[Staging] Patch Notes for November 30th, 2021

[The Curator]

General

 

Atlas Park is ready for Winter.

Draw cutscene letterboxes on the full width of the screen.

Fix the world not rendering on very wide displays.

Fix camera-space fullscreen FX looking terrible at high FOV settings.

Fix a number of issues with the AE contact hologram:

• The way it was originally implemented was hacky and fragile. Rewrote it to be more robust.
• Fixed contact hologram flickering when an NPC with customized colors was used.
• Fixed contact appearance sometimes not updating when first logging in or zoning.
• Fixed contact appearance sometimes not immediately reverting when quitting the TF.
• Fixed contact dialog headshot for color-customized NPCs not reflecting the custom colors.
• AE contact costumes are now refreshed clientside only when it needs to change instead of every frame.
• Removed unneeded network traffic constantly sending the name of the arc contact in every entity update.

 

Costumes

 

Tech Knight backpacks (and possibly other costume pieces) should now render their FX properly.

 

Badges

 

Ripple Raider: no longer requires no player deaths; just defeat all AVs in the Golden Roller mission of the Aeon Strike Force.

Power Overwhelming: should now always detect when Ripplesurge is under the effect of a death puddle buff.

Master of Dr. Aeon's Strike Force: badge hint should no longer be randomly pulled from other badges.

Vision of Ambition: slightly moved to -1724.0 368.5 1327.0

Cut-Off: properly awards again for completing a Flashback arc with a max level between 40 and 49 and no Epic Powers.

Marginalized: properly awards again for completing a Flashback arc with a max level of 50 and no Epic Powers.

All Flashback Challenge badges: temporarily made the badges award on all arcs, regardless of merit payout amount.

• This change is due to many arcs, including all Incarnate Arcs and SSAs, not giving any merit rewards by default, instead putting them behind a Reward Choice which doesn't trigger the badge.
• Story arc merit reward payouts will be revised in January once we're back from the holiday break, and the limitation will be put back in to exclude non-combat and Personal Story arcs.

 

Emotes

 

The following emotes have been added, along with aliases:

• em donut1
• em donut2
• em donut3
• em donut4
• em donut5
• em winterdonut (em holidaydonut, em christmasdonut)
• em spookydonut (em halloweendonut)
• em jellydonut
• em jellydonut2 (em lemondonut)
• em ddcoffee (em coffee)
• em ddcoffee2 (em coffee2)
• em hotdog
• em hamburger
• em sandwich (em sandwitch)

The quick chat emote menu has been updated slightly:

• Added new "Idle > Food & Drink" menu which contains the new emotes under a "Drenched Donuts" child menu
• Removed Drink, Eat Food, Eat Donut, Drink Tea, Drink Enriche from Idle and Action menu(s) and placed them in the Food & Drink menu
• Added new "Idle > Swimming" menu, which contains the innertube emotes.

Some emotes you can perform while you are flying have been updated to be non-random across clients:

• em food (em eatfood, em eat)
• em alakazamreact

Added the following aliases to existing emotes:

• em Ledgesit -> (em Sitledge)
• em Ledgesit1 -> (em Sitledge1)
• em Ledgesit2 -> (em Sitledge2)
• em Ledgesit3 -> (em Sitledge3)
• em Ledgesit4 -> (em Sitledge4)

Emote notes:

• The original em donut emote remains unchanged for posterity. The donut1 emote is a slightly higher resolution, non-world anim model (along with the rest from the base item set).
• The Drenched Donuts emotes (including coffee), require an exploration badge to use. Can you guess which one?
• The 'em coffee' is an unofficial alias for now. Expect it to be repurposed if a generic mug of coffee emote is ever added in the future.

 

Powers

 

Doppelgangers should now properly use Seismic Blast powers.

Doppelgangers should now properly use Stone Melee and Stone Armor when the player is a Stalker.

Removed repetitive combat spam that made references to Granite when using Geode.

Fixed bugs where Seismic Shockwaves would not trigger while exemplared

Significantly toned down the ongoing sound FX for Seismic Shockwaves

Fixed the color palette for the Seismic Blast > Stalagmite Lava Theme.

Amplifiers should now work on Kheldians while they are shape-shifted.

Experience Boosters moved to Temporary Powers > Buffs > Experience Boosters in P2W/T4V.

The Vanguard MDC can now be used while Temporary Powers are disabled, like all other Accolades.

The following Day Job powers were not disabling when Disable Temp mode was active:

• Analyst's Teleporter
• Frequent Clubber
• Invigorate

Adjustments to Crey critter powers:

• Hallucinogenic Gas recharge duration increased to 36s from 22s.
• Hallucinogenic Gas AoE radius reduced to 10ft from 20ft.
• Tear Gas Grenade recharge duration increased to 25s from 15s.
• Tear Gas Grenade AoE radius reduced to 15ft from 35ft.

 

Critters

 

The Boss version of Minotaur/Cyclops (regular and Incarnate) no longer ignores rank reduction to Lieutenant under the "No Bosses" difficulty setting.

Agent Crimson is no longer inexplicably shorter in the Lord Recluse Strike Force, and no longer has a geometry gap on his head in Peregrine Island.

AU-Rifter's Dimensional Distortion now has a minimum range of 5, to prevent dragging players already in melee past them.

Fixed spawn issue where certain high level Crey spawns could spawn low level lieutenants.

 

Tasks

 

The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok: should no longer get stuck after leading Pierce to the computer in the sewers in Mission 3.

The Graveyard Shift: defeating Cortex should now grant defeat credit and count towards the Epidemiologist badge.

Cavern of Transcendence: the chance of an encounter to detach and chase players has been lowered to 0.25% × obelisks clicked × players on map.

5th Column Task Force: no longer revokes the Dimensional Grounding Ray from the team leader on completion (it never revoked from teammates).

Lady Grey Task Force: corrected AI pathing issue in the final mission which caused all enemies in the final room to teleport away into a different area of the map.

 

Dr. Aeon's Strike Force

 

Malicious now properly notes that it disables Super Inspirations in the help text.

Becky now does not become a follower until the final dialog option is completed in Mission 1.

Emperor Requiem is now much larger, making him easier to target in a crowd.

Fixed objective errors that were preventing the Devouring Earth hordes from congregating on the locations of the giant monsters in Ripple 2 of Mission 5 when they hit 75% health.

Battle Becky now flies, which should make escorting her through Mission 7 (especially zone 2) easier.

Adjusted the room that King Midas is fought in order to prevent some issues where his Ripple Singularity could hit players from unexpected locations.

King Midas's Ripple Singularity damage increased by 50%.

[Dispari]

Suggested synonyms for hamburger: burger, cheeseburger

[Sovera]

Ffffffffffffffood emotes! \o/

[fitzsimmons]

"Ripple Raider: no longer requires no player deaths; just defeat all AVs in the Golden Roller mission of the Aeon Strike Force."

 

Boo!  Revert that and give us a fix for Legatus instead.

 

I thought the no defeat challenge was appropriate.

[Ruin Mage]

While I don't disagree that No Defeats is a good baseline challenge, there was a lot of room for error in that badge.

It counted the entire map/mission. If you died at any point before getting to Roller, you lost out on the badge. Not entirely a fun badge given all the Brickernauts.

The challenging one will be Avoid the Blue Stuff--sorry, I mean the Midas badge.

[ScarySai]

6 hours ago, The Curator said:

Amplifiers should now work on Kheldians while they are shape-shifted.

 

I don't normally use amps, but seeing this get fixed is very nice.

[fitzsimmons]

14 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

While I don't disagree that No Defeats is a good baseline challenge, there was a lot of room for error in that badge.

It counted the entire map/mission. If you died at any point before getting to Roller, you lost out on the badge. Not entirely a fun badge given all the Brickernauts.

The challenging one will be Avoid the Blue Stuff--sorry, I mean the Midas badge.

 

Between when you engage the golden roller and go through all 12 AVs, there are no brickernauts. There are some after you defeat the last of the AVs and get the badge however.  Oh well, my badger got it with no defeats so I'm good.  It's just my opinion that removing it softens up what is a nice challenge.

[Ruin Mage]

It counted for the entire mission even before Golden Roller, Fitz.

So there were plenty of chances to fuck it up if you didn't have a stealth-TPer.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Shadeknight

[fitzsimmons]

16 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

It counted for the entire mission even before Golden Roller, Fitz.

So there were plenty of chances to fuck it up if you didn't have a stealth-TPer.

 

Fair point.  I'd have to check to see if there are any Brickernauts in the first part.  I guess each time someone does run through and assemble or incan on the teams I've been on.

 

No real need for stealth  nowadays but I guess I'm so used to running through or someone on the team running through,  I don't give it a second thought.

[Thyristor]

The experience boosters don't seem to be at the P2W vendor anymore, neither former or new positions