Open Beta FAQ - Read This to Get Started!

[Jimmy]

Hello and thank you for your interest in helping us test the future of City of Heroes: Homecoming! In this thread you'll find answers to common questions and information to help you get started on our test shards.

 

How do I install the test shards?

You should download and install the new Homecoming Launcher. Note that this must be installed to a new directory, not the one that contains your Tequila install.

 

If you want to use Tequila / Island Rum instead, check out the instructions in this thread.

 

Test shards? There's more than one?

Yes, there's four shards and two different clients.

 

Beta

• Shards: Brainstorm and Transfer Test
• Used for early, experimental testing.
• Sometimes there will be some cheats and shortcuts enabled to help with testing, but they will occasionally be disabled or removed if whatever we're testing requires it.
• Patch notes will be posted in the Beta Patch Notes forum.

Preelease (aka Staging)

• Shards: Shadow and Transfer Test
• Used for final testing of patches before they are published to the live shards.
• This environment is set up to be as close to the live environment as possible - which means no cheats and no shortcuts.
• Patch notes will be posted in the Staging Patch Notes forum.

Each of these shards will come up and down as needed during testing. At least one Beta shard should be online most of the time, whereas the availability of the Staging shards will be more limited. The Transfer Test shards should only be used for testing character transfers and other cross-shard interactions.

 

Can I copy characters to the test shards?

You can!

1. Visit the Beta Account Center
2. Hit 'Copy Character' under 'Character Copy Requests'

Only one character copy request can be queued in every 30 minutes. During busy periods it may take several hours for your copy to reach the front of the queue. You can check your position in the queue in the Beta Account Center.

 

Copies are only available to Brainstorm (Beta) and Shadow (Staging). Once copied, you can then transfer from Brainstorm or Shadow to the Transfer Test shards if you wish.

 

I found a bug! Where should I post it?

Please post it in the Homecoming Beta Bug reports forum.

 

I have feedback! Where should I post it?

If it's general feedback, please post it in the Homecoming Beta forum. If it's for a specific new feature, please post it in the focused feedback thread for that feature (these can be found in the Homecoming Beta forum when new features are undergoing testing).

 

Where can I find the patch notes?

Visit the Beta Patch Notes forum and the Staging Patch Notes forum.

 

Can I subscribe to be notified of new test shard patches?

You sure can! Visit the Beta Patch Notes forum or the Staging Patch Notes forum click 'Follow' at the top right.

 

 

What's this about cheats on the beta server?

Sometimes cheats and shortcuts will be enabled on the beta server (Brainstorm) to help expedite testing. You can find them in the Quickchat menu:

 

 

Note that the cheats will not always be available. If they aren't available, it'll be for a reason, so please do not post asking for them to return. They'll be back when they need to be back 🙂 

 

Cheats will never be enabled on the prerelease server (Shadow).

 

Will these shards ever be wiped?

We will occasionally wipe these shards for testing purposes. Please do not assume anything (characters, AE missions, supergroups, etc) on these shards is permanent.

 

Why are there four test shards? Isn't that excessive?

It's necessary that each stage of testing involves at least two shards so cross-shard functionality (such as global chat and character transfers) can be tested effectively.

The additional resources required to host these extra shards is minimal thanks to a large amount of back-end optimisation, essentially allowing multiple shards to share most of their resources. Because of these improvements all of our testing infrastructure is hosted on a single box.

 

[Bionic_Flea]

But Jimmy, how do I . . . . (reads) . . . uhh . . . never mind.

[Bionic_Flea]

But Jimmy, where is my Pineapple and Pizza?

[Peerless Girl]

But Jimmy, what about the f00rls? We're going to need a lot more f00rls for all these new shards! 

[Doc_Scorpion]

Maybe I don't understand how the Cheats menu is supposed to work - but Complete Mission doesn't seem to do anything.

[GUTROT]

Hi, I copied a couple of my characters to the test shards and now all of their alignments changed to Hero (except for my Arachnos Soldier, which became a Villain again).  I had a Vigilante, a Rogue and a Praetorian.

It seems the alignment changes also happened to those characters on the live server as well..

Is this behavior normal or am I doing something wrong here?

---

Edit:   After logging in to my characters on the live server their alignment changed back to normal!

Edited April 14, 2020 by isa1312
Update

[EyeLuvBooks]

Not sure if it's turned off right now but the Incarnate slots are not unlocked.

 

Also, is there an easier way to get Enhancements that buying the recipes and crafting them? I don't see any other method.

[AboveTheChemist]

3 hours ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Not sure if it's turned off right now but the Incarnate slots are not unlocked.

 

Also, is there an easier way to get Enhancements that buying the recipes and crafting them? I don't see any other method.

The freebies popmenu should have all that and more. It used to be a separate menu but it's been built-in to the Beta servers for a while now. You can get to it via the same button that accesses the emotes, with the little button on the far right end of the chat bar.

[Jimpy]

Now all I have to do is convince Norton to let me install this.

 

Mission accomplished, but it took a while.

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Jimpy

[Kryss]

is there a way to have a look on the number of sonic manipulation ( mid's reborn ? )

[AboveTheChemist]

3 hours ago, Kryss said:

is there a way to have a look on the number of sonic manipulation ( mid's reborn ? )

Not sure about Mid's, but Bopper has an ongoing project that details the powers in each powerset in spreadsheet form. An updated spreadsheet with numbers from Beta (which include Sonic Manipulation) was posted over the weekend.

[Bill Z Bubba]

If this was covered elsewhere, my apologies. It seems that I still have an old remnant of the freebies popmenu even though I just deleted it from data\texts and revalidated my beta install. I'm currently missing the artillery and bombardment sets (and maybe others) but other players are stating that they seem them. Anyone have any ideas on how to correct this?

[Myrmidon]

Bill, are they also missing when you try /boostset commands?

[AboveTheChemist]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

If this was covered elsewhere, my apologies. It seems that I still have an old remnant of the freebies popmenu even though I just deleted it from data\texts and revalidated my beta install. I'm currently missing the artillery and bombardment sets (and maybe others) but other players are stating that they seem them. Anyone have any ideas on how to correct this?

The current built-in freebies popmenu still refers to Artillery under its original name (Shrapnel) and if you try to grant enhancements using the Shrapnel options, the system reports an error. So there is not a way currently to grant Artillery via the built-in freebies menu. From what I can tell, Bombardment and the three new End Mod sets that came in with the last update of Issue 26 should be in there, but I am looking at the actual menu file from the piggs and not at the in-game menu so I can't verify for certain that they are there.

 

Last night I posted a slightly different version of the freebies pop menu that had been edited to add Artillery in. You can find it in this post. I made some other edits (which are described in that post) but that menu will allow you to grant Artillery enhancements. If you don't want to install another popmenu, you should be able to grant Artillery enhancements (as Myrmidon mentioned) using the following commands:

 

/boostset Artillery <level>
/boost Crafted_Artillery_<letter> Crafted_Artillery_<letter> <level>
/boost Attuned_Artillery_<letter> Attuned_Artillery_<letter> 1

Use /boostset if you want the whole set at once, or /boost if you want either a single crafted or attuned enhancement. The term <level> above would be replaced by the level of enhancement desired (Artillery is 30-50), and the term <letter> is one of A, B, C, D, E, F corresponding to the 6 enhancements in the set. For example, if you want a level 50 version of the first enhancement in the set, use:

 

/boost Crafted_Artillery_A Crafted_Artillery_A 50

I don't know for sure which letter corresponds to which enhancement, but I think it follows the order as listed in-game (which should match the order on the Artillery wiki page).

Edited October 27, 2020 by AboveTheChemist
typos

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

Bill, are they also missing when you try /boostset commands?

Haven't been keeping up so didn't even try those. I'm just glad to know it's not my installation that's borked. Thanks, yall.

[Moonlighter]

Will boostset also work up to 55 so I don't have to drag salvage boosters one at a time for potentially dozens of enhancements?

 

 

[Bionic_Flea]

Nope. 

 

Well, I don't think so because any IO over level 50 doesn't exist naturally in the game.  But maybe this lets you cheat that limit.

[Derek Icelord]

Is there a way to grant non IOs at specific levels? The boost command only works on IOs. I'm trying to collect data on travel power speed caps at various levels.

[AboveTheChemist]

23 minutes ago, Derek Icelord said:

Is there a way to grant non IOs at specific levels? The boost command only works on IOs. I'm trying to collect data on travel power speed caps at various levels.

The closest thing I could find in the freebies menu is the auto enhance feature. It looks like the command '/auto_enhance' will grant single-origin enhancements, but I have never used it so I am not totally clear on how it works. It looks like the boost command will work for hydra, titan, and hamidon origin enhancements so if there was a way to determine the internal name for single origin (or dual or training if you wanted those) enhancements then it might work. Aside from that you might just need to grant yourself some inf and hit the store (assuming what you need is available there).

[Derek Icelord]

/auto_enhance automatically fills your powers with enhancements (but you don't get to pick what it throws in there), so not quite what I need. I use the store when possible, but they only sell in increments of 5 levels, which is also an imperfect solution.

 

I'm trying to recreate the data in the wiki Travel Power table that includes base, even level DOs, +3 DOs, even SOs, +3 SOs, and IOs (boosted and not). I can kludge it with DOs using the AE vendor, but SOs at lower levels are proving a problem.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Derek Icelord

[AboveTheChemist]

1 hour ago, Derek Icelord said:

I'm trying to recreate the data in the wiki Travel Power table that includes base, even level DOs, +3 DOs, even SOs, +3 SOs, and IOs (boosted and not). I can kludge it with DOs using the AE vendor, but SOs at lower levels are proving a problem.

I dug around in some of the spreadsheets and found this data, which worked for me on beta just now. Here is the syntax for DOs and SOs (using an Accuracy enhancement at level 6 as an example):

SO: /boost Magic_Accuracy Magic_Accuracy 6
DO: /boost Mutation_Magic_Accuracy Mutation_Magic_Accuracy 6

I've attached a text file containing the enhancement names I found. I can't say if this list is exhaustive or not, but it should be a good start.

 

so_do_names.txt

Edited January 11, 2021 by AboveTheChemist

[Derek Icelord]

Much appreciated. If there's anything not on that list, I can probably figure it out. This makes my task so much easier.

[Glacier Peak]

This is a great resource for any community members interested in testing!

[Tanklet]

I tried the Copy Character button and it said "Service Unavailable" 

 

Help?

 

EDIT

NEVERMIND! I needed to log into Beta first I guess before the button would work for me. 

FIXED IT!

Edited April 6, 2023 by Tanklet

[biostem]

I downloaded the Beta files, created a character there, was able to create a new character using the storm blast set, but the freebies menu isn't present for me, even though others in the help channel can confirm it is there for me.  Any ideas?  Thanks!