[OPEN BETA] Patch Notes for February 24th, 2024

[The Curator]

Powers

• Fixed a bug with some powers not triggering Domination

 

Arsenal Control

• Liquid Nitrogen: Damage should now require a hit check, and fixed a bug that would sometimes tick multiple times per pulse

Savage Melee

• Savage Leap (Stalker): Power should now grant Assassin's Focus

Mind Control

• Telekinesis: Recharge lowered from 120s to 90s

Traps

• Poison Trap: No longer accepts Slow enhancements

Fire Mastery (Epic)

• Bonfire: Fixed duration (was not meant to be lowered to 30s)

Dark Mastery (Epic)

• Spirit Drain: Typo correction
• Fixed a bug in Tar Patch that could cause the power to sometimes fail to summon the patch.

Psionic Mastery (Epic)

• Psionic Nexus: Typo correction
• Telekinesis: Recharge lowered from 240s to 180s

 

---

New Player Experience Improvements

Based on player feedback we've made some small tweaks to the default configuration for new characters. All of these settings can be customized and your own preferred defaults saved in the options files if desired.

• Power timers default to 'Always' rather than 'Only powers recharging longer than 15 seconds'.
• Modern keyboard profile: changed left mouse button drag to freelook without snapping back to center. Quick look function moved to middle mouse button, swapping the two.
• Power tray numbers default to locked, as the trays now have sensible presets for the tray numbers instead of all coming up '1'. This prevents players from accidentally clicking the tiny arrows. Veteran and advanced players who want in-depth customization know where the option to unlock the trays is located.
• Free camera setting enabled by default.
• Tooltip delay reduced to 0.1 seconds (from 0.6).
• Blink Certifications option that makes the Email tab red if character items are available disabled by default.
• Icon Shrinking animation is enabled by default when the power timer is in the Top or Bottom position, as was intended.
• Subtle power icon animation added for icons behind the timer in the Center position -- shrinks but not as much as the standard animation and has "heartbeat" pulses at regular intervals to provide peripheral visual cues for power recharging.
  • The option controlled by the /tray_always_shrink command still overrides this with the standard animation if it is enabled. We are planning in a future update to make several different power icon animations selectable through the options menu.

 

---

Task Forces

Advanced Mode - Lady Grey's Task Force

Mission 3:

• The team's leader no longer requires the Master of Lady Grey's Task Force badge to overload the Rikti Psi-Network on 4-star difficulty.
• Number of reinforcement Rikti Magus that spawn with Omega K'ong reduced from 4 to 2.

Mission 4:

• The Trebuchet Dropship now fires in intervals of 12 seconds, up from 3 seconds.
• The Trebuchet Dropship now spawns a little earlier reflexively to the progression of the mission objectives instead of at a static set point.
• Hospital point on this mission moved behind the rock so it cannot be shot by the Trebuchet Dropship.
• Dropship spawned reinforcements will only appear on players who are inside the bowl housing Hamidon.
• Frequency of reinforcements lowered and made more sporadic vs. at set intervals.

Mission 5:

• Fixed a volume scene change error that was causing the new finale area to not display with the proper ambient fog.
• Hro'Dtohz and The Honoree have had the AoE defenses removed from their shields.
• HP totals on Hro'Dtohz and The Honoree have been reduced by 10% each.
• Fixed Overcharged Plasma Turret heads floating above their turret bases.

 

Advanced Mode - Dr. Aeon's Strike Force

Mission 5:

• Resolved an issue with Hero 1 & Vanguard stacking Tactics & Assault powers to reach much higher than intended +DMG and +ToHit values.
  • This was making them far more difficult than intended, this change should revert them to Page 6's difficulty.

 

Advanced Mode - Imperious Task Force

Mission 4:

• Fixed a bugged map volume in the water pools of the Chamber of the Emperor.

 

Ms. Liberty's Task Force

• The Arachnos Flyer in this content was using the incorrect zone-critter definition, changed to use the special mission-critter variant of the Flyer that was intended for this mission.
  • This version of the enemy still rewards the defeat badge for the Arachnos Flyer.

 

---

Missions

Striga Island

• Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause male Striga Ghosts to be named "Mek Man".
• Striga arcs fixed to be playable with mixed alignment teams.

 

Various - Outdoor Grandville

• Resolved issue with some mission maps that used outdoor Grandville having rendering issues, such as the Red Widow valentines arc finale.

 

---

Rewards

Ghost of Scrapyard

• Ghost of Scrapyard's Reward Merits and Monstrous Aether now have an 18-hour cool-down to reward on the same character.

 

---

Badges

• Mirror Image: Fixed an issue that would cause this check to succeed on the first mission, but fail on subsequent missions. Should now succeed and stay completed.
• Variety Act: Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause the completion icon to not display.
• Fixed an issue which prevented characters from receiving new Tour Guide tips when collecting an Exploration badge if they already had Passport / Long Range Teleporter before Issue 27, Page 7 went live.

 

---

Vanity Pets

• Vanity Pets > Mini Lusca: Can now fly.

 

---

Alignment System

• The chances of an existing alignment tip being replaced by a newly dropped tip are now reduced based on character level. As the system is intended to help ensure that characters have tips relevant to their level range and allow for more organic replacement of tips while leveling rather than simply dropping them all at transition points, the chances are reduced based on character level, with the lowest rate at level 50. This does not affect tip drop rates if you have an open slot.

• Tips can no longer be replaced while on a mission map, only when in an open zone.

• The "Tip Found!" floating text is suppressed and not displayed if a tip is being replaced because your tips are full. The chat entry in the Rewards channel still appears.

• Alignment tips and Valentines event tips can no longer be replaced when your tips are full. We may revisit this in the future depending on plans for use of the tip system in upcoming content.

• Exploration (Tour Guide) tips still have this functionality enabled and will auto-dismiss the oldest tip, but this is subject to the limitations of these tips dropping. Particularly that they do not drop if you already have a tour guide tip for the current zone.

 

---

Consignment House

• User interface for the consignment house / black market updated to be better about refreshing item status and history without having to resort to tricks to force things to load.
• Mini pet recipe listings on the consignment house were mistakenly bucketed together, this has been resolved and each listing should now only bid & purchase the specific pet's recipe.

 

---

Graphics

• Scrapped the gamma correction integrated into the fragment programs. This caused unforeseen issues with a couple shaders not behaving correctly and resulted in some graphical glitches related to scene fog not always rendering at the correct distance.
• Re-implemented gamma correction as a postprocessing shader. There are a few advantages and disadvantages of doing it this way:
  • Interacts better with SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion).
  • Very slightly reduced color fidelity at high gamma settings. The final 8-bit framebuffer values are being mapped to new colors rather than it being done with higher precision during the lighting pipeline.
  • Does not affect the user interface, only the game world.
• Other than the UI not changing brightness when the gamma slider is adjusted, there should be no visible change from the player perspective other than elimination of rendering issues.

---

User Interface

• Cleaned up a few items in the options menu that were applying clientside immediately, but not saving to the server unless some other option changed that triggered a sync.

[gameboy1234]

8 hours ago, The Curator said:

User interface for the consignment house / black market updated to be better about refreshing item status and history without having to resort to tricks to force things to load.

 

A minor miracle!  Thank you!

 

9 hours ago, The Curator said:

Modern keyboard profile: changed left mouse button drag to freelook without snapping back to center. Quick look function moved to middle mouse button, swapping the two.

 

Thaaaaattt's going to mess with the muscle memory...

 

9 hours ago, The Curator said:

Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause male Striga Ghosts to be named "Mek Man"

 

You have ruined my favorite head canon: the ghost in the Mek machine.

 

[Kaigai Sticky]

Arsenal Control - Cloaking Device - The no fade customization still makes my toon intangible. Not sure it its still too late to say anything.

[Ridiculous Girl]

9 hours ago, The Curator said:

This Giant Monster's Reward Merits and Monstrous Aether can now only be earned once every 18-hours on the same character.

did this go into effect for all (or most) GMs? because i do not remember seeing it listed, and i was just wondering about this in regards to adamastor campers.

[Tenkay Volts]

2 hours ago, Ridiculous Girl said:

did this go into effect for all (or most) GMs? because i do not remember seeing it listed, and i was just wondering about this in regards to adamastor campers.

Seems like just for Scrappy, but yeah if addy can be farmed once every hour that does make this a little heavy-handed. Probably better to roll this across all GMs, and maybe bring the timer down to once every 4 hours or so, roughly in line with non-conditional GM spawn rates

[JayboH]

That auction house change sounds great

[strix_]

There's a very noticeable lag spike that happens every single time you open or close a category in the Auction House now on Brainstorm (literally jolting my character back a few metres if I open it while running, which never happens on the live server even at peak times and in crowded zones), and the problems with needing to force the pricings to load do not appear to have been reliably solved. (i.e. No History Found still appears on some listings, even when the item is clearly listed and has been recently traded.)

 

edit: after further testing, this seems to be affecting live servers this morning too, but it seems exponentially worse on beta

Edited February 23 by strix_

[Lunar Ronin]

6 hours ago, Ridiculous Girl said:

did this go into effect for all (or most) GMs? because i do not remember seeing it listed, and i was just wondering about this in regards to adamastor campers.

 

4 hours ago, Tenkay Volts said:

Seems like just for Scrappy, but yeah if addy can be farmed once every hour that does make this a little heavy-handed. Probably better to roll this across all GMs, and maybe bring the timer down to once every 4 hours or so, roughly in line with non-conditional GM spawn rates

 

Ghost of Scrapyard could be farmed every few minutes, and is/was exponentially more of an issue than Adamastor rewards-wise.

[Doc_Scorpion]

16 hours ago, The Curator said:

Consignment House

• User interface for the consignment house / black market updated to be better about refreshing item status and history without having to resort to tricks to force things to load.

The increased speed is noticeable and appreciated.  The appearance of "No History Found" is greatly reduced, but not eliminated.

I did not encounter the lag spike noted by @strix_.

[UltraAlt]

17 hours ago, The Curator said:

Veteran and advanced players who want in-depth customization know where the option to unlock the trays is located

 

Not if we never bothered to lock them.

 

17 hours ago, The Curator said:

Modern keyboard profile: changed left mouse button drag to freelook without snapping back to center. Quick look function moved to middle mouse button, swapping the two.

 

Hopefully, there is an option to swap them back if we don't like it.

Might be good for new players, but for those of us with muscle-memory trained to the way that it was is another thing.

 

 

[Parabola]

Had a quick play and found the free camera utterly disorientating. I'm not sure why that would be considered better by anyone but I'm pretty sure I'm not the target audience. I found the setting to put it back reasonably quickly.

[strix_]

34 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I did not encounter the lag spike noted by @strix_.

 

I'll keep experimenting to see whether this is just a problem on my end! From further testing, it's a very consistent 2 second spike of heavy lag for me upon opening Enhancements in the AH on Everlasting and Excelsior, with smaller (~1 sec) spikes on Indomitable, Reunion, and Torchbearer. On Brainstorm, it's pretty consistently a spike of over 2 seconds lag on opening Enhancements, leaning towards 3.

[gameboy1234]

I tested the AH on Brainstorm this morning, there was a chunky patch that needed loading first.  After I logged in, I started flying, typed /ah and I got a very noticeable stutter or graphical pause when the window popped up.  Then I closed the window and got no pause at all when I typed /ah.  I moved to a different zone and tried the procedure again, no stutter.  This is pretty acceptable if it continues to work this way, imo.

 

Incidentally, I get exactly the same sort of stutter on my system whenever there's a large amount of graphics to load.  Flying towards Ms. Liberty in Atlas Park for example, will almost always do it because of the large number of people and SFX around her.  If something could be done about that as well (load resources in the background instead of the main rendering thread?) that would cure a lot of "lag" issues I'm personally experiencing.

 

[OldPenn]

14 hours ago, Ridiculous Girl said:

did this go into effect for all (or most) GMs? because i do not remember seeing it listed, and i was just wondering about this in regards to adamastor campers.

 

Yes, Adamastor rewards only being available every 18 hours per character was specifically noted as changed in the original Page 7 notes.  No, there was no mention of a complete pass on GMs, so if you can think of another that is summonable that doesn't have a reward cool down I'm sure that would be appreciated.

[Ridiculous Girl]

13 minutes ago, OldPenn said:

 

Yes, Adamastor rewards only being available every 18 hours per character was specifically noted as changed in the original Page 7 notes.  No, there was no mention of a complete pass on GMs, so if you can think of another that is summonable that doesn't have a reward cool down I'm sure that would be appreciated.

 

the patch notes only say merit rewards, nothing about the other reward drops, hence the reason i ask. 🙂

 

Quote

Giant Monster Rewards

Adamastor

• Adamastor now only drops Rewards Merits to the same character once every eighteen hours; Amount of merits earned remains the same as before.

 

[Wavicle]

I saw something unusual yesterday in Defeat All Snakes in Area from Kalinda:

The Arachnos Flyer was visible on the map.

[OldPenn]

Oh good point, I assumed that was covered by the mini monster recipe note pasted below, but I didn't think of any rewards deeper than that.

 

"The following Giant Monsters found in city zones now have a 10% chance of dropping an invention recipe of a miniature version of themselves. This chance is rolled individually per character who received credit and is tied to the same drop table as the Reward Merits."

 

The only other reward on Adamastor was 5 threads for incarnate players, and that was already limited to first time per day (I'm assuming it was 18 hour, also).

I still can't think of any deeper rewards off the top of my head. I don't think it applies to badges, but it would suck if you went and got rewards other than the defeat badge (by your character/team not doing 10% or more damage) and then defeated another one and qualify for the badge but not get it. (Like multi spawn Titans when nobody bothers to invite the lower levels; so I'm glad that Titans are not on an 18 hour cooldown in this use case.)

 

First defeat of Adamastor gives:
[14:37] You received 10 units of Reward Merit.
[14:37] You received 6 units of Reward Merit.
[14:37] You received 5 units of Incarnate Thread.
[14:37] You received Monstrous Aether.

 

I'll have to wait until it can be summoned again before I can tell you what the second defeat within the 18 hour cooldown gives.

*Edit:

[16:19] You gain 51,000 experience and 17,000 infamy.
[16:19] You received Monstrous Aether.

 

Not sure if the Aether was intended to be rewarded if the Reward Merits are not, but there you have it. 

No threads nor Merits if the 18 hour reward cooldown is still in effect.

Edited February 23 by OldPenn
Second defeat results added

[tidge]

18 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I saw something unusual yesterday in Defeat All Snakes in Area from Kalinda:

The Arachnos Flyer was visible on the map.

 

The Arachnos flier is present, but unfightable in Mercy Island. It would be nice if it was visible in Grandville (via the map), because of its mechanics: (1 of 4 possible routes, untargetable while flying, etc.)

 

19 hours ago, OldPenn said:

 

Yes, Adamastor rewards only being available every 18 hours per character was specifically noted as changed in the original Page 7 notes.  No, there was no mention of a complete pass on GMs, so if you can think of another that is summonable that doesn't have a reward cool down I'm sure that would be appreciated.

 

There are other red-side Giant Monsters that can be spawned, but there are specific zone-related peculiarities (Deathsurge) or other times (Caleb's day/night cycle) that prevent them from being rapidly summoned like Scrapyarder. Caleb has other elements (flying, stealth) that make it less-than-optimal to try to "farm".

 

I should disclose: I honestly don't know if Caleb has a 4-hour timer or not, because it is such a PITA to (a) spawn (b) find (c) guarantee all of its cohorts have been destroyed. I'm assuming it doesn't have a respawn timer based on the few times I've gone an spawned it. I want to say on at least a couple of occasions I've spawned it "right after" a server reboot.

[The Curator]

A new build just went to the beta server! Since there are only a few small changes from the previous build, the existing patch notes have been updated to reflect the latest changes:

 

 

As usual, changes from the previous build are color-coded to help quickly identify to new notes.

 

Green indicates net new changes from live.

 

Blue indicates changes from the previous beta build that will not be part of the final patch notes.

[Luminara]

On 2/22/2024 at 3:32 PM, The Curator said:

Alignment tips and Valentines event tips can no longer be replaced when your tips are full.

 

Thank you.  Thank you very much.

 

On 2/22/2024 at 3:32 PM, The Curator said:

We may revisit this in the future depending on plans for use of the tip system in upcoming content.

 

[Night]

The graphics issues regarding rendering and world fog seem to have been fixed so that's awesome! Although there seems to be an issue with this patch release, and the current live patch, where the /visscale setting is not remembered between game launches, as in you might set your setting through the command to /visscale 4, but upon closing the game and launching it again it will reset to /visscale 2, which I think is the maximum available through game options UI. The /visscale setting also resets back to /visscale 2 when you open the game options UI.

[scarlet_f]

• Savage Leap (Stalker): Power should now grant Assassin's Focus 
  
  can we get this fix for Stalkers Touch of fear too? I bug reported it a good while ago

[Pazta]

On 2/22/2024 at 1:32 PM, The Curator said:

Powers

Traps

• Poison Trap: No longer accepts Slow enhancements

Additional bug with this power: The Initial_Poison_Gas from Poison Trap makes a hit check, but is not enhance-able for accuracy.

 

Quote

[12:36:48] Poison Gas: MISSED Vanguard IDC!! Your Poison Gas power had a 5.77% chance to hit, you rolled a 91.81.

Edited February 24 by Pazta

[Tenkay Volts]

23 hours ago, OldPenn said:

First defeat of Adamastor gives:
[14:37] You received 10 units of Reward Merit.
[14:37] You received 6 units of Reward Merit.
[14:37] You received 5 units of Incarnate Thread.
[14:37] You received Monstrous Aether.

 

I'll have to wait until it can be summoned again before I can tell you what the second defeat within the 18 hour cooldown gives.

*Edit:

[16:19] You gain 51,000 experience and 17,000 infamy.
[16:19] You received Monstrous Aether.

 

 

Yeah, we should add a cooldown to Addy for the monstrous aether for the purposes of consistency if we're sticking with the 18-hour cooldown for conditional GMs.

[Sovera]

3 hours ago, Night said:

The graphics issues regarding rendering and world fog seem to have been fixed so that's awesome! Although there seems to be an issue with this patch release, and the current live patch, where the /visscale setting is not remembered between game launches, as in you might set your setting through the command to /visscale 4, but upon closing the game and launching it again it will reset to /visscale 2, which I think is the maximum available through game options UI. The /visscale setting also resets back to /visscale 2 when you open the game options UI.

 

Always been like that. I bound the command to my W key so when ever I move I reactivate the visscale command.