issue 27 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%.

[Ruin Mage]

Yay.

[Aurora_Girl]

BATTLE BECKY, Y'ALL!

[Ms Deadly]

THE EMOTE UPDATE WE NEEDED ❤️

 

[Peacemoon]

Beautiful! 

[Lazarillo]

39 minutes ago, The Curator said:

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

You got me a quick cheat on my Ouro badges for my birthday?  I feel so blessed.

[Glacier Peak]

Glorious!

[Hedgefund]

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

 

This one needs to be bolded and given a bigger font.  It's causing much consternation in help chan so far after the restart.

[McSpazz]

YEEESSSS! I didn't realize how much I needed this!

[Duuk]

With changes to how AE works... any chance we'll be able to have an AE terminal in bases at some point?

[Dispari]

Enjoying the new invisible sandwich emote



(Which I assume is not intended)

[Bopper]

3 minutes ago, Dispari said:

Enjoying the new invisible sandwich emote



(Which I assume is not intended)

They might be playing the head crushing game.

 

 

[InvaderStych]

5 minutes ago, Bopper said:

They might be playing the head crushing game.

 

Clearly WAI.

 

[LeBlanc]

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

Does this mean there will be an effect on the Vanguard Jetpack finally?? It needs one bad!

[Sabrina Pandora]

No Winter Super Pack discount this year?!?

[Ridiculous Girl]

it's like my birthday or something! which it is... 🥸

[Zhym]

38 minutes ago, Sabrina Pandora said:

No Winter Super Pack discount this year?!?

This patch made Atlas Park winter-ready, but it didn't actually start the Winter Event.  The first entry in the patch update threw me off, too, until I excitedly outfitted my badger (who needs all the Winter Event badges) with a scarf and ran to the chalet...to see no Father Time.  Hopefully the Winter Event will start soon!

Edited November 30, 2021 by Zhym
Never mind. Apparently I just needed to wait a few minutes.

[Placta]

4 minutes ago, Zhym said:

This patch made Atlas Park winter-ready, but it didn't actually start the Winter Event.  The first entry in the patch update threw me off, too, until I excitedly outfitted my badger (who needs all the Winter Event badges) with a scarf and ran to the chalet...to see no Father Time.  Hopefully the Winter Event will start soon!

 

The winter event went live ~20 min after the servers came back up. I got the License to Chill badge and the notification Father Time needs help rescuing creepy babies.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, MadCow99 said:

With changes to how AE works... any chance we'll be able to have an AE terminal in bases at some point?

God I hope not. Considering how much of a character’s life can be spent in AE, that’d be a good way to never see sunlight or other players ever again.

[Zhym]

4 minutes ago, Placta said:

The winter event went live ~20 min after the servers came back up. I got the License to Chill badge and the notification Father Time needs help rescuing creepy babies.

D'oh!  That'll teach me not to be an overeager early (winter) bird!

[Cinnder]

2 hours ago, The Curator said:

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

 

Wow, not only the start of the winter event, but so many fixes!  Xmas has indeed come early!  Thanks yet again for the above.

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Sabrina Pandora said:

No Winter Super Pack discount this year?!?

 

Can we get an official comment from the GMs if there will be one this year or not?

[AboveTheChemist]

5 hours ago, The Curator said:

The Drenched Donuts emotes (including coffee), require an exploration badge to use. Can you guess which one?

Just did some testing of the new emotes. The various new 'eating donuts' emotes were locked behind said badge, but I was able to use the 'ddcoffee' and 'ddcoffee2' emotes without having said badge.

[Troo]

17 minutes ago, AboveTheChemist said:

Just did some testing of the new emotes. The various new 'eating donuts' emotes were locked behind said badge, but I was able to use the 'ddcoffee' and 'ddcoffee2' emotes without having said badge.

 

how do you not have that badge?!.. oh, maybe you're on a new alt.. n e v e r m i n d 

[AboveTheChemist]

13 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

how do you not have that badge?!.. oh, maybe you're on a new alt.. n e v e r m i n d 

Haha, the keyword there was 'testing'. I was testing the emotes to see if they really were locked, so I used a character without that badge. I am updating the emotes menu to include them, and will use the 'LockedOption' feature to allow them to be used once the badge is earned.

 

Along those lines, it might be worth considering having those emotes unlockable by more than one exploration badge. The badge in question is heroside, so perhaps allow it to be unlocked via a redside badge (like 'Sweet Tooth' in Cap au Diable) and a goldside badge (perhaps 'Don't Drink It' in Neutropolis or 'Binge Eater' in Underground Neutropolis), so characters that are strictly red/gold side can have access to the emotes. There may be more thematically appropriate badges, I just looked for ones whose names evoked eating/drinking. 

Edited November 30, 2021 by AboveTheChemist