issue 26 Patch Notes for September 10th, 2019

[Captain Powerhouse]

3 hours ago, lyra said:

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That is expected. One of those should drop in combat. The bug was that it was giving 3.5 (2x) defense on both those lines for a total of 7 defense.

[Corruption]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

Again I know how to raid. I know how to raid this hamidon, I led raids against pre-i9 hamidon. I was on the SG that first took him down on my server. But please forgive me for not being 25 years old anymore. Please forgive me for after working 11 hours and getting home and spending time with kids, and wife, and finally getting some diner and doing anything else that is being expect of me on any given day, if all I want to do is relax a bit by playing a video game I enjoy and check out from thinking  without having to take on the role of being a raid leader. And I know other people have real lives also.

 

A while back you all said you were gonna take a break from leading raids. I didnt bitch about that or throw some fit that you had to keep doing it. If someone doesnt want to lead they should not be forced to. But this is not that. This is a game mechanic specifically in place that prevents players from taking part in content that is already being played in a publicly open zone. And we are not locked out because the server can not handle the stress or any physical reason. We are locked out because of some out of date idea that this game has some recognizable sense of reward vs effort attached to it. 

 

Well this game, when being played as "intended" allows for 1 level 50 character to team with 7 level 5 characters who all stand at the door and do nothing and kill an entire map at +4 levels. In normal missions even not just AE content. It allows when being played as "intended" for AV strength and monster strength characters to be taken out by single heroes or villains. Players to solo TFs. and multiple other things that in any other game would have been nerfed out if they even made it to live. So I fail to see how saying that having a zone population that allows Hamidon to be zerged is breaking any reward mechanic in the game. So while I agree that I, or someone else could step up and lead a raid if we choose to, I am saying more why should we have to if the encounter is being fought already just to satisfy some bullshit idea that this game has balanced rewards mechanics?

And you don't think a 15 seconds Hami raid is boring? There is absolutely no work involved in a zerg Hami raid, just time spent forming up and spawning Hami.

 

You're complaining about something that was obviously completely broken and your argument about sometimes possibly being left out isn't a good one. Should task forces and incarnate trials be uncapped? No, that's stupid and illogical. There were only that many people showing up for the raids because it was ridiculously easy for a lot of rewards. I know many people who only showed up for the rewards, not because it was fun.  Stop blaming other players for this change when the Homecoming devs even admitted the increased zone cap was a bug.

 

I didn't even get into the terrible lag that comes along with having that many people in a single zone. Yes, it was still laggy with the 64-bit client.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Corruption

[QuiJon]

1 hour ago, Corruption said:

And you don't think a 15 seconds Hami raid is boring? There is absolutely no work involved in a zerg Hami raid, just time spent forming up and spawning Hami.

 

You're complaining about something that was obviously completely broken and your argument about sometimes possibly being left out isn't a good one. Should task forces and incarnate trials be uncapped? No, that's stupid and illogical. There were only that many people showing up for the raids because it was ridiculously easy for a lot of rewards. I know many people who only showed up for the rewards, not because it was fun.  Stop blaming other players for this change when the Homecoming devs even admitted the increased zone cap was a bug.

 

I didn't even get into the terrible lag that comes along with having that many people in a single zone. Yes, it was still laggy with the 64-bit client.

I didn't say I don't think it was boring, I said that I don't think the solution for that was to lock out players that want to take part. Find a way to include players and make it not boring. Hell even with only 50 players a MSR is still boring as hell I don't see how that has anything to do with players wanting to do something. They want the reward. 

 

First of all just because a ton of people started to fightin a raid doesn't immediately say it is broken. As I pointed out, one play fighting a map spawned for +4 and Eight players is also "broken" if you want to look closely at it. However absolutely NO attempt or suggestion has been made to say that needs to be fixed has it? Task forces and incarnate trials are instance missions and as such have a cap naturally. It is not the same thing as an enemy spawning in an open public zone having a limit put on it as to who can and can not take part in fighting it. Imagine if this was Lusca or Jack in Irons and you were not allowed to attack it because the game decided it would result in the monster taking to much damage to quickly. That is what this change is equivalent to. Most all playes only do anything for the reward so stop using the idea that the event is or isn't fun as a way to justify why you would want to do it. And honestly the more personalities in the zone, the more fun I have not because the fight itself is fun or not. Fighting that stupid rezing AV in an ITF isn't fun, it is done because it earns a reward. And even so that is not nearly as hard anymore as it used to be either, should we cut the team size of a ITF down to 3 to make it a challenge again?

 

The lag I will give you. I know that got bad with that many people. But it was not horrible at 100 people so why cut it off at 50? Heck is wasn't that bad at 150 people. But even so if you want to use lag as the argument then that still would say the level cap could be higher, atleast double then what it is. 

 

And homecoming devs never said there was a glitch until they fixed it. You can not tell me that devs that are also playing the game every day didn't notice that the zones had no caps on them for 5 months and never mentioned it or that it would eventually be fixed. You also can not tell me that it would take 4 months to fix this glitch if it was a glitch and not an intended change that they regretted later. It would not be difficult to slap in to any weekly update a change to the code that capped the population limit on the zone so if this was a mistake why would it take this long to fix. What happened was it was done intentionally. I wont argue that I am sure the consequences were unintended. But it has been broken for 5 months I don't see why a better fix could not have been done in that time, or if it really was just noticed why a fix has to be done immediately instead of looking at all options. Hell how long was the martial assault set broken and they didn't take that away from players. They know the base slash command is broken and they have not fixed that because there are other issues with the legit power they want to look at first before taking that away. The rewards offered in this game as all just made up stuff. It costs no one anything for it to be broken while they find a better fix. 

Edited September 13, 2019 by QuiJon

[Leandro]

2 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

You can not tell me that devs that are also playing the game every day didn't notice that the zones had no caps on them for 5 months

I was told about the cap increase on Saturday and immediately reversed it. The "devs" don't play the game every day, and when we do it's most likely not in the production servers. Don't confuse GMs, who are in game constantly to help players, with "devs", who mostly experience the game through staring at code and near-empty test servers.

[Zep]

1 hour ago, Leandro said:

I was told about the cap increase on Saturday and immediately reversed it. The "devs" don't play the game every day, and when we do it's most likely not in the production servers. Don't confuse GMs, who are in game constantly to help players, with "devs", who mostly experience the game through staring at code and near-empty test servers.

I wonder, out of curiosity, roughly how many lines of code are there? For the server and separately for the client?

 

Separate from lines of code would, I think, be bytes of config data (where things like zone caps are stored) - my guess anyways, I only have experience with very small blocks of code.

 

While we all have our different views on how balance and other changes that come out impact our game play styles, I would hope we are all in strong agreement at the awesomeness that patches and upgrades are coming out.

 

Even were our wondrous dev's playing daily it does not mean they play the same way you or I do play. I am, sadly, burdened with a full blown case of alt-i-holisism and have only recently made it again to the Rickti War zone and not at all to The Hive. I didnt notice the cap had changed just by running missions, how would you?

 

Thank you again to everyone who makes this world work for us!!

[Yomo Kimyata]

7 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Again I know how to raid. I know how to raid this hamidon, I led raids against pre-i9 hamidon. I was on the SG that first took him down on my server. But please forgive me for not being 25 years old anymore. Please forgive me for after working 11 hours and getting home and spending time with kids, and wife, and finally getting some diner and doing anything else that is being expect of me on any given day, if all I want to do is relax a bit by playing a video game I enjoy and check out from thinking  without having to take on the role of being a raid leader. And I know other people have real lives also.

 

A while back you all said you were gonna take a break from leading raids. I didnt bitch about that or throw some fit that you had to keep doing it. If someone doesnt want to lead they should not be forced to. But this is not that. This is a game mechanic specifically in place that prevents players from taking part in content that is already being played in a publicly open zone. And we are not locked out because the server can not handle the stress or any physical reason. We are locked out because of some out of date idea that this game has some recognizable sense of reward vs effort attached to it. 

 

Well this game, when being played as "intended" allows for 1 level 50 character to team with 7 level 5 characters who all stand at the door and do nothing and kill an entire map at +4 levels. In normal missions even not just AE content. It allows when being played as "intended" for AV strength and monster strength characters to be taken out by single heroes or villains. Players to solo TFs. and multiple other things that in any other game would have been nerfed out if they even made it to live. So I fail to see how saying that having a zone population that allows Hamidon to be zerged is breaking any reward mechanic in the game. So while I agree that I, or someone else could step up and lead a raid if we choose to, I am saying more why should we have to if the encounter is being fought already just to satisfy some bullshit idea that this game has balanced rewards mechanics?

Someday, you may want to look back at this and say, huh, did I really kick up such a ruckus because they fixed the ATM machine that was spitting out 20s?  Dude, send me a PM and tell me what you were exploiting merits to buy.  I'll give you whatever you want so you can spend time with your family and spend less time defending whatever it is you want right now on the forums.

[tatmia]

I'm not seeing it in the notes, but did this patch increase the price of all the rocket packs for the P2W vendor?   I don't remember them being 50K

[gameboy1234]

2 hours ago, tatmia said:

I'm not seeing it in the notes, but did this patch increase the price of all the rocket packs for the P2W vendor?   I don't remember them being 50K

The 30 minute jet packs are 5k, just like they've always been.  The other jet packs are 50k.  I don't recall exactly their price before, but I'm sure it was more than 5k, since the 30 minute jet pack was all my starting characters could afford.

 

[Lunchmoney]

19 hours ago, Leandro said:

mostly experience the game through staring at code

[srmalloy]

On 9/10/2019 at 9:22 AM, Ukase said:

Look - I like reward merits, emp merits - all that stuff. But, I think if we look at the hamidon raid as it was "intended"...the original dev team never imagined that 4 leagues would just bum rush hamidon and win easily. It was never part of the thought process. 

Actually, they learned this very early in the game. The mission "Find who's supplying the Freakshow with the new weapons" mission that gives you the Nemesis Staff temporary power originally gave the temp power to whichever character opened the right crate. At the time, missions were infinitely resettsble, and the zone limit in the Hive was 240. A group of people assembly-lined running people through the mission to get a Nemesis Staff, then they took enough people to fill the Hive and performed a sub-two-minute Hami Raid, simply by rushing in and shredding him with NemStaff blasts.

 

The mission was quickly changed to give the Nemesis Staff temporary power to the mission holder, regardless of who opened the crate, and the temporary power was nerfed to make it single-target, rather than AoE. So, yes, the original dev team was perfectly aware that the Players would zerg Hamidon if they found a way to make it work.

 

And I remember some of the early Hami raids, where the lag when we finally massed on the nucleus was so bad that -- with Hasten active and AM stacked twelve or more times, powers could take several minutes to recharge for your tier 1 and 2 attacks.

Edited September 14, 2019 by srmalloy

[Bubbleguts]

Anyone else notice Tool Tips are bugged? Eventually the code goes back to the percentage slider.

[QuiJon]

On 9/13/2019 at 4:25 PM, Leandro said:

I was told about the cap increase on Saturday and immediately reversed it. The "devs" don't play the game every day, and when we do it's most likely not in the production servers. Don't confuse GMs, who are in game constantly to help players, with "devs", who mostly experience the game through staring at code and near-empty test servers.

So you can data mine all this information from the live servers that we have been flooded with as to how many characters exist, how many player accounts, how many of each AT, how many of each power set, what their level ranges are, how many instances exist on the server at a time, what the population is at any given time, and for 5 months no one ever noticed that one zone in particular was hitting commonly a population level that was 4 times what it was supposed to be set at? 

Look even if I believe this and I find it hightly questionable, I still question the solution. So long as a instance gets a break down of certain ATs they need to complete a raid the raid is totally simple to do so long as people are willing to listen to directions. And capping the zone at 50 only actually means that 1 (ONE) round of mitos is commonly now taken out. So that 20 second raid now lasts 1 minute and 20 seconds because once the initial mitos spawn is down if you have smart players you can zerg through hamidon with still only 50 people and pets. (and I mean incarnate pets not even nukes or shivans) 

This is why I have vocally been cirtical of the change. The only real thing the change accomplishes is not to make the raid more difficult, but to at some point block people from being able to take part because not enough people come in for a raid to actually do it for another new instance that formed. And I would be willing to bet if you looked at all those numbers you can, every night since this change happened even if multiple isntances took down hamidon on the same server that at some point a new Hive spawned that capped out at just a few players. All those players were essentially blocked out from raiding because that zone never even got he chance to attempt a raid because of this change. And I feel like for an event in a open public zone that is not fair. People say "well THIS OR THAT is also instanced what is the difference" the difference is to do a ITF I don't need to find 49 other people that want to do it I need to find 7. And even if I only find 5 inmost cases can still do that TF or mission. Hamidon doesn't scale down to a 15 person raid any more then it scales up to a 200 person raid. 

[Leandro]

52 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

So you can data mine all this information from the live servers that we have been flooded with as to how many characters exist, how many player accounts, how many of each AT, how many of each power set, what their level ranges are, how many instances exist on the server at a time, what the population is at any given time, and for 5 months no one ever noticed that one zone in particular was hitting commonly a population level that was 4 times what it was supposed to be set at?

Different people do different things. I had nothing to do with that datamine collection, that's not my thing. Cipher has nothing to do with setting zone cap limits. No single person is aware of every aspect of both development and server management; whoever noticed the zone cap increase never told me, and so far I haven't heard any other developer say they knew about it.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Leandro

[_NOPE_]

@Leandro, wait, you mean you're all HUMAN??? Damn, and here I thought y'all were some kind of all seeing-all knowing computer gods.

THANKS FOR RUINING THE ILLUSION DUDE! 😡 😡 😡

Edited September 16, 2019 by The Philotic Knight

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, QuiJon said:

This is why I have vocally been cirtical of the change.

You've been vocally critical of it because, as you've told us at great length, it's personally inconvenient for you.

[QuiJon]

17 hours ago, Derekl1963 said:

You've been vocally critical of it because, as you've told us at great length, it's personally inconvenient for you.

Yes i have. And frankly if that inconvenience that I, and others are suffering, solved the actual problem that people claim the raid had, then I would probably just accept it and say it was best for the game though just not for me. But I only see 2 problems that people have reported in this thread that the Hamdion raid suffered from. The first was that having so many people made it too easy. The second was that people farmed the rewards which are already high for the encounter but the speed fo the take down just made worse. 

This change solves neither of these issues. It is a knee jerk response to apparently being surprised there was no cap to the zone yes. But with 50 people like I said the raid in total honestly takes not a lot of time difference. One league can still pretty easily take down hamidon with only clearing his initial round of mitos and zerging through the blooms. Even if you fight a bloom it is not a big time difference. So really the idea that less people have made it harder is just false. Unless you happen to get into a hive with inexperienced raiders that don't listen to directions or don't expect to work. 

The second is the reward per difficulty. Which like I said this is still a very quick encounter for 80 merits, or a hancer that might sell for 20m influence or even for 4 emp merits. Takes about 10-12 minutes minimum to run a DA arc to get 1 emp merit so the 20 minutes it takes to raid for 4 is still way higher. And because Hamidon for some reason doesn't scale down the merit rewards beyond the first cut in half, even at 40 merits a run it is the best reward for time investment I can think of. Not many TF you can complete in 20 minutes that give that. 

So both those issues could have been solved by either toughening hami up in the case of it being to easy, or changing hamis rewards or how they award. (for example put the 20 hour limit on each reward option so there is no reason to run him for then 3 times and get one reward each time no matter if it is a 2 minute zerg or not) But a low cap on the zone doesn't prevent any of the issues people keep telling me is why the cap is needed. The only thing it does do is prevent players for joining a on going raid league. And depending on server populations and how many want to raid or other events taking place, most nights leaves at least some players out in the cold. All I am saying is if those were the problems then if it cost me my ability to take part I guess so be it, but at least solve the problem when doing it. 

 

[Abraxus]

25 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

Yes i have. And frankly if that inconvenience that I, and others are suffering, solved the actual problem that people claim the raid had, then I would probably just accept it and say it was best for the game though just not for me. But I only see 2 problems that people have reported in this thread that the Hamdion raid suffered from. The first was that having so many people made it too easy. The second was that people farmed the rewards which are already high for the encounter but the speed fo the take down just made worse. 

This change solves neither of these issues. It is a knee jerk response to apparently being surprised there was no cap to the zone yes. But with 50 people like I said the raid in total honestly takes not a lot of time difference. One league can still pretty easily take down hamidon with only clearing his initial round of mitos and zerging through the blooms. Even if you fight a bloom it is not a big time difference. So really the idea that less people have made it harder is just false. Unless you happen to get into a hive with inexperienced raiders that don't listen to directions or don't expect to work. 

The second is the reward per difficulty. Which like I said this is still a very quick encounter for 80 merits, or a hancer that might sell for 20m influence or even for 4 emp merits. Takes about 10-12 minutes minimum to run a DA arc to get 1 emp merit so the 20 minutes it takes to raid for 4 is still way higher. And because Hamidon for some reason doesn't scale down the merit rewards beyond the first cut in half, even at 40 merits a run it is the best reward for time investment I can think of. Not many TF you can complete in 20 minutes that give that. 

So both those issues could have been solved by either toughening hami up in the case of it being to easy, or changing hamis rewards or how they award. (for example put the 20 hour limit on each reward option so there is no reason to run him for then 3 times and get one reward each time no matter if it is a 2 minute zerg or not) But a low cap on the zone doesn't prevent any of the issues people keep telling me is why the cap is needed. The only thing it does do is prevent players for joining a on going raid league. And depending on server populations and how many want to raid or other events taking place, most nights leaves at least some players out in the cold. All I am saying is if those were the problems then if it cost me my ability to take part I guess so be it, but at least solve the problem when doing it. 

 

I assume then, that you have added your voice to those in the "suggestion" thread asking for another look at this issue?  Pretty sure that's the place where they look for that kind of feedback, for the most part.  I would think the more who sign on to that thread, the more impact it will have.  I can't imagine it will go back to the way it was, but perhaps there is a compromise to be found.  As has been said many times, these guys play the game like we do, and they aren't oblivious to the outcries of folks who express concern, or consternation over a change. 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Abraxus

[Starforge]

Just remember, they're looking for substantial feedback. Not complaints with no actual merit like most in this thread.

[Mage Storm]

Not reading everything so I'm not sure this has been mentioned but quick cast snipe in energy blast now changes the rest of the blast powers to its cast animation style and they won't switch back to what you have set for each power until you use a secondary attack. I have no clue if it does this for other blasters sets but it is highly annoying for my energy blaster main.

[Rathulfr]

10 minutes ago, Cieron said:

Not reading everything so I'm not sure this has been mentioned but quick cast snipe in energy blast now changes the rest of the blast powers to its cast animation style and they won't switch back to what you have set for each power until you use a secondary attack. I have no clue if it does this for other blasters sets but it is highly annoying for my energy blaster main.

I play a level 50+3 Energy/Temporal Blaster as my main, and this has not been my experience.  All of my attacks appear to animate properly, except for the occasional Power Burst, when my body doesn't move so it looks like it's bursting out of my crotch.  Personally, I find this off-putting.  Hilarious, yes, but off-putting, as well.  But it doesn't happen every time.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Rathulfr

[_NOPE_]

2 hours ago, QuiJon said:

And frankly if that inconvenience that I, and others are suffering

Wait wait, wait, did you just say the word "suffering" in a video game forum, and the word related to an action within a video game? 

 

 

 

[Ironblade]

3 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Yes i have. And frankly if that inconvenience that I, and others are suffering, solved the actual problem that people claim the raid had, then I would probably just accept it and say it was best for the game though just not for me. But I only see 2 problems that people have reported in this thread that the Hamdion raid suffered from. The first was that having so many people made it too easy. The second was that people farmed the rewards which are already high for the encounter but the speed fo the take down just made worse. 

This change solves neither of these issues.

Wait, what?  The zone cap addresses both of those issues.  Maybe not in a way you'd like, but to say it solves neither issue is just false.

 

It completely negates the first issue and addresses the second one.  Is it the best possible solution for the second issue?  I doubt it, but it gets it back closer to what was originally intended.

[QuiJon]

1 hour ago, Ironblade said:

Wait, what?  The zone cap addresses both of those issues.  Maybe not in a way you'd like, but to say it solves neither issue is just false.

 

It completely negates the first issue and addresses the second one.  Is it the best possible solution for the second issue?  I doubt it, but it gets it back closer to what was originally intended.

Please tell me how? Hamidon so long as you get enough tanks can be taken down pretty easily. The zone cap doesn't make it harder or more likely to fail the encounter. It adds a bit of time for sure, but not a lot. The few raids I have been able to make it to sense the change that were organized it really didn't take much longer from the "Go fight monsters" to the "Kill the buds" then it normally took. So no it has not made it harder it has not made it less likely to succeed, if you are in the groups with capable players. 

And no the best possible solution to the second issue would be to address or cap the rewards to an acceptable level. Like I pointed out no other TF or event that gives you a reward menu choice at the end allows you to duplicate that reward within 20 hours. And TFs that do allow you to continue to get merits, also scale down those rewards by half each time you run then, not just the first time. So if you blocked out the emp merits to one per 20 hours, and the HamiO to one in 20 hours, and then put a true mechanism of halfing reward merits, really beyond running it three times a night it would be kind of useless. Which again, at the current difficulty and time commitment is not out of reach for one nights raid, and frankly at a continued 40 merits per run, considering you can do 2-3 runs in a hour, leaving that reward unmolested by diminishing the returns is the very reason why people continue to want to farm the encounter over and over and over again when there was no cap in the zone. 

If that reward had been changed then likely you would have one big raid per night, do 3 runs everyone gets their reward and they would all move on to do other things. Easy raid not not, that reward limit accomplishes the goal which capping the zone did not. 

[Ael]

2 hours ago, The Philotic Knight said:

Wait wait, wait, did you just say the word "suffering" in a video game forum, and the word related to an action within a video game? 

 

 

 

I was about to post this exact same thing. I was like, wait, suffering? Oh, you poor, sweet summer child. Bless your heart. You are not "suffering" because you no longer get to take part in a 15 second zerg Hami, and are now going to be forced to pull your weight for all of five minutes. 

[swordchucks]

A week later, I think Hami is fine.  The coordination is slightly more complicated and a trial version would be very welcome (as it would give the leader more control over who joins and recourse to kick leechers - plus having two or so people in-zone that aren't in-league is just weird).  I have probably run Hami more in the week since the population cap than the week before it and, overall, the time investment is only slightly longer. 

 

MSR remains the zone that's annoying to coordinate.  The trial version will fix a lot of aspects of that, though that's a big undertaking to get into the game.

 

The only real casualty from this, long term, is the loss of a huge group activity to do in-game (RP and similar evens are in-game, but they aren't really part of the game in the way a raid is).  That large-scale action was really cool and, frankly, something that helps set CoH apart from other games.  If we could find our way back to that in whatever form, I think it'd be a good thing.