issue 26 Patch Notes for May 30th, 2019

[Leandro]

GENERAL

• Added power cooldown indicators as a WIP option, accessible through Options > Window > Beta Settings.
  
• Fixed a couple of issues with the Cathedral of Pain that could cause it to get stuck if all the Obelisks were destroyed or the Aspect of Rularuu was defeated right when the Willforges respawned.
  
• Replaced the Jetpack Suppliers in the Shadow Shard with P2W Field Agents.
  
• Some unused Pandora's Box SSA contacts were being introduced by other contacts; this should no longer happen.
  
• Fixed a server crash when a player in the final stage of character creation disconnected from the queue server during an unusually long SQL wait queue.
  
• Fixed a client crash when putting an enhancement in the Auction House (OuroDev PR #66 & #70).
  
• Fixed a client crash seen during activities with many active power effects, such as the Rikti mothership and Hamidon raids, by switching to 64-bit FX/Sequencer handles.
  
• Fixed a client crash in the UI drawing code if a pet has a creator but no owner.
  
• Connections from the client to the QueueServer were not encrypted; they now are. In addition, encryption keys have been upgraded from 512 to 4096 bits.
  

BASE EDITOR

• "Apply to Room" and "Apply to Base" will now work to fill an entire block floor-to-ceiling.
  
• Added an experimental option to use outdoor lighting in supergroup bases. It is recommended you try it with different skies to find one suitable for your base style. Outdoor lighting disables the dynamic lighting used in base rooms and from base items; there's (at the moment) no way to have both.
  
• Replaced the "Exit" buttons with an "Options" menu with options for Default Sky, Lighting Type, Grid Size, Angle Snap, Room Clipping and Hidden Markers. The hotkeys and slash commands still work, this is just for ease of discovery of the new features.
  
• Yes, new items are coming, they just weren't ready for this patch.
  

GRAPHICS

• Offloaded all the hardware-only physics effects to the CPU. This results in the same physics quality as enabling PhysX hardware, as has been requested, without having to actually update the PhysX libraries. The reason it's being done this way is because updating the libraries would break the game client for other servers that share the same game files. The impact on the CPU is negligible on modern hardware.
  
• Modified the Glacier FX so it can be looked at from below.
  
• Improved particle effects for Burst Of Speed power in Blaster/Martial Manipulation secondary.
  
• Improved the Ki Push FX from Martial Combat.
  
• Lowered the saturation of the reflection cubemap used in the tailor, to better display colors while in the costume creator.
  
• General improvements to many chest emblems, chest details and supergroup emblems: cleaned edges, reduced compression, standardized resolution.
  
• Added a second color on many chest and shield emblems that previously only took a single color.
  
• Repairs/improvements to Face textures to help with skin tone matching and reduction of uncanny valley. The Medusa face was missing the entire blue channel in its diffuse map, this has been reconstructed based on clues in the other parts of this face.
  
• Improvements to the Makeup color masks for female heads; mostly blurs the edges of the lipstick so it blends better and fits onto the lips more fully when the player chooses heads with different shaped features.
  
• Fixed a glitch with the Buckled Leather top and alpha channels on chest emblems.
  

POWERS

• Immobilize Powers in Controller and Dominator primary power sets should no longer make their targets immune to KnockUp. KnockBack will be converted to KnockDown. This helps sets like Ice and Earth, as their AOE Immobilize power will no longer make their AOE Knockback power useless.
  
• Cold Domination for Controllers and Masterminds now have a Minimal FX option, just as Defenders and Corruptors do.
  
• Archery animations should now work properly.  No more floor kick animation when trying to fire an Acid Arrow, among other things.
  
• Rain of Arrows animation has been reduced from 4 to 2 seconds. Base recharge time has been increased 5 seconds to compensate.
  
• Bio Armor > Hard Carapace: This power should now offer damage resistance in PvP.
  
• Stalker's Ice Melee should now crit on PvP.
  
• Flash Freeze should now affect flying enemies.
  
• Glacier should now be usable while flying.
  
• Fixed an error that allowed players to create Shield Defense characters with Claws, Dual Blades, Ninja Sword, Spines or Staff Fighting primaries. These characters always were broken and unplayable.
  
• Scrapper's Shinobi-Iri should now be able to accept Jump enhancement sets.
  
• Sentinel's Beam Rifle > Refractor Beam should now accept Defense Debuff sets.
  
• Doppelgangers from players with the following powersets will no longer spawn without any powers:
  
  • Blaster Support > Ninja Training
    
  • Blaster Support > Plant Manipulation
    
  • Blaster Support > Radiation Manipulation
    
  • Brute Defense > Radiation Armor
    
  • Brute Melee > Radiation Melee
    
  • Dominator Assault > Radioactive Assault
    
  • Mastermind Buff > Cold Domination
    
  • Scrapper Defense > Radiation Armor
    
  • Scrapper Melee > Radiation Melee
    
  • Sentinel Defense > Bio Organic Armor
    
  • Sentinel Defense > Radiation Armor
    
  • Sentinel Defense > Super Reflexes
    
  • Sentinel Ranged > Beam Rifle
    
  • Sentinel Ranged > Water Blast
    
  • Stalker Defense > Radiation Armor
    
  • Stalker Melee > Radiation Melee
    
  • Stalker Melee > Staff Fighting
    
  • Tanker Defense > Radiation Armor
    
  • Tanker Melee > Radiation Melee
    
  • Tanker Melee > Spines
    

REWARDS

• Patrol XP can now be consumed in Architect Rewards mode and/or with a bonus XP multiplier. It will always add 50% to the base XP earned.
  
• The conversion rate from Vanguard Merits to Reward Merits has been increased from 10:1 to 30:1. The intent of the conversion rate is for a Mothership raid to award between 30 and 50 Reward Merits, with Hamidon rewarding 80 Reward Merits as it requires a lot more setup and coordination. The initial ratio of 10:1 was set on a small server, and it is entirely too good for the kind of population that Homecoming supports.
  
• Rikti War Zone pylons now drop 3 Vanguard Merits when destroyed, for a total of 60 Vanguard Merits for all 20 pylons.
  
• Rikti Drop Ships and Patrol Ships now drop 6 Reward Merits and 10 Vanguard Merits when destroyed.
  
• Fixed an issue with Morality Missions not resetting the mission owner's alignment points on completion in some cases. This does not apply to teammates, only the mission owner.
  
• Increased the reward for completing a Morality Mission to 40 Reward Merits. Originally this was lowered from 50 to 20 based on datamined times it took to receive a new Morality Mission after completing one, but that time was skewed by the above bug allowing players to run Morality Missions back to back.
  
• The reward table at the end of the Statesman Miss Liberty Task Force and Lord Recluse Task Force stated that the Synthetic Hamidon could be picked once every 24 hours, and if you had ran the Task Force before the 24 hours were up it granted a Single Origin enhancement instead. However, the timer on the reward table itself was 18 hours, leaving a window of 6 hours in which you thought you would get a SHO, but got a SO instead. This has been fixed by lowering the 24-hour check to 18 hours.
  
• Death From Below will now gradually grant less Experience Points after level 10. The effect is based on the experience points required for each level, so it has a built-in curve that starts with a very minor decrease and ramps up until level 20. Please see GM Jimmy's post below for more details on this change. Jimmy nerfs.
  

[Leandro]

Most of the graphical changes listed above are from Flashtoo, who kindly offered their work after posting on the Future Volunteer Recruitment: Art thread. Here are some example images to illustrate the changes. Click on the images to enlarge them. The rest of this post comes straight from Flashtoo.

 

Particles and Effects

 

Burst of Speed

 

Ki Push

 

Generic Reflection Cubemaps

Desaturates the generic cubemap used on costume parts in the tailor, for better/more accurate color display. Does not affect in-world appearance.

 

Emblems and Symbols

 

Emblem General Improvements

Cleans up transparency artefacts at edges, and sharpens the definition of, various chest/shield emblems. The following emblems are covered by this patch: Anarchy, Building, Celtic 1, Celtic 2, Chalice, Comet 1, Comet 2, Cube, Devil, Eye of Horus, Hand, Hourglass, Masks, Medieval 2, Medieval 3, Mushroom Cloud, Optic, Ornate 1, Ornate 2, Radioactive 2, Radioactive 3, Rocket, Pawprint, Saturn, Shell, Shield 1, Shield 2, Skull 1, Skull 2, Star 4, Star 5, Star 6, Star 8, Sun 1, Sun 2, Swirl 1, Swirl 2, Swirl 3, Sword, Swords Crossed, Symbol 10, Tiger, Torch, Vitruvian, Wave, and (in Special Symbols)Council, Circle of Thorns, Freedom Phalanx, and Vanguard.

https://i.imgur.com/fNRpce6.png[/img] https://i.imgur.com/FzKqzhH.png[/img]

 

(Please ignore the flipped colors on the Anarchy symbol; that was my mistake in taking screencaps.)

 

Secondary Color Patch

Allows the usage of both colors on chest/shield emblems that previously only took a single color.

 

Faces and Hair

 

Face Fix Mega-Pack

Makes small changes to eye placement and skin shading to correct various issues with Steampunk, Retro Sci-Fi, Imperial Dynasty, and Vampire faces, and adds a finished diffuse map to Medusa face.

https://i.imgur.com/trh3kUb.jpg[/img] https://i.imgur.com/YT6YOyU.jpg[/img] https://i.imgur.com/4IK2Nx6.jpg[/img]

 

Makeup Fixes

Adjusts lip color to better fit mouths and smooths eye makeup somewhat.

https://i.imgur.com/p01nAlR.png[/img]

 

Clothing and Color Masks

 

Buckled Leather Fix

Corrects the issue with the Buckled Leather top that causes unwanted transparency with chest emblems when using the top's native color mask.

 

[Jimmy]

Some additional context on the changes to Death From Below and the Rikti Mothership Raid

 

Both of these are to further the goals set out in the open letter we published. The intention is to ensure all content is roughly similar when it comes to a time/effort to reward ratio, so players are free to pick and choose which content they want to engage in.

 

The Rikti Mothership Raid, as you could probably tell, was an obscenely efficient method of farming Reward Merits. Even an average raid was around five times more efficient than most other content, but a well-run raid could be significantly more. This created a situation where the RMS was the only activity to do if you wanted to get high-end rewards. This is obviously contrary to our goal of enabling players to run a variety of content without feeling forced into specific tasks for the best rewards.

 

We took this opportunity to make some other changes as well to hopefully make the raid a bit more interesting and ensure all players are encouraged to fully participate. Both the Pylons and The Great Meta... er, the Rikti Dropship now grant merits upon being destroyed.

 

As for DFB: This was a different kettle of fish. Because this was far more accessible to anyone that wanted to participate, and it did have one key benefit (allowing you to 'skip' the first 10~ levels that you've played a hundred times), we wanted to be careful with how we approached it. As described above the XP rate starts dropping down after level 10, and drops down to be more in line with other content as you approach level 20. This means you can still do 1-2 runs to get yourself to level 10-15, but after that DFB is no longer the most efficient thing to do.

 

Here's a graph detailing how the XP drops off:

 

 

And here are the exact figures:

• Level <=10: 100%
  
• Level 11: 98%
  
• Level 12: 96%
  
• Level 13: 93%
  
• Level 14: 90%
  
• Level 15: 86%
  
• Level 16: 81%
  
• Level 17: 76%
  
• Level 18: 69%
  
• Level 19: 60%
  
• Level >= 20: 50%
  

 

[Rhinoxx]

Impressed - those are some pretty significant tweaks on the graphics side of things  :D

[vulpinetyrant]

I can't help but be curious why there is no mention of the Crash to Desktop bug that seems to exist when exiting a mission. I've had it happen to me on everyone one of my characters during both grouped and ungrouped missions Task Force or otherwise. And I've seen it happen to multiple members of a team I've been on. I know tickets have been put in and its been mentioned in the Discord chat. It doesn't always happen and I know of no way to force it, its seemingly random. Is this just something we have to live with or is this going to be addressed at some point?

[kiramon]

I’m happy about DFB. God I hate running as a level 5 for 5-6 runs to get to 22 with every character with every other option just being inefficient in comparison...

 

[Rhinoxx]

I can't help but be curious why there is no mention of the Crash to Desktop bug that seems to exist when exiting a mission. I've had it happen to me on everyone one of my characters during both grouped and ungrouped missions Task Force or otherwise. And I've seen it happen to multiple members of a team I've been on. I know tickets have been put in and its been mentioned in the Discord chat. It doesn't always happen and I know of no way to force it, its seemingly random. Is this just something we have to live with or is this going to be addressed at some point?

 

It might be an error that is hard to reproduce? I for one have never experienced it - or at least I have not seen it since the earlier days of CoH. Not experienced it so far in HC era.

[Venture]

Wow, you guys have certainly been busy.

[Wenlocke]

Most of the graphical changes listed above are from Flashtoo, who kindly offered their work after posting on the Future Volunteer Recruitment: Art thread. Here are some example images to illustrate the changes.

 

If you've got someone doing this kind of thing now,  any chance they can look at the impervium katana skin for dual blades? It currently seems to be missing all its texturing.

[Zentry]

I know you all will get a lot of complaints and whining about the changes you made to DFB and MSR, but I wanted to thank you for all of your hard work that you do as VOLUNTEERS to make this happen!!  Thank you for bringing back our City!!!

[Nosaj]

• Offloaded all the hardware-only physics effects to the CPU. This results in the same physics quality as enabling PhysX hardware, as has been requested, without having to actually update the PhysX libraries. The reason it's being done this way is because updating the libraries would break the game client for other servers that share the same game files. The impact on the CPU is negligible on modern hardware.
  

 

Will this change re-enable the promiscuous propagation of shell casings from Assault Rifle and Merc Masterminds? I live in hope.

[Guest Cronolizer]

its really cool how the homecoming team is so efficient while they seem really passionate about the game as a new player being tested all kind of mmos  im really impressed keep up the amazing work :)

[Leandro]

I can't help but be curious why there is no mention of the Crash to Desktop bug that seems to exist when exiting a mission.

 

In order to debug that kind of crash, I need to collect memory dumps of the crash when it happens; to do that, I need to include a file in the COH directory, crashrpt.dll, which would collect those memory dumps and send them to the Homecoming servers.

 

The problem is that a lot of people are using the same COH install folder for multiple servers, so if the file is added, memory dumps from other servers would start being sent to the Homecoming servers, which is a massive can of worms. So for now, I'm not including the file, which makes debugging that kind of crash pretty difficult.

 

Once the Sunrise patcher is done, it will give each server its own folder to place DLL files on, and then I can put crashrpt.dll in there and start collecting crash dumps, as well as including the updated physxcore.dll for "proper" PhysX hardware support. Messing with the files in the install folder that is shared by multiple servers would be disrespecful at best, reckless for sure, and malicious at worst.

[Not2sweet]

Nice, you doing a very good job TY

[RussHood]

JSYK, the new homecoming.exe was flagged by my AV (AVG) as suspicious, but already passed inspection (in case others post of app closure issues)

[Leandro]

JSYK, the new homecoming.exe was flagged by my AV (AVG) as suspicious, but already passed inspection (in case others post of app closure issues)

 

Yes, that's going to continue to happen until I start digitally signing the .exe with a code certificate and they build enough "trust" with the AV companies. The code cert was requested a couple of weeks ago but it's still in the process of being issued, since Homecoming LLC is a new entity they are being extra demanding. I wasn't planning to patch until I had a cert, but it's been two weeks already, so unsigned .exe it is.

[Izuela]

About make up that needs fixing. Would you consider making a SECOND version of those that does NOT include lip coloring, some time in the future? I rarely want the same color on the lips as I do on the eyes.

[ChanelNo2]

I am shocked! I expected some minor changes and some bug fixes, but not those changes that improve the look, powers, even the makeup and badges. This is amazing! You guys are doing a great job, I can not wait to see what you're going to do in the future.

[Sundodge]

 

• Offloaded all the hardware-only physics effects to the CPU. This results in the same physics quality as enabling PhysX hardware, as has been requested, without having to actually update the PhysX libraries. The reason it's being done this way is because updating the libraries would break the game client for other servers that share the same game files. The impact on the CPU is negligible on modern hardware.

 

 

Does this mean we get all the crazy physics stuff again?!  :o ;D

 

Also great job on all the changes!

 

 

[Prototelis]

Stoked for physX buff.

 

Gonna throw all the garbage and leaves at mobs.

 

[Number Six]

Will this change re-enable the promiscuous propagation of shell casings from Assault Rifle and Merc Masterminds? I live in hope.

 

Oh yes.

 

[Chuckers]

I am in total amazement with this patch. The amount of things fixed/updated/changed is awesome. Especially for a volunteer staff!!

Thank you.

[Gypsidious]

New here.  Any posts that show WHEN during 5/30 this is happening?  I can't contact the login server.

[HJofVecna]

Same. I'd be interested to know when I can get my hands on these sweet, sweet additions.  :D

[RussHood]

A small text box on the server status page stating down for maintenance would be nifty. 

Thanks for the responses, and all the effort and time!