issue 26 Patch Notes for September 10th, 2019

[Abraxus]

👆

This!

**Edit**  That would have had more impact if there hadn't been a page break inserted between this, and the previous post, but you know what I mean. 😉

Edited September 11, 2019 by Abraxus

[Crowe]

On ‎9‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 3:32 AM, Leandro said:

Zones

• Fixed the zone cap in The Hive, The Abyss and the Rikti War Zone to be 50 (this was accidentally changed in May - it should have always been 50).

This made me sad -- the Hive and the RWZ had pretty much become social areas more than anything else.  This pretty much killed that based on the fractured/instanced turnout of last night.  I actually thought the zone cap change of May was an improvement and find this "fix" to be very disappointing.

[Apparition]

28 minutes ago, Foxfyre said:

The funny part is the Hami encounter is still balanced to SO's.  So it's not "hard" still anyway.

 

Exactly.  It will take some time to learn for those who have never done normal Hamidon raids before, but it's not rocket science.

[swordchucks]

14 hours ago, swordchucks said:

It might now be how it was on live, but a whole lot of people playing now never did that content on live.  For a lot of us, the way it was since May is the only way we've experienced it.

I'm quoting myself because I've had some time to mull over my feelings (and become less fatalistic).  I still don't like the change or the effects of it, but there's something more fundamental at play here that I want to express as clearly as I can:

 

Homecoming has been up for months now.  You have a percentage of the current player base that never played on live.  You have a percentage of the player base that played on live a little but never saw most of the content or quit a long time ago (I count myself in this group).   You have a percentage of the player base that was active at the end of live, but now after several years don't have strong memories of a lot of it.  For many of these people, Homecoming is CoH, not live.

 

Thus, I urge the devs to take care with "fixing" long-standing bugs.  For someone with a strong attachment to live, it's a simple fix, but for someone without that attachment, it can feel like a dramatic change.

[Shoulung]

I personally find some of the incarnate trials more complex than hamidon. Perhaps we’ll start having some SGs that pop up that are focused on end game raiding, where they can have a little more accountability of their group members. There’s nothing you get from hamidon that you can’t get another way, outside of the badge, so I don’t see a gearing problem with it. I really just think it’s leaving the raid open to griefers with such a low zone cap. 

[QuiJon]

2 hours ago, Foxfyre said:

For what it's worth, at least on Excelsior last night.....something happened that I didn't expect.

All the freeloaders and leechers didn't even bother to show up.  It was weird.  We used to have a group of about 10 people all with the same SG name who would huddle off all by themselves, never join league, never interact with anyone......they weren't there last night.  Nor any of the others.  So, the leechers might, for the most part, stay away.

I guess my problem is being that I was in hive 2, is that ok fine those 10 people didn't get a reward I can understand how people see that as a good thing. But how many people that were stuck in hive 2 also didn't get a reward that are normally willing to show up to the raids, help kill monsters, buds, and actively take part to earn a reward, walked away with nothing last night because all the really capable raiders got into hive 1 and they were locked out. 

 

I don't think the changes should be predicated on preventing freeloaders or forcing a certain game play dynamic to match the intent of content. I mean if that is the point where do we stop? I mean hey how many times have we been on ITFs where people rush that second mission and ignore ambushes? Oh well those ambushes are there because the "intent" was to have to fight them, lets change that mission now also. Or LGTF I mean we put those 4 generators in that final room to make you have to fight all those Rikti, lets change that one so that you cant kill a generator until the room is cleared. 

 

Yes I get that this hamidon was made to be fought a certain way and the population allowed that to be by passed. But if the people wanted to come and take part they shouldn't be prevented from doing so. Their ability to get a reward should not be dependent on lucking out to get on a league with those that are capable of listening. You want the mitos to have a point fine, make hamidon impervious to damage if there are mitos around him. Hell make more mitos spawn if the population is higher. I am fine with scaling the encounter. But if they really want to talk about intention for game play. Well for the amount of time I spend in the hive 2 last night to walk away empty handed I could have went into my farm solo and earned enough influence to buy the ATO part of whatever I would have bought with the merits from a normal night of successful raids. So frankly if the ability level of the "extra" hives outside of the main raid group that already knows what they are doing doesn't increase this change just means I go from coming to take part in a social activity in a multiplayer game to running solo farm missions so I can keep up on building my many alts. And when "multiplayer" is right in the title of the game types description I don't think that is the intended game play either. 

 

Sorry Fox, prob only the first paragraph of this was really in response to your comment. And I also know that you and your buddies didn't have to come over after your own raid and try to recover hive 2 last night, it was very cool you attempted to help us. But I think by that point the damage was just done.

[_NOPE_]

I think the Hamidon issue could be resolved by making the Hive into a League-instanced mission. No player cap, just whomever is in the League are the only ones that can enter that instance. It'd require new code, probably a lot, but I think it'd be worth it, and it'd be code that could be used elsewhere in future missions/task forces/trials.

Edited September 11, 2019 by The Philotic Knight

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, swordchucks said:

Thus, I urge the devs to take care with "fixing" long-standing bugs.  For someone with a strong attachment to live, it's a simple fix, but for someone without that attachment, it can feel like a dramatic change.

Dramatic changes are a way of life in any living, breathing, MMORPG.  You learn to deal with them or you live a life where you're always frustrated and pissed off.

[ParaBruce]

1 hour ago, swordchucks said:

Homecoming has been up for months now.  You have a percentage of the current player base that never played on live.  You have a percentage of the player base that played on live a little but never saw most of the content or quit a long time ago (I count myself in this group).   You have a percentage of the player base that was active at the end of live, but now after several years don't have strong memories of a lot of it.  For many of these people, Homecoming is CoH, not live.

 

Thus, I urge the devs to take care with "fixing" long-standing bugs.  For someone with a strong attachment to live, it's a simple fix, but for someone without that attachment, it can feel like a dramatic change.

Yes, exactly this, and put much better than I would have this morning. Thanks, @swordchucks.

[Torcel]

3 minutes ago, The Philotic Knight said:

I think the Hamidon issue could be resolved by making the Hive into a League-instanced mission. No player cap, just whomever is in the League are the only ones that can enter that instance. It'd require new code, probably a lot, but I think it'd be worth it, and it'd be code that could be used elsewhere in future missions/task forces/trials.

This could be viable, but I urge caution in such a course.  The biggest PITA about Hami and MSR both is the time sync we call the gathering phase.  A lot of folks won't join the league until things are already underway (more of an issue, I think, for MSR than for Hami), and having to gather a full league before we enter the raid is going to be a bit painful.  No other instanced league content (e.g. all the I-trials) accommodate a full league; we have no experience doing so.  And I am admittedly a bit concerned about griefers and leechers jumping in and taking spots from people interested in actively participating with no real recourse available to the raid leader beyond kicking them.

 

If we're going to go that route, I'd strongly advocate being able to add new people to the league after the raid has begun.  Anyone on the league needs to be able to get into the instance, regardless of when the raid started.  That'll let the MSRs kick off with less than a full league and be able to add people once things get moving and interest rises, and it'll let the league leaders kick griefers and leechers out of the zone with the possibility of adding active participants.

[_NOPE_]

Yeah, frankly, I never ran a modern Hamidon, I only ran Hamidons before Leagues even existed, so I don't even know how the interface works. I assumed that people could leave and join Leagues on a whim like they can a team, but maybe that's wrong? My suggestion was based on that assumption.

[QuiJon]

4 minutes ago, Derekl1963 said:

Dramatic changes are a way of life in any living, breathing, MMORPG.  You learn to deal with them or you live a life where you're always frustrated and pissed off.

I get that but I also think we need to look at the idea that this is no longer a commercial MMORPG. When the game was live a company profited off the idea of keeping things difficulty and time consuming. I don't want to sound unappreciative because I greatly appreciate what these devs have done for us over all in their spare time. But now our donations do support and keep this server afloat. So though I can understand fixing strait exploitive things, I think something like this that lived for so long broken and no one seemed to care, maybe should have been left to the server population as to if we wanted it addressed or not. 

 

Even back on live COH surivived for as long as it did off of the players making alt characters. In the last few years for profits we got system put in the game that extended the time it took to fully build a character out with things like IOs and later Incarnates. But I think it is safe to say that the majority of players that stuck with Homecoming one major reason for doing so was that it offered a more casual time investment then the "classic" game did. Incarnate stuff is easier, merit costs are lower etc. Essentially it made it somewhat less grindy to play with the altitis that I had back in the early days of the game. This change directly effects that dynamic that Homecoming offered. I do think there should have been some kind of discussion on how the players would have liked to see it handled before it was just done in a unannounced change. They could have run a survey or something that just asked do you  a. want the zone capped, b. slightly lower merit reward, c. scale hamdion difficulty up etc.

 

Most all changes on this server are announced through being on test and discussed before going live, this seems like it was just dropped on us. And no I don't buy the explanation that it was a fix from a broken mechanic when servers were transferred. I know I was on raids in both the hive and RWZ that had more then 50 people present before the servers were transferred. There might have been a cap but it was not at 50.

[Torcel]

3 minutes ago, The Philotic Knight said:

Yeah, frankly, I never ran a modern Hamidon, I only ran Hamidons before Leagues even existed, so I don't even know how the interface works. I assumed that people could leave and join Leagues on a whim like they can a team, but maybe that's wrong? My suggestion was based on that assumption.

They can when you're not doing something instanced, and each team can be doing something completely different - my SG runs a Chillin' with Villains night, too, and we routinely have the entire gamut of level ranges in one league, organized more or less by level, with each team running different kinds of content (papers, SFs, contact arcs, etc).  But none of that is instanced aside from the mission maps.

 

The only instanced league content in the game as far as I'm aware is the Incarnate trials, and you can't just add new people to those once it's started.  Anyone who DCs can get back in, but you have to have been in the league when the instance opened to get in later.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Torcel

[Apparition]

The league bug would have to be fixed first before making instanced raids available.

[Apparition]

4 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

Most all changes on this server are announced through being on test and discussed before going live, this seems like it was just dropped on us. And no I don't buy the explanation that it was a fix from a broken mechanic when servers were transferred. I know I was on raids in both the hive and RWZ that had more then 50 people present before the servers were transferred. There might have been a cap but it was not at 50.

 

The change was "just dropped on us," because, let's face it: The raid zone cap being changed to 200 was a mistake, and people exploited the heck out of it for months.  The Zerg/Hamikazi Hamidon raids were essentially an exploit.  No one ever intended for people to make 240 to 400 reward merits in one hour per night.  The Homecoming developers, with the exception of the base TP macro, never announced an exploit fix before hand. 

Edited September 11, 2019 by Apparition

[Torcel]

4 minutes ago, Apparition said:

The league bug would have to be fixed first before making instanced raids available.

Hmm.  Maybe.  I've definitely seen that happen - it happened to someone on last night's Indom MSRs.

 

But is it still a problem if they're invited to team and then moved to a different team?  If not, that's a viable work-around (and how I usually do league invites anyway).

[Apparition]

6 minutes ago, Torcel said:

Hmm.  Maybe.  I've definitely seen that happen - it happened to someone on last night's Indom MSRs.

 

But is it still a problem if they're invited to team and then moved to a different team?  If not, that's a viable work-around (and how I usually do league invites anyway).

 

Not sure.  I wanted to have six team leads in place before inviting people to Rikti mothership raid leagues, but finding six level 50 players that I know and trust that are actually interested enough to do Rikti mothership raids has been difficult as of late, making that impossible.  So now I just form up Rikti mothership raids myself the new way by directly inviting everyone to the league, but I do two things: I only change teams around in the league to make sure that there is a level 50 character leading the team, and I specifically repeatedly ask people on the Request channel before hand to check their team tab to make sure that they are actually on a team, and if not to drop and send me a tell for a re-invite.

 

So far, cross my fingers, no issues, but I don't poke the bear by moving people around if I don't have to.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Apparition

[Torcel]

Fair enough.  We move people around to balance team comps as well - if you have a team of tanks, they won't get as many merits or inf because they're not hitting as many things for as much damage as a team of blasters will, particularly anyone actively pulling.  Likewise, if you have a team of MMs, their pets will hit EVERYTHING and they'll get twice the V-merits of anyone else in the league.  The only people we don't move as needed are the team leads themselves, and those are the only people I usually hear about missing teams in that way.

 

But we should start having people check like that for sure...

[Apparition]

3 minutes ago, Torcel said:

Fair enough.  We move people around to balance team comps as well - if you have a team of tanks, they won't get as many merits or inf because they're not hitting as many things for as much damage as a team of blasters will, particularly anyone actively pulling.  Likewise, if you have a team of MMs, their pets will hit EVERYTHING and they'll get twice the V-merits of anyone else in the league.  The only people we don't move as needed are the team leads themselves, and those are the only people I usually hear about missing teams in that way.

 

But we should start having people check like that for sure...

 

In a perfect world, I would agree with you.  If the league bug didn't exist, I would do that as well.  But it does, so, as I said, I try not to poke the bear by moving people around much unless I have to.

[Torcel]

I'm saying I think that moving people around clears it, though.  As does having them invited by the team leads, or invited to a team first, then moving them.

 

We'll have to do more testing to be sure, of course *shrug*

[Tater Todd]

On 9/10/2019 at 3:32 AM, Leandro said:

• Fixed a bug where Illusion Control powers would not stack as expected.
• Fixed a bug where Illusion pets were ignoring enhancements.

Wait, so this was an issue on Live too?

[Foxfyre]

27 minutes ago, Apparition said:

The league bug would have to be fixed first before making instanced raids available.

This could be gotten around simply by asking everyone to check their team windows to make sure they're on a team before zoning into the instance.  

Simply moving a person to a different team in a league and then back to their original spot fixes this bug.

[Squid Vicious]

If the server community can come together and adjust to the original Hami design, that would be awesome.   There are some good leaders among us!

 

And there are also some folks who may underestimate the importance of clear communication when leading.  I had no idea this was a thing, but apparently it was.   Can we please agree to reserve the REQUEST chat for raid leaders, for example?   This way the rest of us can better follow what our leaders are trying to do.     Kkthx

 

The zone changes are just the beginning of a series of ‘corrections’ in store for us on the HC servers, peeps.  Up next, the ‘enterbasefromcode’ ‘fix’ for example.   You heard it here first!    There are other ‘adjustments’ coming too, I’ll bet.   (E.G. I don’t think we’ve seen the end of tweaking AE exp or rewards 😎)

 

My theory is:  We’re close to an announcement regarding NCSoft negotiations and our HC dev friends will need to ‘fix’ a few more things before big brother begins really observing us and our ‘rogue’ servers in earnest.   Got to show our overlords that we haven’t ‘strayed’ too far from the original client as it existed before sunset, I’ll wager.   😇

[Doc_Scorpion]

24 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

I get that but I also think we need to look at the idea that this is no longer a commercial MMORPG. When the game was live a company profited off the idea of keeping things difficulty and time consuming.

Even if it's not a "commercial" game, Homecoming still needs to keep the money flowing.  A large part of that is the same ol' bugaboo that every online game faces - keeping the game as interesting as possible to as many people as possible.  Commercial or non/not-for-profit, ya gotta have the bodies coming in to keep the lights on.

(Honestly, I wonder if I should make that my sig...  Because over the week I've been back, I see a lot of people that don't grasp that principle.)
 

24 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

This change directly effects that dynamic that Homecoming offered.

Certainly true.  But does it change it unequivocally for the worse because the folks that want to gather as many Merits as humanly possible now have a harder time of it?  Not at all.  Reading the reports in this thread, people are already changing and adapting and having fun doing so.  I expect that trend to continue (it almost always does), and those that won't adapt to be left in the dust.

[gameboy1234]

14 hours ago, JCMcBoo said:

I kind of like it. It's got a very cloaked Predator feel. They know that you're there but can lose you easily with your Stealth active.

I think it's fine on enemies.  Occasionally I will actually not notice a stealthed enemy and that makes it feel like an actual game mechanic that has some impact.

 

For my own character I don't like it, there's way to much invisibility going on and I can't see my own character.  For teammates and league mates too I think being really transparent is a unnecessary and makes play more difficult.

 

Priority one is my own character, there ought to be a limit how transparent my own toon can be.  Second priority is team and league, which would be convenient for good play.  For the rest of the game (enemies, non-teammates, pvp opponents) it's probably about right.