to be here. Paragon Transit Authority getting complaints about seismographic shaking when monorail train pass over support strut on island. Only began start surveying. Like most of city, caves everywhere below surface. ' ...which makes me think there's a missing line break between 'on island.' and 'Only began'. There's usually an extra blank space between paragraphs. His description in-mission has the line: 'their latent Troll stone-manipulation abilities and become a formidible force as a result'. Should be 'formidable'. I did like his design - especially the pickaxe shovel combo holstered on his back. He was quite handy during boss battles, but did get stuck in the Rikti section for a while. It was that thin bridge over water section - the room with three cannons. He jumped down and couldn't get himself back up until I lured him to some rocks. The extra height gave him enough room to leap over the railing. I tend to lose Sefu Tendaji there in the RWZ missions too, so not a TF-specific issue. The stage show (and lyrics, especially) felt out of character for Lord Nemesis and his troops, but the man is also infamous for messing with people's heads. Gives me a whole 'No one will ever believe you' vibe, so I can still believe it despite my initial doubt. Placing the drones has this line: 'Cleared off immediate danger, this spot should work. You set one of Zoe's drones down.' 'of' has an extra f Mission 4: The proximity based ambushes around the Mole Machines are a nice touch. Especially since they're not required to progress the mission - gotta make a deliberate detour to walk into that trap. I'm not quite sure what happened, but in the final cave room, I had some Nemesis soldiers killing each other instead of me. Here's the messages: Colonel has defeated Mini Nemesis Bomb Colonel has defeated Colonel I was dead at the time due to not noticing all the snipers lurking in the steam (clever placement, especially the ones on the very top layer), and the character didn't have any confusion powers that could have caused treason in the ranks. While I was dead (for at least a minute), all the troops around Lord Nemesis suddenly did a knockdown flip. I did some testing, and it may be the Mini Nemesis Bombs - they flipped Nemesis twice in a row when they went off beneath his feet. (I, strangely, was fine.) Speaking of the Mini Nemesis Bombs, their heads turning with the camera angle is a neat effect. If a bit odd when they're behind my avatar, but swivel 180 degrees behind them to stare at me, the player, and not the character beating the sprockets out of Lord Nemesis. The reveal of the Nemesis Mole Train was a nice twist, and I thought it had an interesting design. Being able to click on certain pieces to get information wasn't something I expected, but was a neat touch. Unsure if there were more, but I only discovered the phonograph and the steam boiler. I fought my way along the train until the allegedly real Nemesis revealed that he'd brought back all the duplicates I'd already defeated. The compass waypoint pointing to his location was present in the cutscene and blocked his last speech bubble: I didn't take a screenshot at the time, but here's a text recreation: "But you know what they say about love and war! Hahaha! 285 yrds. battle be joined!" The compass waypoint isn't enabled by default, so may not actually be a problem that needs attention. When Nemesis Gamma attempted to kamikaze himself on me, he said: 'If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me!' which doesn't feel like it fits Lord Nemesis's character, defective double or not. The sentiment, sure, but the cliche phrasing, not so much. Good usage of the Self Destruction power, though. The description of the Lord Nemesis on the steed has the same misspelling of 'formidable' as the Supa Miner. It's in the second paragraph: 'Taking to combat atop a mechanical steed, this incarnation of the Prussian Prince of Automatons is more formidible than ever' Good lord, 'Mass-Produced Jaegers' certainly aren't lying about their name. I went from 300ish Brass Hunter kills to high 600s in the final train car with the Nemeses. (Also got Unveiler (presumably from the Mini Nemesis Bombs) and made fair progress on Green Machine.) There was a constant stream of them - I can see this arc being popular with people who want the Nemesis army defeat badges. Of course, I was also killing the bosses slower than a team would, meaning they had more time/chances to spawn. Non-mission specific The Gasmeisters and General Field Marshals have colored text at the end of their descriptions (I think General automatons did too?). There's only one line break between it and the end of the normal description - there's usually a blank line between paragraphs/segments in descriptions to break up the text. All the Nemesis Automatons being faulty seems odd to me. Sure, we've seen obvious ones in the past, but that was typically due to damage, defect due to a lack of maintenance, or a deliberate reveal of inhumanity as a taunt. Or them just not being in an important enough location that they'll be scrutinized; these things are meant to be indistinguishable from real people when Nemesis puts in the effort, as proved in several missions. So why isn't he? Getting lazy? Is making it obvious they're not real people meant to be some sort of taunt? ...now that I think about it, it could be to draw attention away from the proper, more subtle ones, actually. If people only think about the blatant ones, it's easier for proper ones to slip under the radar. Or it's just another mind game. He loves those.

I realized why certain hyphens were after the linebreaks; my UI is scaled up, which shifted the text. So what I posted yesterday regarding broken words isn't necessarily where other people would see them, making it somewhat unhelpful. Apologies if you've already made alterations based on it. Due to this realization, I redid the arc with UI at 100% to see what I miscorrected. This is from Wylie's dialogue after the patch today: Mission 1 'Retrieve Artifacts' intro: In Ouroboros: armed to the teeth with all sort of ancient ré lics. The gall of them, Normal intro: Just because a sword is magi-cal doesn't mean you should use it to No linebreak on the hyphen, but easily chalked up to just another oddity in how the character talks. Previously mentioned broken words not present at default scales. Mission 2: Unnecessary consultation: The last thing we need is someone even less experienced with ar tifacts to purchase the Warriors' weapons. Return: Ah, look at this! A lekythos with fun éra-ry markings on it. Mission 3 intro: I figured they had fallen apart, the only ones left old stragg lers with no direction or purpose. Sendoff: Take this rune, it will keep the protect ive magics from affecting you. Same broken words here as previously. Mission 4's intro has the same breaking on 'en er-gy' and 'am at-eurs' at 100% Mission 5 intro: "Death incarnate" doesn't wrap around at 100%, so that can be ignored from my previous post. Sendoff: One of them is likély going to try sho wing bravado and tell you something useful Mission 8 doesn't break 'developed traps' at default scale, so that can also be ignored. Mission 9 Intro: you should be able to get the psy-chopomp to talk. Sendoff: Regardléss of anything, I would pré pare for a fight. Conclusion: The information that psychopomp gave you is incréibly dis turbing. Dissension in the ranks and electrons are arguing if they should keep car rying éléctric charge or not.

Doing a quick go through, looking for typos/dialogue errors (plain text, because copy-pasting breaks accented characters and ignores italics): Mission one's sendoff has: perhaps you can learn more about where they're k eeping a large stash. That would be very useful indeed. Hmm? After completing the street sweep: But what was this about a we apons sale? Mission 3, 'Stop the archive breakin' (should be 'break in' or 'break-in'): From the intro: I figured they had fallen apart, the only ones left old stragg lers with no direction or purpose. From the sendoff: Take this rune, it will keep the protect ive magics from affecting you. From the entrance text: 'A tingle passes through you as you cross across the entrance's protective wards' - there's no period at the end of the sentence. Skull dialogue in mission: 'Death Head Slammer: Not everyone of us needs to be all 'Oooh, death, scary gloomy goth' to appreciate Morana's power.' 'Everyone' should be 'every one'. Mission 4 'Recover stolen tomes' intro has: Sure, they had powers which drew upon negative en er-gy and just in the event someone absolutely foolish steals them! Rank am at-eurs, didn't even try to dispel Mission 5 street sweep intro: speaking of Morana as some sort of "death in carnate". Clearly, they have progressed Mission 6 'Interrupt Skulls binding ritual' Entrance: 'The air in this graveyard is several degrees colder than outside its gates' is missing a period at the end. Mission 8 'Recover a Spirit Trap' intro: Arachnos have de veloped traps to capture the ghosts I didn't go through all of Sertrakis or the Psychopomp's dialogue branches, but didn't immediately spot anything needing corrections in the options I chose. Another minor issue is the mission accept text: half the time, there's no punctuation at the end but I'm not sure if that's intentional or a deliberate choice. I think the instances of incorrectly placed hyphens in certain line breaks might have been due to character name length, but couldn't say for sure.

I did a quick run through all the new maps with collectible objectives set to max - nothing spawned in an inaccessible location. I did another run with destructible objects set to max, using the 'Go to next objective' and 'kill target' buttons in Architect Options to speed things up. When I tried that with the 'Port Oakes - Docks & Ship' map, (misspelled 'Port Oaks', incidentally) it teleported me outside the forcefield barrier and onto the floor of the dry docks all the way at the west side of the zone. /whereami said it was at Zone/Mission: i27_PortOakes_Dock_01_generic Position: [1365.9 -54.8 116.2] . After a few more 'go to next objective' clicks, I was also placed at [1382.0 46.3 -193.0] . From there, I could explore all of Port Oakes except for the actual mission area; the forcefield was invisible from the outside, but still impenetrable. Despite being teleported outside with the next objective button, no objective spawned at either dry dock location - all were within the intended area. All the destructible objects spawned in accessible locations in the other maps as well, but I do want to mention that one of the bombs in Fort Hades dropped in a location I probably wouldn't have found if not for 'Go to next objective'. It's all the way in the top left of the map at [-2679.0 64.3 -1852.3], on a flat plateau mostly cut off from the fort, and in a place I don't believe most people would look. The location can be avoided by setting the objective's pawn point to appear in the middle instead of front, but I can easily see that area being a point of frustration for players without access to 'go to next objective' once an arc is published. Also a minor issue in mission selector: Port Oakes - Docks & Ship is alphabetically listed after Fort Hades, possibly due to it being misspelled 'Port Oaks'.

In Investigate Utopia Complex, the final mission of Erin West's arc, Darkness Dragon consistently despawns after the phone call ambush. I ran the arc multiple times (with all Alpha Team members at high like points so they remain loyal), and noticed that unlike the other members, Darkness Dragon had no lines of dialog for defeating the bosses at the end. So I ran it again, keeping her targeted most of the time to figure out where I lost her, and it turned out to be the ambush. After she says "Oh heck no! There's no way I'm betraying my bestie!", she does the Victory emote and fades into nothingness. She doesn't reappear until the ending cutscene. Which I suppose does keep her from having to fight you, but seems like it might be a bug.

It's on the wiki now, (well, most of it. I didn't transcribe every variation - the arc branches a ton) but the mission text itself's not actually appearing on Erin West's page. I'm assuming it's due to the massive size of it, given that I keep getting the message 'Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included.' when I attempt to edit and preview it to fix it. Not sure what to do about that. In any case, clicking 'Template:StoryArc Cutting Back Old Growth on Erin West's page will show you most of it, but Capture some B-roll's only a blue link at the very end. If you click it, it has the mission info, though.

Erin West arc typos, spoilered for length:

I'm not great at balancing, so can't really advise you there. The various Dark powersets are worth looking at though - I quite like the animations from Dark Control. Especially Living Shadows' grasping hands animation and Haunt's ghosts. Map-wise, I'd say maybe the Caves - Mausoleum sets with lots of 'Collect object - Pile of Bones' objectives strewn around (set behind a chain of other objectives so they don't glow the whole time) as decoration. Maybe a few altars with skulls on them too? Another suitable map is the Unique - Outdoors - Graveyard maps, but they may be a bit too 'open' to serve as a lair (and open maps can also be annoying to find objectives). Could be useful if the player's intended to catch them in the act of harvesting souls/bodies from the place, though. Both choices may be a bit too on-the-nose, though. Perhaps the old Cimeroran Cave mausoleum maps could also serve as a suitable lair. I once used Unique - Circle of Thorns - Baron Zoria's Lair as a map where the Circle were harvesting ghosts for their ectoplasm and turning it into street drugs to loosen the tethers between potential hosts' bodies and souls (as well as temporarily giving users with Mu ancestry death powers, which showed the Circle who to snatch and grab for new bodies). The arc itself was overly ambitious and poorly executed (partially due to it fighting me every step of the way during writing and me giving up and deciding 'good enough'), but the idea of a massive, glowing pool of ectoplasm/soul juice inside Oranbega may be of interest to your ex-Circle necromancer. Or the Unique - Circle of Thorns - Vaults of Mu one. Regarding how they appear on the player's radar, there's always being sent to investigate the classic MAGI Vaults theft/other powerful/evil magical items being stolen from collections, all of with troubling histories/implications for what they'll be used for by the thief. The exact nature of the objects would depend upon his intended method of ascension. Mass death ritual to give themselves the sacrifices' life force/power? Piercing the Aether to ascend to a higher plane and reunite with the Circle's goddess? If not that, some sort of mage noticing and becoming concerned about an abnormally high amount of necromantic/soul magic in the vicinity of the villain's lair also works. Or there being graverobbings, or kidnappings of mages/metahumans (for the lich to sacrifice for power/consult/turn into undead slaves), or a variety of other things that would alarm any mage enough to ask the player for help.

I also found Major Benjamin to be a character that jarred me out of suspension of disbelief when I played this arc. Not just because of the over-the-top, modern real world extremist propaganda, either - I fully believe there are people with such beliefs in the organization (though there would naturally be differences in presentation due to CoH being alternate history). What really threw me off, though, is that the man's meant to be a Raserei Ubermenschen. From the description of minions with this rank: "Every member of the 5th Column aspires to become one of the Raserei Ubermenschen, but few of them achieve this lofty goal. They are the spiritual and philosophical leaders of the 5th Column - totally devoted to its beliefs and goals. Like any good soldier, they lead by example. Their intense training and physical enhancements make them the perfect soldiers and perfect models of behavior. In battle, they serve as an inspiration to all who fight at their side." Speaking to Major Benjamin (who's an Oberst) I find myself unable to believe this man achieved the highest rank of possible, let alone became part of 'the inner circle that surrounds the 5th Column's leadership. They are charged with the grand stratagems that further the ultimate goal of the 5th Column'. If he were a lower rank/newly inducted into the 5th Column, I could buy his rhetoric easier as him being unrefined at spouting propaganda yet so he's throwing anything he can at the wall to see what sticks. But he's supposed to be good at it at this point, and he's not. I think the main issue for me is that he just doesn't speak like a 5th Column officer; he talks like an alt-right influencer, not a professional soldier. I had similar issues with the Council troops in Adelard Ziegler's arc - their speech patterns are also off, though decidedly less overtly. At first I thought it was due to the operation in the first mission being 'small-time', so they weren't assigning their best troops. Definitely realized that wasn't the case by the time I finished the arc, though. I do tend to over-fixate on minor details, however, and found the rest of Kogan's arc interesting.

In Technician Naylor's first mission, he sends you to steal a book from the Circle. The clue for collecting it says: 'Despite the books, tower, it seems to be all about how the Circle makes their portals.' I checked the wiki, and it says it's supposed to be 'Despite the books title' (which makes more sense despite lacking an apostrophe).

Previously, this mission would be full of low-level Skulls representing Psimon Omega's phobias, alongside 3 even-level bosses to defeat. Well, when I attempted it today it was full of level 40 Skulls from Kallisti Wharf. My poor level 32 villain couldn't even scratch them before getting hospitalized.