8.16.06
COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Extended Duration of Empowerment Station Buffs to 60 minutes.
• Increased the 'lifetime' of the attackable portion of Trick Arrow Oil Slick. This should fix the failure to ignite issue.
• Swift, Quickness and Lightning Reflexes now grant a bonus to Flight Speed, in addition to their existing Resistance to Flight Speed debuffs.
• Teleporting is no longer allowed in Pocket-D.
• Reduced Endurance Cost for Power Pool Flight.

Rewards

• Prestige rewards (while playing in Supergroup mode) increased approximately 25%.

Bases

• You can no longer place more than one Combo Energy/Control generator in a base if you have more than one Oversight Center.

New rooms available:

• 
  The Oversight Center (Found in the Control Rooms tab). This is a 3x3 room that costs 50,000 Prestige. It can hold 1 Control item, 1 Storage item, and 1 Workshop item (as well as unlimited decorative items, but no Aux items).
• Med Bay: This is a 2x2 Medical room that costs 50,000 Prestige. It has the restriction of only allowing 1 Medical item in it (no Anchors, no Aux items).
• Teleport Bay: This is a 1x2 Teleport room that costs 50,000 Prestige. It has the restriction of no Dimensional Anchors and only allowing 1 Teleporter and 1 Teleport Aux Item (so your Teleporter is restricted to going to only one zone).
• Workshop: A new 1x2 Workshop is available costing 50,000 Prestige. It, too, can not have any Dimensional Anchors in it, and it is limited to 1 Worktable and 1 Storage object, as well as 1 Empowerment Station.
• New Base Item: Combo Energy/Control generator. This is a new Control item, a small, 25,000 prestige, generator that outputs Control and Energy to a level that is "just enough" to get the minimal functionality of the base online (that being a single Teleporter, Reclaimator, and Worktable). It comes in both Arcane and Tech versions, and you can fit 1 per Oversight Room and 1 per Plot (multiple Oversight rooms do not give you multiple Combo Items).
• Unsecure Base Plots are now limited to 1 Item of Power. Secure Base Plots are unchanged (there is no artificial limit to the amount of Items of Power a Secure plot can contain).

Chat

• Fixed rare crash related to certain global chat channels.

Game

• Fixed the AI for inanimate objects (such as the Mole Machines) which were moving under certain conditions.
• Fixed rare bug that could cause character data (powers, badges, costume) to be corrupted.

Tailor

• Fixed bug that sometimes made characters invisible in the Tailor window.

Badges

• 
  
  All boss-level Rularru Overseers (Eyeballs) now count towards the Visionary badge.

CITY OF HEROES

Badges

• All Portal-generated Banished Pantheon Spirits now count for the Banished badge.

Bases

• Teleport Beacons (Tech and Arcane) added to City of Heroes. All Paragon City zones are now accessible through the Base Teleporter. To get a zone's beacon for your base, simply hit all of that zone's "explore" badge locations while in Supergroup mode (it doesn't matter if you personally have that exploration badge already or not). The zones added are: Croatoa, Eden, Terra Volta, Kings Row, Founders Falls, Peregrine Island, Galaxy City, Brickstown, Rikti Crash Site, Independence Port, Talos Island, Steel Canyon, Skyway City, and Atlas Park .

Tasks

• Altered Dr. Vahzilok mission to complete when the Dr. is defeated.

City Zones

• The Hive: Fixed bug in the Hamidon encounter that caused some players to drop off the damage done list and therefore get no reward when the Hamidon was defeated.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Scirroco's Patron powers should now allow proper enhancement slotting.

Badges

• All Legacy of Chain minions now count toward the Ember Legacy of Flame gladiator.
• All Legacy of Chain lieutenants now count toward the Lucent Legacy of Light gladiator.
• Gladiator: Crab Spider Longfang now awarded for completing a Patron Arc.
• Coralax Gladiator badge should now be obtainable.
• Lowered requirements for Pirate badge.

City Zones

• 
  Grandville:Fixed Arachnos Flier so that it will respawn properly (should appear much more frequently).
• St. Martial: Fixed inaccessible/missing mission door.

Tasks

• Fixed bug in King's Row Mayhem Mission where rescued Villains would not follow players.
• Fixed several Arachnos mission maps where defeated players would resurrect at the location they were defeated when they tried to go to the Hospital.
• The Freedom Phalanx members in the Recluse Strike Force will no longer Drop enhancements. This should help alleviate the issue of players' trays being full when the Synthetic Hamidon Enhancement is awarded.

8.3.06
City of Villains
City Zones

• Grandville: The Grandville hospital is back in the game.

8.1.06
Combined Notes
General

• Improved network performance across the board.
• Fix for pets to get through doors more easily if they get in each other's way.
• Long distance Supergroup invites no longer crash the map.

Power

• Hyper Phase Temporary Power now has the 30 second shut down.
• Gambler's Cut for Stalkers and Scrappers now properly calculates Critical Strikes.
• The 5% Defense reduction in Scrapper and Brute versions of Unyielding has been reduced to a 3.75% Defense reduction. This value matches the unenhanced Defense gained from the Tough Hide passive power in the same power set. The Tanker version remains unchanged, as the values already match properly.
• Added Toxic Resist to Sonic Dispersion power for Corruptors, Controllers and Defenders. The help text has always stated that Toxic damage was resisted by this power, so we added it.

City Zones

• Players should no longer get stuck in the Pocket D Elevators.

Missions

• Moved certain spawns in CoT Maps to higher ground for hostage purposes.

Tasks

• Several doors which were giving XP but were not supposed to have had the xp reward removed.

Bases

• Items placed in Storage Containers are saved immediately.
• Base storage will now allow combined enhancements to be stored/removed.

Tailor

• Fixed the Gloves for Huge Robotic 3.
• Huge Upper Body Jacket selection now has matching sleeves.

Chat

• Added additional logging and error checking code to global chat.

World

• Fixed a problem with pets getting stuck in elevators.

City of Heroes

Powers

• Tanker War Mace: The order in which the powers Clobber and Jawbreaker are received have been swapped. This means that Jawbreaker will now be available at level 4, which should help War Mace's ability to deal damage at lower levels. Lower level characters that have already selected Clobber will still have it and can continue to use it and slot it normally.
• Power Boost epic power now works properly with Kinetics, Transfusion.
• Peacebringers in Light Form can no longer appear invisible to players who suppress extra player effects.
• Defender Epic Power Build Up now enhances Transfusion's heal.

Missions

• The first mission of Citadel's Task Force now gives a reward as expected.

City of Villains
Badges

• Born In Battle Accolade no longer needs the Nigh Indestructible badge. It requires the Unbreakable badge instead.
• Added the Defeat Recluse badge to patron arcs that were missing it.

Missions

• Nemesis Mole Machines no longer give experience.
• Added a Patron Respec to the first Patron Story Arcs.
• Modified the Lorenz Ansaldo mission to make the generators smaller.
• Completion of the Temple of the Waters Strike Force now awards the badge correctly.

Powers

• Domination is now usable when the caster is under the effects of Hold, Stun or Sleep.
• Changed first tier Mastermind Upgrade power descriptions to "Recharge: Fast."
• The Domination effect for Dominators now grants them some protection from most status effects for the duration of the effect.
• Corrected short help text of Corruptor Cold Domination Ice Shields and Glacial Shields to reflect Melee, Ranged and AoE defense bonuses.
• Stalker Placate Powers endurance costs are now more consistent.
  Mastermind Henchmen Medics/Protector Bots now heal/repair as expected.

City Zones

• Stopped Kalinda from floating above ground in Mercy Island.
• Improved the paths of Pier 2 and Pier 7 Scrapyarder spawns in Sharkhead Isle.
• Fixed elevated Arachnos Flier paths which were causing clipping in Grandville.
• Fixed a bug where Arachnoid Web Frames were not visible in Grandville.
• Brute Electric Armor Power Surge now has the correct feedback at end of the effect.

Tasks

• Villains who have already received their Patron Power Sets will be granted a Patron Respec upon logging in. This respec stacks with the Thorn Tree respecs as well as the free respecs given out when major power changes happen. This respec allows your character to do the Patron content at any point in their career, even level 50, and be able to add the Patron Powers to the character. These respecs can be redeemed from Arbiter Lupin.

World

• Fixed a missing Mission Door in Grandville.
• Fixed a mysterious floating beam in Mercy Island.

Critters

• Players no longer get experience when Coral minions expire on their own.

Here's something that was added to the patch notes after I had posted them on the 16th. Kinda weird really, since they couldn't keep something as outrageous as this a secret...

City Zones

• Siren's Call: Modified police drones around hero hospital to help prevent villain camping.
• Recluse's Victory: Players can no longer dismiss friendly turrets.

This is actually pretty amusing. Instead of correcting the problem, they went entirely the other direction with it, causing heartache and pain with a lot of people.

You see, there is a big hurrah going on over at the CoH/CoV boards right now about the ability to dismiss pets. Apparently, there was a way you could 'farm' the pillbox badges. Have a hero defeat all the turrets, take control of the pillbox, then immediately release all the 'pets' (pillbox gave you four turrets as the pets). Then you could have a villain take control and immediately dismiss the pets. A hero and villain working in tandem could trade this pillbox back and forth approximately every 20 seconds or so.

Wouldn't have been a big issue but some folks got sick and tired of the "Heroes capture a pillbox" and "Villains capture a pillbox" flashing across everyone's screen three times a minute. Oh, hardly anyone ever goes there anymore to try and defeat the signature heroes/villains that show up as you need quite a few to take them down. The zone hardly has any players in it anymore and the only ones complaining are the die-hard PvPers who like Recluse's Victory simply because you are not auto-exempted down to a certain lvl like the other zones (you keep all your powers).

So, instead of making a fix that works for everyone, they take an already poorly designed badge and reinforce it just so they don't have to admit they screwed it up in the first place. Here is what was wrong with the badge to begin with...

The credit towards the pillbox badge could only be earned by activating the pillbox once all four turrets were defeated. It did not matter who defeated the turrents but just simply that they were all defeated. This means that you (and/or your team) could spend time defeating all four turrets and someone not on your team could simply drop down and activate the turret before you had time to do so, thus defeating the whole 'risk vs. reward' standard that this game is designed around.

Also, another poor design flaw was that there was no team credit for activating the pillbox. You had to compete with your own teammates to activate the pillbox just to get credit.

This could have been quite easily fixed if they had just changed the requirement for the badge from taking control of a pillbox to defeating a turret. The current requirement for the pillbox badges are 10, 100, and 1,000 pillboxes. They could have easily changed that to 40, 400, and 4,000 turrents (four turrets to every pillbox).

They've just simply set it up for a different type of farm. Now, all they have to do is to get one hero and one villain together, have hero defeat pillbox Alpha while villain defeats pillbox Bravo. Once that is done, have the hero go defeat pillbox Bravo while villain defeats pillbox Alpha, and so forth. An unclaimed pillbox spawns four lvl 54 boss lvl turrets. Once a turret is claimed, the turrets are now a lvl 50 boss. Makes it a lot easier, in my own opinion.

So, it looks like it is going to be a while for me to get my third pillbox badge. I typically tend to pop into the game once I get home from work in the morning and usually take over about five every morning. Let's see...at the rate of about 25 per week, it is going to take me the next 40 weeks or so to earn that badge.

Well, that's a lot better than the final healing badge. At my current rate, it is going to take me about the next 28 months of non-stop healing in the arena to earn the final badge.

Yeah, it's stupid, I know.

However, that is how Positron set up the badge as they want to work off the philosophy that one one toon should ever have all the badges. A wrong philosophy, if you ask me. Customers want to be able to earn all the badges and I'd give the customer what they want. If a person was to not farm for the sixth healing badge, at a kick-ass rate of 100,000 healing points earned every day (and I do mean it has to be a great day for that to happen), a person would have to play every single day for the next 27 years or so.

9.20.06
COMBINED NOTES

Mission Dropping Feature

• You will now be able to drop missions that you receive from Contacts. Dropping a mission will carry with it everything that completing the mission successfully does. It will advance story arcs, improve Contact XP, grant special powers, give Mission Complete XP, etc. You will not be able to “replay” the mission you dropped. This is done this way so that you are not stuck on a Story Arc, or are missing a vital Temp Power needed later on in the mission chain, etc.
• In order to drop a mission, you must be the mission owner, and you can talk to the Contact that gave you the mission. If the mission is droppable, an option to drop it will appear.

There are a few caveats to the Mission Dropping Feature:

• You can only drop one mission every 7 days with this feature. If you need to clear a mission, but have already used this feature in the past 7 days, you will need to contact Customer Support as normal.
  
  *You can not drop timed missions.
  *You can not drop missions that are part of a Task or Strike Force.
  *You can not drop missions that give badges as Mission Completion rewards.
  *Some other missions are marked as “undroppable”. These are missions that have rewards that are well above average.
• You will not be given the choice at all to drop missions that are undroppable. You will need to contact Customer Support in order to clear these missions.
• If you are on a team with someone who drops a mission, you will receive no rewards for the mission.
• Missions that are dropped are logged so we can more easily debug bugged missions.

Powers

• Fixed an issue with Moment of Glory which caused the Icon to blink after the power's Buff period had ended.
• The Gladiator version of the Malta Hercules Titan will no longer combine into a Zeus Titan if two are present.
• Ring of Fire and Fire Cages both have had a -Fly component added.
• The Teleport reticle now displays properly on Teleport powers with range enhancements.
• Pets made up entirely of f/x (like Tornado or Voltaic Sentinel) now display properly.

Tasks

• Lieutenants will now appear in missions for solo players.
• Fixed a bug that allowed some destructible objects in missions to get into a state where they could not be targeted.

City Zones

• Recluse's Victory: Attempting to dismiss a Turret no longer causes it to become inactive.

Game

• Fixed a bug that can make enemies and/or other players invisible to you.
• XP debt in PvP has been adjusted: If a player is defeated by another player, no debt is given. If a player is damaged by another player and then defeated by NPCs, debt is given proportional to the amount of damage inflicted by NPCs.

Bases

• Moving stacks of stored items by double clicking no longer causes items to be dropped from stacks and lost.

CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Kheldian Energy Flight's Endurance cost reduced to match the changes to the Flight power.
• The Tranquilizer Darts temporary power no longer slows the user when activated and properly slows the Devouring Earth.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Back Alley Brawler should no longer give debt when defeating players in Recluse's Victory.
• Freedom Corps Nullifiers Sonic Grenades will now properly display a debuff icon when you are affected by them.
• Lowered the sound volume of the Elder Cobra's Poison Beam attack.
  Tasks.
• Future of Freedom Strike Force: Freedom Phalanx members on Lord Recluse strike force will once again drop Enhancements, Inspirations, and Salvage.
• Future of Freedom Strike Force: At completion of the Strike Force, you are now given a choice table to pick your reward. You can pick a random Synthetic Hamidon Enhancement or a specific Single Origin Enhancement.

11.28.06
Issue 8: To Protect and Serve
Headlines
Veteran Rewards: Now players will receive rewards for the time spent playing the game. New costume pieces, badges, powers, pets and more! Something new every 3 months!
Police Band and Safeguard Missions: Calling all Heroes! Bank Robberies, Sewer Bombings, Jail Breakouts and more villainous attacks are in progress! Monitor the police scanner and come to the rescue to thwart these diabolical schemes!
Fautlline: Rebuilding of ruined sections of Paragon City has been a long time goal for the city. The old Overbrook area, known today as Faultline, has made significant restoration progress. However, crime and crisis plague the area, requiring the vigilance of the cities’ Heroes.

COMBINED NOTES
Veteran Rewards
New powers are available across Paragon City and the Rogue Isles: Veteran Rewards! Now, as your account accrues time, in 3 month intervals, your characters will gain access to all new badges, abilities, costume pieces and more! For complete details please visit the Official City of Heroes or City of Villains web site:
City of Heroes Community Site
Additionally, you can now visit PlayNC.com’s Account Management Page https://secure.plaync.com/cgi-bin/plaync_manage.pl to view details of your account and a listing of which Veteran Rewards are available to it!
Updater

• If the update client fails to connect, it will cycle through ports 13094, 6994, 80 and 23094 until it connects. Alternatively the ‘-port’ command line parameter can be used to specify one of these ports (for example: CohUpdater.exe –port 23094).

Pocket D Changes

• Arena Kiosks: These Kiosks will allow Heroes and Villains to fight against each other more easily if they want to settle personal issues.
• In front of the bars are two arena officials, an "Arena Information Operator", who will provide information on how to use the kiosks; and a "Games Information Operator", who will provide detailed information on each of the game types of the arena.
• Rikti Monkey Fight Club: Due to a combination of the Family cutting in to the RMFC profits in Sharkhead, and an offer from DJ Zero to expand their enterprise, Joe Young and Cornelius have moved their "entertainment concern" on up to the Pocket D. They have set up a new "Lounge" on the hero side of the club. “It’s a lot classier than the old place”, says Joe Young.
• It’s loud in Pocket D! Local chat in Pocket D will only be heard by players within 50ft of each other now.

Powers

• Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Gadgets secondary for players.
• A large number of powers, most those that involved ground hugging or wall crawling type visual effects, were adjusted to perform better.
• Dark Miasma's Tar Patch, Dark Miasma's Dark Servant, and Dark Blast's Life Drain will now play animation and effects when cast.
• Altered Moment of Glory to insure that the -Regen portion goes away at the end of the duration of the power.
• Added -Fly to Gravity Control Gravity Distortion power.
• Jump Kick from the Leaping pool set now does Knock Up instead of Knockback. The chance of Knock Up occurring has increased to 20% (from 15%.)
• Removed hesitation from the Mental Blast animation. There was a pause that prevented the character from acting, even after the power had finished animating.
• Fixed missing animation for Ice Sword when used with Fly.
• Various ‘Build Up’ and ‘Aim’ powers now have a new look.
• Increased the base flight speed of Hover by 10%.
• Added a slight delay to the usage of Team Teleport. This should alleviate the issue of Teammates randomly being left behind after a Teleport.
• Soul Storm is now escapable. There is still a bit of delay after you escape before you can move or attack again, but it’s much less of an ‘I win’ power.
• Rikti ambushers will once again show teleportation FX.
• The Helmet enhancement (Mutation/Magic - Range) was giving twice the bonus of other Range DOs. It has been reduced to match.
• Rebalanced the powers used by some of the high end Longbow critters to make them less frustrating to fight.
• Fixed some animation issues with the Jump Jet Pack power granted from the Good vs. Evil Edition.

Tailor

• Characters can have tails and wear trenchcoats at the same time
• Chest patterns added to have as backdrop for chest emblems
  • Emblem Blend
  • Emblem Circle
  • Emblem Diamond
  • Emblem Heart
  • Emblem Shield
  • Emblem Square
  • Emblem Star 1
  • Emblem Star 2
• Hair Style "ice" added to huge and male
• Hair style "Buzz cut" revamped and added to huge and male
• Zombie texture added to the monstrous legs
• Jackets and Robes have had there shoulder geometry unified to work better with cape mantles
• "Over Shoulder Cape" is available for all types
• "Cellular" pattern added to gloves and boots
• Military coat for huge and female revamped to fit better, prevent clipping, and to better work with other costume pieces
• Some broaches moved to prevent hovering
• Samurai belt added to all huge categories
• Hoods and Hair reweighed to prevent bald spots when head scaling
• New costume pieces are available at the Tailor and at Character Generation:
  • Male/Huge/Female
    • (Head – Detail 1): Galactic Glasses, Government Glasses, Blast Goggles up
    • (Head – Ears): Floppy, Bunny, Cat, Rat, Teddy, Wildcat
  • Female
    • (Upper Body - Chest - Tops with Skin): Angelic, Assassin, Excess, Savage, Tanker
      (Lower body - Legs - Bottoms with Skin): Angelic, Assassin, Excess, Savage
• Face masks revamped to prevent texture neck streaking.
• Face masks "Ghost" & "Neck Cover"
• A few female hair styles tweaked to fit better.
• "Ponytails Fat" added to female hair styles.
• Thin stripes 1 & 2 added.
• Assassin pattern added to gloves and boots.

Titles

• Players may now change their title at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45. These title changes do not stack (if you do not use the one you get at level 25 when you reach level 35, you only have the level 35 change, and lose the level 25 one). At 50, players may change their title without restriction. Talk to any trainer to change your title in this manner.

Bases

• Autonomous Expert System can now take a Mission Computer as an Aux Item, and Mystic Orrery can now take an Oracle as an Aux Item. These changes will allow Supergroups that only have those Control sources to run the Cathedral of Pain.

Tasks

• An icon will appear on a Contact in the Contact Window when you are on a Story Arc with that Contact. This will let you better manage the Story Arcs you are doing.
• Set all PvP zone mission rewards down to the normal mission completion levels.

Titles

• Fixed bug that prevented players from being able to reset their second title to "none".

11-28-06 Patch Notes (cont):

List of new or updated emotes:

Emote Invent
Emote Dance1
Emote Dance2
Emote Dance3
Emote Dance4
Emote Dance5
Emote Dance6
Emote EatDonut
Emote Donut
Emote EatFood
Emote Eat
Emote Food
Emote ListenPoliceBand (Heroes only)
Emote SitChair1
Emote SitChair2
Emote SitChair3
Emote SitBench1
Emote SitBench2
Emote SitBench3
Emote SitBench4
Emote SitExecutiveChair
Emote SitStool
Emote SitTable1
Emote SitTable2
Emote Teabag

Changes specific to CITY OF HEROES:

Faultline Redux

Faultline officials recently provided funding for reconstruction and work was underway in the first neighborhood, when major disaster struck. Due to strange seismic activity on the moon, tidal anomalies caused the Overbrook Dam to rupture flooding the zone. Additional crews have been called in to assess the Dam and shore up the rest of the zone, however, they are continually thwarted by the recent arrival of new villain groups to the area and one group, in particular, that no one expected: Arachnos. It appears Arachnos has been poking around supergroup base wreckage in Faultline for some time, searching for technology that will further Lord Recluse’s nefarious plans. Paragon Officials have called in small detachments of the Paragon Police Department and Freedom Corps, but are also asking heroes to come forward and protect the new city.

Features of the “new” Faultline:

• Transition from Trial Zone to a City Zone (with Overbrook Dam as a Hazard area)
• Level range has been adjusted to 15 – 25
• Missions have been added (see Jim Temblor in New Overbrook at the Memorial statue in the park as your initial contact)
• New Villain groups added: Arachnos, Freakshow, The Lost, Sky Raiders…and something lurking in the water.
  • More plaques and badges
  • Entrance to Pocket D
  • Stores, Trainer (Mirror Spirit), and a hospital have been added to Faultline

Police Band Missions
Paragon Police Department contacts have been added to all City Zones except for Atlas Park and Galaxy City. They will be added to a Hero’s contact list as soon as they enter a zone. These contacts will direct characters to missions aiding the PPD in fighting crime in Paragon City.

• Once you talk to a PPD Contact, your contact list will have a "Police Band Tuner" added to the top of the list. Clicking this will bring up an assortment of crimes-in-progress.
• You will fight level-appropriate Villain Groups in random maps and random mission objectives. Once you have outlevelled a zone, however, you will no longer be able to get Police Band missions in that zone.

In addition to normal missions, the PPD will give out Safeguard Missions. You get Safeguard missions after performing three to five Police Band missions.


Safeguard Missions
Safeguard missions allow the Hero player to enter a large outdoor mission map and defend the city from invading villains. The goal is to defeat the Villain behind the attack, preventing a bank robbery, but there are lots of other things going on, too. Safeguard missions are set up for single players and teams.

• Safeguard missions will issue a door in the zone the player is in when mission is accepted (i.e Kings Row Safeguard mission will lead the player to the Kings Row PPD truck door).
• When you enter the instance, the bank is immediately being robbed. Don’t delay in getting to the bank, or the crooks could get away with the cash, failing the mission.
• A 15 minute timer starts once the bank heist has been stopped and the mission is completed. At this point you can use the given time to secure the map, explore and fight for additional badges and rewards. This allows the players to end the mission quickly, or hunt for additional XP and rewards if they choose.
• There are several goals and multiple side missions that can be unlocked and played once the bank robbery has been thwarted. Completing any section of goals or each side mission rewards the players with a special bonus (such as extra XP, temp powers, or unique salvage) and will add some time back to the counter. The more they complete the longer they have to try and complete more goals, so the better they do the higher their rewards.

Giant Monster Spawns Increased

• The following Giant Monster Spawns have had their frequency increased:
  • Kraken - Perez Park
  • Babbage - Boomtown
  • Jack in Irons (non-scripted, individual) - Croatoa
  • Eochai (non-scripted, individual) - Croatoa
  • Adamastor - Dark Astoria
  • Jurassik - Crey's Folly

Tasks

• The team mission completion option now works for heroes as well as villains.

City Zones

• Rikti Crash Site: Taking the portal from Rikti Crash Site to Peregrine Island will no longer get you stuck in the portal ramp.
• Independence Port: Only one Lusca will spawn at a time from now on.
• Peregrine Island: Portal Corp interior portal doors will no longer cause players to get stuck on exit.
• Skyway City: The Lobby to the PPD station can be accessed correctly.

Powers

• Controllers Fossilize power will now properly have ‘critical hold’ effects versus critters. This is a bug fix -- this aspect of the power already existed, but was set to always fail.
• Fixed the Short Help text on Stone Cages to properly reflect the powers usage.
• Added -Fly to the Oni's Ring of Fire Power.

Game

• Trains will now stay at station longer, there will be shorter times between trains and the doors of the trains will be clickable while the train is in the station.
• Fixed rare crash in Independence Port.

Changes specific to CITY OF VILLAINS

City Zones

• Mercy Isle: Fixed hole in the map players could get stuck in.
• Port Oakes: Fixed hole in the map players could get stuck in.
• Corrected Scorpion Shield text on the Patron Powers plaques in Grandville.

Powers

• Many Darkness powers have a new look attached.
• Removed Double Stacked ‘Super Jump’ from Ninja Mastermind Pets.
• Added slightly increased running speed to all Mastermind pets.
• Updated the power description on Thermal Radiation.
• Arachnos Night Widow Bosses have had their Defense values slightly reduced.
• The Arachnos Arch Villain Nocturne has been rebalanced.

Dominators

• Dominators will now build Domination faster depending on the size of the Team they are grouped with. Each member of the team (aside from the Dominator himself) increases the speed of Domination gain by approximately 16%. Note that this bonus does NOT apply to the existing bonus Assault powers gain in PvP. The maximum bonus to Domination will happen in a full 8 person group.
• Base Domination gain increased by 50% (to 3 points per attack up from 2 points per attack.)

Tasks

• Heroes in the Lord Recluse Strike Force have been slightly reduced in level. Vindicators are now level 51 and the Freedom Phalanx are level 53.
• Corrected the Level Range on the Freakshow Elite Boss Metal Shift. He should no longer show up green to players at higher levels of the mission.
• Fixed interior minimaps for several Arachnos mission maps.
• Brokers in Cap au Diable now correctly tell low level characters to come back and talk to them at level 10 rather than level 5.

12.7.06
COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Fire Imps: Summoned Fire Imps level will now be 1 below that of their caster. For instance, if you are level 39 and cast Fire Imps, each Fire Imp will be level 38.
• Stalker and Scrapper versions of Impale have had their range reduced to 40 feet. This change is being made to bring the power more in line with Blast power sets' short range, high damage attacks.
• Tanker and Brute Fiery Aura: Healing Flames: Recharge reduced to 40 seconds, healing scale increased to 2.5.
• Reduced the duration of the rooted portion of the Burn animation and normalized the duration for Male, Female, and Huge models (the Female and Huge models were ~1.25 seconds longer before you could move or attack than the Male).
• Burn graphical effects were changed slightly.
• Radiation Blast Aim was boosting the damage of Negative Energy powers twice, while not giving any benefit to Toxic damage attacks at all, due to a duplicated entry. Both issues are now fixed.
• Added secondary effects to Enervating Field and Radiation Infection to help identify the anchor.
• Minor tweaks to Radiation Control power graphical effects for performance related issues.
• Jump Kick will now only play a knockback/up animation when the target is actually affected by knockback/up.
• Nemesis Staff (Veteran Reward and Temp Power) will now have the correct delay for the sound and visual FX when it is drawn and fired.
• Broadsword, Claws and Katana powers which debuff Defense have had a visual effect added to the debuff.
• Temporary Powers with Flight will no longer permanently suppress Flight Speed if you have a toggle debuff on a target.
• Tweaked all versions of Photon Seekers so they should be more responsive.
• Corrected an issue that made extra enhancement slots in Sprint and Rest disappear after a respec.

Tasks

• Restored bonus awards to PvP missions. However, the bonus reward can only be given to a player once every 30 minutes. Otherwise, the player will receive a standard mission reward.

Bases

• Slightly reduced footprint for arcane teleporter base items: teleporters can now be placed side by side to maximum capacity of each teleporter room.
• Corrected an issue with the Arcane Force Field. It should now grant Defense to those within its area of effect.

PvP

• 
  All members of a team now share the timer for how long after defeating an enemy before they can gain reputation for defeating that same enemy again.

Chat

• Fixed bug that disconnected players from global chat when entering a new map, until an enemy was defeated on that map.

Veteran Rewards

• Added text to the Long help descriptions of the Veteran Reward powers explaining that damage enhancing powers will not apply to them.
• Changed Short Help text for Veteran Reward Powers so they better match the Long Help descriptions.
• Turned off floater text for base details when claimed.
• Claiming Prestige Sprints should now remove the option to claim them. If you already have these sprints claimed, you may claim it one last time to get rid of it off your Veteran badge list.
• The Ghosts in Croatoa are now properly affected by the Ghost Slaying Axe Veteran Reward Power and are affected by the bonus damage versus undead.
• Modified the Veteran Reward powers Nemesis Staff and Blackwand. The temp powers gained through missions are unchanged.
• The Nemesis staff no longer has a Disorient function; however it will deal bonus damage in the hands of any character of the Technology, Science or Natural origins.
• Blackwand's bonus damage is now usable by Magic, Mutant and Natural origin characters. Additionally, Blackwand has had a minor To Hit debuff added.

Game

• Emotes for /eat food and /eat donut should work a bit more consistently.
• Sit emotes should work more consistently. They should always reposition you at ground height and be interruptible by flight.
• Wings will now animate while falling. For example: running off of something and falling or turning flight off while in air and falling.
• Wings will now animate while jumping.
• Enhancements once again con based on combat level rather than security level.

Badges

• Fixed typo in Bad Luck badge.

Tailor

• Big Afro added to male and huge
• Assassin & Angelic patterns added to male & huge
• Samurai belts are now available for huge
• Skull face option now scales properly with huge
• Huge now has the option for putting chest details over trenchcoats
• Female now has the option of No Sleeves with trenchcoats.
• Fixed issue with many chest details clipping through huge characters.
• Martial Arts belts should be available when wearing a Jacket
• Epsilon, Zeta and Eta no longer repeat in the chest detail listing.

CITY OF HEROES

Powers

Blaster Improvements:
These changes are all aimed towards addressing sets based on feedback from players. These changes also affect Defender and Corruptor versions of these powers where applicable.

• Blaster Fire Manipulation: Ring of Fire: Increased overall damage. Damage ticks are now faster, as well. Recharge was increased to 6 seconds.
• Blaster Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword: Bonus damage increased.
• Blaster Fire Manipulation: Combustion: Bonus damage increased.
• Blaster Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword Circle: Bonus damage increased.
• Blaster Fire Blast Powerset: Bonus damage increased by 50% for all appropriate powers.
• Blaster Fire Blast: Blaze: Increased Range to 40'
• Assault Rifle Ignite: Increased Range to 40'
• Energy Blast Power Burst: Increased Range to 40'
• Radiation Attack Cosmic Burst: Increased Range to 40'
• Sonic Attack Shout: Increased Range to 40'
• Blaster Devices Taser: Increased Range to 20'
• Blaster Devices Smoke Grenade: No longer requires a 'to hit' check for the Perception Debuff. The other effects of the power still require a successful to hit check.
• Blaster Archery Fistful of Arrows: corrected an issue which could prevent the power from damaging foes.
• Blaster Archery Blazing Arrow: corrected an issue that could limit the DoT portion of the power from doing more than one tick of damage.
• Blaster Assault Rifle Flamethrower: Range increased slightly and recharge time changed so it now matches the range and recharge of the Corruptor version of this power.
• Blaster Electrical Blast Aim should now display the proper look, and match the other powers in the power set.

Gauntlet and Aura Inherent Taunt Changes:

• All of these powers may now affect Archvillains and Giant Monsters once again. However, they must pass a 'To Hit' check at -20% for the taunt to effect these targets, even for powers such as Invincibility which are normally 'Always Hit'
• Invincibility was looking at the wrong table for it’s inherent taunt ability. It now looks at the correct table, which will bring its taunt functionality more in line with other Taunt Auras. Additionally, the Magnitude of the Taunt was increased so that it matches the other Taunt Aura powers.

Controller Containment bonus is now identical when used on critters or players. When a damaging power is used on a character under the effects of a detrimental status effect, the damage caused will be twice the base damage. (Exception: Spectral wounds damage bonus remains lower, due to the nature of the power.)

Controller Ancilliary Powers:
The damage of these powers was made artificially high originally, to make them desirable. In general, the damage was set to be roughly equivalanet to that of a Blaster. When Containment was added later, this was not taken into account. As such, these powers all do roughly twice the desired damage under Containment conditions. This series of changes is aimed at bringing these powers closer to balance.

• Earth Mastery Hurl Boulder: Base damage reduced from scale 3 to scale 1.64
• Fire Mastery: Fire Blast: Base damage reduced from scale 2 to scale 1.1
• Fire Mastery: Fire Ball: Base damage reduced from scale 1.6 to scale 1.05
• Ice Mastery: Ice Blast: Smashing damage reduced from scale 0.8 to scale 0.2, Cold damage reduced from scale 1.2 to 0.8
• Ice Mastery: Ice Storm: Removed unresistible PvP damage and added Containment.
  - Primal Forces: Power Blast: Smashing damage reduced from scale 0.8 to scale 0.2, Energy damage reduced from scale 1.2 to 0.8
• Psionic Mastery: Psionic Blast: Base damage reduced from 2 to 1.
• Psionic Mastery: Psionic Tornado: Base damage reduced from 0.35 to 0.175.
• Defender Electrical Blast Charged Bolt has had the amount of endurance drained in PvP increased. There was a decimal shift error which had this aspect of the power underperforming.
• Defender Lightning Bolt has had the -recovery portion of the power reduced. It is now consistent with the rest of the powers within the powerset.
• Slightly increased the PvE Endurance Drain for Defender Electrical Blast Short Circuit to bring it in line with other versions of this power. It now drains 35% endurance if unresisted, compared to 33% previously.
• Slightly increased the PvE Endurance Drain for Defender Electrical Blast Thunderous Blast to bring it in line with other versions of this power. It now drains 55% endurance if unresisted, compared to 50% previously.
• Defender Lingering Radiation powers -Regen was operating at 1/5th the scale of the equivalent Corruptor or Controller version. The base scale now matches across all three Archetypes.
• Revamped the Effects for Trick Arrow/Glue Arrow. Should cause fewer frame rate errors, appear more visible, and accurately reflect the radius of the glue patch.

Powers – PvP specific:

• Blaster Energy Blast Power Push now has a portion of it's damage unresisted in PvP. Additionally, the Knockback portion of the power now follows standard suppression rules in PvP.

Emotes

• Most of the emotes that were not working properly for Kheldian Dwarf form were either modified, replaced, or disabled. Most of these changes were made to resolve issues with the Dwarf sinking into the groundplane or registration issues (i.e., shoving a hot dog into their noggin). The effect emotes include:
  - Sit (and all of the new sitting poses)
  - Ledgesit
  - Lotus/Yoga
  - Kneel
  - Eat Donut/Eat Food/Drink
  - Read Newspaper/Listen to Police Band
  - Grief
  - Batsmash

Tasks

• Fixed bug that sometimes assigned players to a mission location with no door in Atlas Park.
• Defeated Vahzilok in Faultline once again are counted properly for the Numina Task Force.

Critters

• Removed Undead status from the Infected villain group. They are diseased...not zombies!

City Zones

• Croatoa: Fixed Red Cap spawns in the zone and in missions so that Red Caps below level 35 appear again.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Brutes attack powers will now generate Fury faster against high ranking enemies (including players in PvP)
• Traps: Poison Gas Trap should play the vomit animation on targets occasionally
• Corruptor Bitter Freeze Ray's Scourge attributes were set up incorrectly. As a result, it did not handle Scourge in PvE properly, resulting in lower damage output. This is now fixed.
• Corruptor Dreadful Wail's Scourge was missing the Delay variable which made the Scourge damage appear before the animations were complete. This is now fixed.
• Changed the Long Help description on Lightning Rod so it no longer states you must target the ground for this power to work
• Mastermind Thug Henchmen: Some improvements made to the change in costumes when fully upgraded.

Badges

• Villains were not supposed to be able to earn the "Villain Disruptor" badge. Villains who earned this badge will have it revoked, and they will be unable to earn it any more.

12.14.06
COMBINED NOTES

Game

• Tooltip information should now appear properly when mousing over powers and enhancements.
• You can no longer click on names in your /ignore or /friends lists to target players that you are able to attack.

12.12.06
COMBINED NOTES

Game

• In this update there are some "behind the scenes" changes to prepare for the coming Winter Event. If you are interested to learn more about this event, you can read the testing notes here. More information about the Winter Event will be available on the main website and in your email when the event goes Live.
• Also included in this update are changes to address recent server and client stability issues.

1.25.07 Version 13.20070110.3T
HEADLINES

• Base Rent Overhauled
• Standardization of how toggle powers hold or "root" your character in place.
• Taunt and Gauntlet corrections and animation standardization.
  

COMBINED NOTES

Base Rent Overhaul (WooHoo!!!!!!!)
Base Rent is now calculated solely on your plot size. The larger the plot, the larger the rent. Secure plots also pay more rent, due to the number of defenses they are allowed to have. When they are re-introduced, Items of Power will reduce the amount of Rent due.

Existing supergroups will see this change take place immediately, but it is not retroactive. No supergroups will be receiving refunds for rent already paid.

Plot Name Plot Size Rent

Tiny Hidden Spot 8x8 0
Small Hidden Spot 8x12 20000
Hidden Spot 12x12 43000
Small Secret Location 12x16 65000
Secret Location 16x16 105000
Large Secret Location 16x20 145000
Small Hidden Complex 20x20 200000
Hidden Complex 20x24 280000
Large Hidden Complex 24x24 350000
Massive Hidden Complex 24x28 610000
Small Secure Location 12x16 200000
Secure Location 16x16 420000
Large Secure Location 16x20 750000
Small Secure Complex 20x20 1300000
Secure Complex 20x24 2100000
Large Secure Complex 24x24 3200000
Massive Secure Complex 24x28 5000000

POWERS:

Taunt: All Taunt power animations have been slightly adjusted. They will now root the player for the same amount of time and take the same amount of time to 'hit' a target. The timing was normalized around Dark Melee's taunt, which was the quickest activating version, so this equates to a minor buff for most versions of taunt and provoke.

Gauntlet: Gauntlet and related power effects should now work properly on all ranks of targets. Underlings, Minions, Lieutenants, Bosses and Elite Bosses should have Gauntlet effects work normally. For Archvillains, Heroes and Giant Monsters, Gauntlet effects require a harder to hit check in order to effect the target.

Animation changes:
All toggle activation animations have been normalized to fit the following rules:

• Any toggle that only affects yourself should not cause you to be rooted while activating
• Any toggle that affects yourself and/or allies should not root you while activating. Leadership, Shadow Fall, Dispersion Bubble, etc
• Any toggle that affects yourself and debuffs or damages enemies should root you while it activates.
• Any toggle that only affects enemy mobs should root you while it activates. (Blazing Aura, Icicles, etc)
• All "Tier 9" powers will root the player while activating. This includes Granite Armor.
• The activation time is consistent for all at 1.5 seconds. This generally resulted in a shorter rooted animation.

Some specifics:

• Stone Armor/Earth's Embrace, Ninjitsu/Kuji-In Rin, Super Reflexes/Practiced Brawler, and Regeneration/Instant Healing will no longer root the player while activating
• Kheldian or Peacebringers: Changing form no longer roots the character.
• Ice Armor/Energy Absorption will now briefly root the player while activating.

Many power animations were changed so that they do not play faster or slower based on the size of the character.
Note: Click Powers
We plan to adjust "Click" powers in the future to make them conform to rules of when a power "roots" your character similar to the ones applied to Toggle buffs in this update. "Click" powers are those that you click once and do not stay running like a Toggle. Buffs like Radiation Emission's Accelerate Metabolism is an example of a "Click" power. Some "Click" powers were changed in this update that may be revisited in the future.


Other Power Changes:

• The Golden Rings and Renewal of Light Temporary Powers' lifetime is now measured in real time days, not /played days.
• Stone Armor/Earth's Embrace - Changed effects so that dirt, stones, and rock portion will only play on the ground.
• Tanker and Brute Super Strength Rage: Fixed a bug in which would allow players to bypass the Endurance 'crash' at the end of the power's duration.
• Psychic Assault/Psychic Scream: Corrected a pause that would play after using this power while flying.
• Dark Armor’s sound effect now correctly silences after a short time period.

Rewards

Key Reward Choices that you do not qualify for will not be selectable, and will tell you why you can not select them. For example, if you complete a Respec Trial and have already earned the maximum amount of respecs possible for a character of your level, the respec reward choice will be unselectable, and tell you that you have already earned the maximum amount of respecs for your level.

Game

• Characters' wings will no longer be visible while using the alakazamreact emote while they have Force Shield on them.
• When logging in, the chat window will display the number of free tailor sessions available, if any.
• A count of the total number of badges a character has is now displayed in the Personal Info Menu Item.
• Corrected an issue with a specific mission map where players could click to go to the Hospital, re-spawn and die from nearby critters.
• Fixed a problem with elevators in a specific mission map. (Uh, yeah, this is the FrostFire map...used to be when you went from second floor to third floor and used a specific elevator, you could "see" under the map and see where FF was standing in the final room).
• Players will no longer be able to create or edit a supergroup while shapeshifted.

Tasks

• Characters are no longer able to talk to their contacts via cell phone while in PvP zones. This change is necessary to prevent bugs that can cause players to receive no reward for completing missions

Critters

• Redcaps can now correctly spawn at levels below 35.

Badges

• The Dimensional Warder badge will now display a progress bar.

CITY OF HEROES
Powers

• Blaster Devices Targeting Drone now grants a damage bonus to the Assault Rifle Sniper Rifle power.
• Blaster Devices Taser: Changed animation and cast time.
• Blaster Devices Cloaking Device: Removed erroneous text from Long Help text.
• Kheldian Antagonize: Increased durations in PvE, added PvP Duration modifier.
• Kheldians Inherent Taunt ability in Dwarf Form will now work on all ranks of critters.
• Snow Storm graphical effects have been reworked. The base effect was modified and an effect was added to indicate the anchor. Also fixed a bug in the power definition that was causing the base effect to play on every affected mob, rather than the targetted anchor. This should prevent Snow Storm from stacking with itself and becoming blinding white.

Tasks

• Nightwolves in the Citadel Task Force should no longer appear at levels not within the level range of the task force.
• Banished Pantheon Masks should no longer show up in missions higher than their given level.

Game

• Supergroup base teleporter beacons to Faultline now send you to the correct location.

CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Brute Secondary powerset attacks were generating Fury vs. high rank targets too quickly. This has been adjusted and these power now have the same bonus as the Brute Primary powers.
• Brute Patron Powers bonus Fury vs. Players and high ranking critters has been lowered to the same amount given by normal Brute attacks.
• Dominator Blaze, Power Burst and Thorny Barrage: Increase maximum range for from 20' to 40'.
• Fixed Photon Seekers levels for both Transcended and Quantum PPD. They were spawning at too high a level in some cases.
• Players using Ghost Widow's Patron Power "Soul Storm" will go into the normal combat stance after it is cast rather than going into a different animation.
• Domination: the bonus given to Domination gain based on team size, although it was being calculated, was not being applied properly, resulting in lower Domination gain. This has been fixed.
• Patron Power Pets should now be defeated when their creator is defeated.
• The Patron Power Pet Mu Guardian should now use his Sentinel of Lightning power properly.

Tasks

• Numina will no longer resurrect Ms. Liberty during the final battle of the Recluse Task Force
• Reports of the Arachnos Flier have re-surfaced.