issue 27 [Beta] Patch Notes for May 7th, 2021

[Jimmy]

Powers

•  Sorcery > Arcane Bolt / Arcane Power
  • Activating and deactivating toggles will no longer grant Arcane Power
•  Inherent > Walk
  • Movement speed cap adjusted from 3.15mph to 3.25mph (to match NPC walking speed)
  • Jumping speed cap increased to 14.32mph (the base jumping speed)

Miscellaneous

• Removed ambushes from delivery missions to Kalinda in the Temple of the Waters SF
• Renamed the Shopkeeper badge to Proprietor (as Shop Keeper already exists as a day job badge)

Arena

• You can no longer begin observing an arena match if you had any combat activity in the past 10 seconds
• Arena Observer / Gladiator modes will now automatically kill all pets on entry (certain pets could still be summoned when entering an arena match)

Bug Fixes

• Firebase Zulu: Closed holes in the collision boundary of the zone
• The Chantry: Closed holes in the collision boundary of the zone
• Echo Plaza: Added a collision boundary around the zone to fix issues with teleportation powers
• Cleaned up some unintended behaviour with the Fortunata Hypnosis proc

[siolfir]

35 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

Removed ambushes from delivery missions to Kalinda in the Temple of the Waters SF

That was quick. 🙂

 

Can't say that I'm surprised about the change to Arcane Bolt given how many times it was brought up in the feedback thread.

[UberGuy]

14 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Can't say that I'm surprised about the change to Arcane Bolt given how many times it was brought up in the feedback thread.

 

I think the issue was that originally there was no way around it. Someone must have cranked out a way. 🙂

Edited May 7, 2021 by UberGuy

[Katharos]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

Miscellaneous

• Removed ambushes from delivery missions to Kalinda in the Temple of the Waters SF

HELL YEAH!

[Glacier Peak]

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

• Renamed the Shopkeeper badge to Proprietor (as Shop Keeper already exists as a day job badge)

Nice name change! 😁

[Wavicle]

are ambushes generally supposed to happen in Mercy? I thought the starting zones didn't allow them... I definitely got ambushed the other day in Mercy while doing some arc...maybe Mr. G

[Cinnder]

There's a high level arc from Grillo that has you go back to Mercy and comes with a Malta ambush.  Fun for the lowbies if you don't notice them.

[Faultline]

Feel free to name specific arcs and missions for review.

[Wavicle]

3 hours ago, Faultline said:

Feel free to name specific arcs and missions for review.

I'll take a look at the wiki to see if I can figure out which one it was.

[Wavicle]

3 hours ago, Faultline said:

Feel free to name specific arcs and missions for review.

Ok, I got it.

I was running The Great Grun Gathering from Victor Von Grun. I had just completed the mission Get Device from Dr. Creed and was about to teleport out of Mercy when I was ambushed by a couple of Malta grunts.

[Cinnder]

The mish I was referring to is 'Investigate unsanctioned project' from Operative Grillo.  But I should state for the record that I don't have a problem with the ambush.  It's only 2 Malta, and characters of Mercy's level won't get debt if they're killed anyway.  

[Faultline]

In general I agree with removing ambushes from deliveries if the delivery target is in Atlas or Mercy. The phasing volumes in those areas don't interact well with ambushes and the mobs can easily become invisible to players while still being able to attack them. At some point we need to review and redo the arcs that use those phasing volumes; it's a neat trick but it has problems.

[Cinnder]

Ah yes, I hadn't considered the phasing. Fair enough.

[gameboy1234]

What is a phasing volume?

[Cinnder]

 

2 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

What is a phasing volume?

 

It's an area of a zone that changes based on stuff you've done in missions.  As far as I can recall, it's used only in certain areas of Atlas & Mercy for some starter mishs, plus in DA, where it puts up a magical barrier effect after you've defeated Mot.  The tricky thing is that these areas can appear differently to different characters, depending whether they have completed the specific missions, and a mob that crosses into one of these areas can disappear from one's view, depending which version of the area one is seeing at the time.

[gameboy1234]

Ah, got it.  I think of those as "instances", didn't know the CoH name for them.  Thanks @Cinnder

 

[Wavicle]

5 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

Ah, got it.  I think of those as "instances", didn't know the CoH name for them.  Thanks @Cinnder

 

I think in CoH the term "instance" refers to door missions, special trial rooms, and different copies of whole zones like Atlas Park 1, Atlas Park 2, etc.

[UberGuy]

Yeah. The phased areas aren't really "instanced" in the way that's used in other places in CoH. While phased areas' contents vary based on the status of a team's leader (including a team of one player), different teams whose leaders are in the same state all see the same things in the phased area and can effectively "share" it. Everyone doesn't get their own team copy.

Edited May 12, 2021 by UberGuy

[Chris24601]

On 5/9/2021 at 1:01 PM, Faultline said:

At some point we need to review and redo the arcs that use those phasing volumes; it's a neat trick but it has problems.

I’ve got a suggestion on that.

 

The original reason for those phasing volumes was to cut down on the number of actual instances that would need to be generated by the number of new players/toons the live devs expected to be present at low levels. This is why only the last mission of each arc was actually properly instanced even when you were sent indoors.

 

However, technical limits and populations march on.

 

So my suggestion is that, instead of phases, have each mission send us into an instanced section of Atlas/Mercy via Enter Mission by speaking to a contact (which a lot of the later post Atlas/Mercy missions used) with only the non-combat phases left in the open world and perhaps de-phased (a permanent Hellion bust from the first arc and the murder scene investigation and hero speaking to angry citizens from the two middle arcs wouldn’t be bad things

to leave unphased).

 

Basically, you could throw a bounding box around the Northwest corner of Atlas Park and use that map for pretty much all the first and third arcs and one of the Northeast corner for both of the second arcs.

 

So, for example Habashy’s arc might be a quick street hunt (five Hellions in the unphased open world isn’t ridiculous), then he sends you to the officer only, instead of telling you to go north to the lake area, he sends you to an instance where you rescue hostages to unlock the underground section and recover the artifact. Exiting the mission puts you back at the police officer and your mission bar says to call Matthew.

 

Change the “beat up specific guy for disguse” into another short open world hunt mission for any Hellion that allows you to enter the door for the non- combat walk around to find a flier mission, then instanced mission as normal.

 

For the Vahz mission, keep the talk to the detective/witness as a non-phased element in Atlas Park (some RP-er might need an open crime scene at some point) and turn the sewer part into an instance. Talk to the hero turned entertainer and have them send you to a instance to stomp some Vahz and rescue people. Exit by entertainer and run final instanced mission normally.

 

For the Skulls arc, the hunt could probably stay open world as could “click open world glowies.” Just unphase those areas but leave enough Skulls in the area to handle the hunt portion. Leave the hero firing up an audience as an unphased element. Actually, there’s not much phasing in that arc anyway.

 

For the Thiery Arachnos arc, create an instance of that whole chunk of Atlas on fire. Theiry sends you in and you fight Arachnos. Exit by Thiery. He sends you in again to fight more Arachnos Commanders and merge the destroy towers mission in with that, replacing the mission turn in dialogue with pretty much the same thing as comm chatter box text. Exit and run the final door mission and turn in with Habashy as before (and his unphased wife... because invisible non-combat NPCs isn’t really an issue the way phase volumes are).

 

That should render Atlas phase volume free and some of the instances replacing phase volumes may not even need to be identical; a small outdoors warehouse section would work for the Arachnos missions just as well as the specific Atlas Park layout for example.