Avatea

Release Notes for 18.20090422.5T

Tuesday May 12, 2009

COMBINED


Mission Architect

[*]The maximum number of tickets awarded per player per mission has been reduced to 1,500 tickets. Because you cannot get a partial reward for defeating an enemy, you may end up with slightly less. [*]It is no longer possible to unpublish an arc that has been banned, though it may be resubmitted. [*]You may now either unpublish, or resubmit an invalidated arc. [*]If your character is not eligible for any xp/influence/debt reduction rewards in a Mission Architect mission, you will no longer be awarded any tickets for that mission. [*]It is no longer possible to have the Mission Completion ticket reward be greater than the total number of tickets gained before mission completion. [*]The ‘chicken tug’ animation is no longer selectable for critters through the Mission Architect UI.[/list]
Join in the Community Discussion.

Greetings!

Since the issue that initially prompted this thread has been resolved, and to avoid confusion with current issues, this thread will now be locked.

Please do however continue to post issues you are encountering in the appropriate thread or create one if you can't find any that related to your problem.

Many thansk for your understanding with this!

This maintenance is now completed. Again, thank you for your patience!

On Thursday May 7 2009, PlayNC Services will be brought down for maintenance. All PlayNC services will be unavailable at that time.

Planned Start: Thursday May 7 2009 6:30 AM (Pacific Time) / 9:30 AM (Eastern Time)
Planned Finish: Thursday May 7 2009 9:00 AM (Pacific Time) / 12:00 PM (Eastern Time) /

You will be unable to access the following areas during the maintenance:

[*] The PlayNC Store (to purchase items like the Booster packs for instance);[*] The City of Heroes Ingame Store (to purchase services or items like character transfers, renames, character slots or Respec tokens);[*] The PlayNC Account Management System (to manage, create, upgrade or re-activate your account for instance);[*] The creation of new Forum accounts (the use of existing Forum accounts will not however be affected).[/list]
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience with this matter.[/color]

The maintenance is now over, thank you for your patience!

An Emergency maintenance will be performed at 12PM (Pacific Time) / 3PM (Eastern Time) to address the Supergroup Base Access issue.

Estimated duration is 2 hours but the servers may be brought back up earlier.

We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your continued support.

Release Notes for 18.20090422.2T

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

COMBINED

Badges

[*]The Builder line of badges has had their requirements to obtain decreased substantially, so that the final badge “Master Builder” has the same requirements as getting a mission into the Hall of Fame.[/list]
Emotes


[*]Fixed a bug that would cause costume change emotes to crash the game client.[/list]

Mission Architect


[*]Fixed more memory leaks in the Mission Architect windows.[/list]
Mission Architect Custom Critters


[*]Improved performance on custom critters with the Dual Blades power set. Changes were made to make it much easier for AI-controlled critters to get combos.[*]Extensively revamped the Custom Critters powers Rank and Difficulty settings. Power selection for custom critters should be better standardized, more flexible and provide finer control over the difficulty of custom critters.

[*]All melee power sets have an additional ranged power added. Any ranged attack normally in a melee set will now be available at all levels, difficulties and ranks.[*]Build up and Aim style powers now are available at the "Difficult" Setting for LT's and above.[*]Status protection Toggles standardized at "Extreme" setting for LT's and above.[*]Self Rez powers set to “Extreme” Difficulty for bosses or higher rank.[*]Armor Toggles now standardized. Minions begin with normal Smash/Lethal protection, LT's begin with extra protection, and bosses get all protection toggle effects except status protection.[*]Armor power sets PBAOE toggles set at “Difficult” setting for LT’s and above.[*]Ranged attacks Tier 9 nukes standardized at "Extreme" setting. All Endurance intensive nukes available to LT's and above.[*]Control power sets standardized to AOE effects at “Difficult” setting or higher.[*]Control power sets Pets set to “Difficult” setting for Bosses or higher rank.[/list][*]Corrected Help description of Pain Domination powerset in Mission Architect[*] The rewards for defeating Rikti Communications Officers in Mission Architect has been decreased to match other minion level critters. Missions using earlier versions of the Rikti Communications Officer will be invalidated, and will need to be republished.[*]Batzul Fire Imps can no longer be selected as an allied critter. Missions including them will be invalidated and will need to be republished.[*]Visual FX for “Captured (Energy Field)” custom animation in the Mission Architect have been slightly modified. The original version was intended for a very specific use with a specific NPC (Penelope Yin)[*]Ninjitsu - Hide - Adjusted the suppression time on the damage bonus.[*]Trick Arrow - Flash Arrow - Perception Debuff now supresses when the player is hit.[*]Ninjitsu - Blinding Powder - Perception Debuff now supresses when the player is hit.[*]Devices - Smoke Grenade - Perception Debuff now supresses when the player is hit.[*]Fire Control - Smoke - Perception Debuff now supresses when the player is hit.[*]Powersets are now listed in alphabetical order when viewing ‘all’.[/list]
Powers


[*]Mystic Fortune - The Tower damage effect should no longer be applied when zoning or respawning, and should no longer damage players below 25% health.[/list]
City Zones


[*]Adjusted Rikti ship paths to not go through AE buildings. Affects Atlas Park, Galaxy City, Peregrine Island, Mercy Island, Nerva Archipelago. Also adjusted a few patrols in Nerva that got obliterated by AE drones.[/list]

CITY of HEROES

Powers

Blasters


[*]Cold Mastery - Corrected Missing Ice effect on Hibernate.[/list]
Controllers


[*]Fixed a minor issue with Illusion Control Phantasm which could cause it to spend time toggling on a power which has no effect.[*]Ice Mastery - Corrected Missing Ice effect on Hibernate.[/list]
Tankers


[*]Iced Armor - Corrected Missing Ice effect on Hibernate.[/list]
CITY of VILLAINS

Powers

Corruptors


[*]Leviathan Mastery - Corrected Missing Ice effect on Hibernate.[/list]
Masterminds


[*]Mastermind Jonin when fully upgraded are now always in Hide, except for immediately after attacking.[*]Mastermind Soldier Spec-Ops when fully upgraded are now always stealthed, except for immediately after attacking.[/list]
Dominators


[*]Leviathan Mastery - Corrected Missing Ice effect on Hibernate.[/list]
Stalkers


[*]Leviathan Mastery - Summon Guardian should once again accept Recharge Intensive Pets invention sets[*]Leviathan Mastery - Corrected Missing Ice effect on Hibernate.[/list]
Join in the Community Discussion!

Please use this thread for discussion about the Release Notes for 18.20090422.2T announcement!

I've removed the global announcement now, apologies for the lateness. Those issues should have been fixed now.

Edited the restrictions and changed the level restriction to 14 indeed.

Please use this thread for discussion about the Trial Account Restrictions announcement!

Hi all,

We would like to clarify a few things about Trial accounts. This should provide answers to most questions you may have.

Players using Trial Accounts are subject to the following restrictions:

[*]They can be invited to teams that are using the Mission Architect Missions but they will not be able to access Mission Architect terminals to create, rate or start any published Mission Architect Missions;[*]They cannot level past level 13;[*]They may earn Influence/Infamy but only up to 50 000;[*]They may be invited into a team but cannot join Super-Groups;[*]They may communicate with other players but cannot email other players and may only speak in the Local (/local), Help (/hc) or Team (/team) channels.[/list]Trial Accounts will have those restrictions active until they are upgraded with either:

[*]an online serial code purchased from the online NCsoft store,[*]an NCsoft Game Card (purchased from a participating retailer) or[*]a serial code from a City of Heroes / Villains boxed retail product.[/list]
Join in the Community Discussion!

Thanks very much to all of our players who participated in the Training Room and Live Server Anniversary Events that we threw on 28th April! We hope you had as much fun participating in them as we did throwing them.

We must inform you that due to errors during the Anniversary Events, a few players may have obtained badges that shouldn’t have been made available to them (i.e. Heroes earning Villain monster badges and Villains earning Hero monster badges). These unintentional badge rewards will be removed from affected characters. We’re sorry for the inconvenience but truly appreciate your understanding regarding this matter!

If you didn’t catch Positron’s global message Anniversary Address, you can read it in the News section here!

Join in the Community Discussion!

Please use this thread for discussion about the Interviews announcement!

Please use this thread for discussion about the Interviews announcement!

With the 5th year Anniversary, we’ve seen a lot of press surrounding City of Heroes. A lot of great articles have come out, including a number of interesting interviews with members of our team. There might even be a few choice tidbits of information you haven’t heard before…

Just in case you missed them, here they are!

[*]Gamervision interview with Matt Miller aka Positron [*]Massively interview with Matt Miller [*]Ten Ton Hammer interview with Matt Miller [*]OMGRPG interview with Matt Miller [*]ZAM Network interview with C.W. Bennett aka Pohsyb[/list]

Check them out!

Join in the Community Discussion!

Hey Heroes and Villains!

On behalf of the entire Paragon Studios/City of Heroes team, I wanted to take a few minutes to write this letter to express our excitement and appreciation for all that you have done for us. We've had a lot of exciting things brewing over here, and with each step and unveil we have received an amazing amount of positive feedback and activity which is exciting to see.

Issue 14: Architect has been live for over a week now, and I must say we are simply astounded at the response we've gotten for it. Not only have the current players of CoH and CoV taken a shine to the new feature, but we are seeing a lot of familiar faces return to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles to check out this new innovation in MMO's...user created content.

Like every system we design here, the Mission Architect system has been a labor of love that we have poured over every little decision on. I feel like everything we have worked on has really been worth it when I see that within 60 minutes, we had 360 entire Mission Arcs (each containing up to 5 missions) available for other people to play. By midnight on day one, we had over 2600 arcs, and exactly 24 hours after launch we were already at 3800 arcs. We did some data mining of our own, and 3,800 surpasses the amount of content that we, the developers, have made for all of City of Heroes and City of Villains combined. In just one day our users did more than we could in almost five years.

Users are now talking about which Mission Arcs are fun, and which ones are brutal. They have set up threads in our forums where they "Review" each others' work, giving critiques and criticisms on the arcs published by others. They have even gone so far as to make movie-style posters, comic-style covers, and in some cases machinima using the in-game models to promote their arcs. We never expected anything like that even in our wildest dreams when designing the feature, and I think that is totally cool.

70% of the arcs that are published use Custom Enemy groups. These are enemies created using our fantastic costume editor, coupled with a large sampling of the powersets that the game already uses. These unique enemies have proven to be extremely popular and sparked new life into the game. Players absolutely love fighting custom enemies for the simple fact that they no longer know what to expect. One of the biggest problems with MMOs is you eventually learn what all the critters you are fighting do, and the game can get pretty rote. Developers make new critters, but there can be months before you get new ones. Now players have the opportunity to be constantly making new enemies with new, interesting capabilities that can challenge and vex themselves and their friends, any time they want.

Looking at the Mission Server one week after launch, we currently have over 20,000 published arcs up and playable, of those there were 6259 "Heroic" themed arcs and 2240 "Villainous" themed ones, as well as 112 Time Travel arcs, 134 arcs that deal with Statesman in some way, and 794 arcs that have the 5th Column in them. When it comes to ratings, there were 2,860 arcs that are "5-stars" and 582 arcs rated as "1-star".

All in all, the actual launch of Issue 14 has exceeded any expectation we have set for it. We aimed very high with this Issue, but even the most Pollyanna dev on the team never expected the feature to take off this fast, with this amount of awesome buzz behind it. Players and the press have been calling this revolutionary, and I think we at Paragon Studios are just bringing our heads up to see exactly how revolutionary it actually is.

So, please accept our thanks for all the support and we hope you will continue to enjoy City of Heroes

See you in the Architect!


Matt "Positron" Miller


Join in the Community Discussion

The website should now be accessible again.

Thank you again for your patience with this matter!

The maintenance will be taking a little while longer to be completed.

We will update this thread as we get more information.

Thank you for your patience with this.

On Thursday April 16, PlayNC Services will be brought down for maintenance. All PlayNC Services will be unavailable at that time.

Planned Start: Thursday April 16 - 4:00 AM Pacific / 7:00 AM EST
Planned Finish: Thursday April 16 - 9:30 AM Pacific / 12:30 PM EST

You will be unable to access the following areas during the maintenance:

[*] The PlayNC Store (to purchase items like the Booster packs for instance);[*] The City of Heroes Ingame Store (to purchase services or items like character transfers, renames, character slots or Respec tokens);[*] The PlayNC Account Management System (to manage, create, upgrade or re-activate your account for instance);[*] The creation of new Forum accounts will also be impeded but access to existing forum accounts should not be affected.[/list]
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience with this matter.

Starting at 6:00 AM CST - 11:00 AM CST all US, European, and testing shards for City of Heroes will be brought down for maintenance and publish of Issue 14: Architect.

We expect the downtime to last the entire 5 hours but please allow for early release or an extension as necessary. Always check the Server Status page for complete details

We apologize for any inconvenience to your play schedules, but look forward to bringing you this exciting new Issue!

Thank you for your continued support.

You have been waiting patiently and now the time has come! City of Heroes® content Update Issue 14: Architect has now officially begun its Open Beta phase. Now is your chance to play and give feedback on one of the most in-depth player created mission systems in an MMO to date! Your story/mission masterpieces will be available in-game for all your fellow gamers to play and rate - and the higher their rating, the more YOU benefit!




So what are you waiting for? Instructions on how to get to the Training Room / Open Beta server can be found here!




As you create your unique stories/missions in Open Beta, all your content will be saved locally on your computer within your beta directory. When Issue 14 goes live, you'll need to copy that information over to your default installation of City of Heroes. Check out this link to find out exactly how to do this for the PC and Mac versions of the game.




Need more reasons to create kickin' missions during Open Beta? Well, here they are:

Dev's Choice

Developer's Choice stories are hand picked and represent the team's personal favorites within the Architect system.

Dev's Choice picks will appear on their own special "Dev's Choice" list and will be recognizable by the following icon:







But wait--there's more! Any player whose mission achieves Dev Choice status, will also receive the associated Dev's Choice badge:








Will your mission be one of the first to get awarded Dev's Choice? Stories flagged as Dev Choice during Open Beta will have the potential of getting migrated over to the live servers once issue 14 goes public. The exact number of stories and which stories they will be...will be decided in the weeks to come. Once Issue 14 goes live, the Dev's will periodically add more Dev's Choice picks to the list!

Hall Of Fame

The Dev's get to pick their favorite stories/missions, but so do you! Based on the number of people who play your mission and how high others rate it, your piece of playable content could reach Hall of Fame status! Who doesn't want to be considered the best-of-the-best among their peers?




Hall of Fame designated missions will be identifiable by this icon:







The creators of Hall of Fame missions will also receive the Hall of Fame badge:









But it doesn't stop there. As other players rate your missions with high marks, you will earn tickets. So your climb to Hall of Fame status could be a very prosperous one!




Each City of Heroes game account can publish a maximum of 3 stories (each of which can contain up to 5 missions). However, if your stories reach Hall of Fame or Dev Choice status, you will be rewarded with an additional story slot! And you can continue to earn additional story slots with every Dev Choice or Hall of Fame honor you receive – there is no limit! Also, if your mission gets awarded Dev’s Choice, you can STILL achieve Hall of Fame status (and vice versa) – so you can earn both!




And don't worry...if your mission gets awarded Dev's Choice, you can STILL also achieve Hall of Fame status (and vice versa).




Even though you can start rating missions in Open Beta, those ratings will not carry over to when Issue 14 goes live...so unlike Dev's Choice, there will not be any Hall of Fame designated missions when Issue 14 becomes public. But, as soon as the Issue has in fact released, the race to Hall of Fame is on!




So jump on to the Test Server and start creating, playing and rating those missions now! You never know...your uber mission-creating skills just might make you a community super-star! Or, if mission building isn't your thing, just sit back and enjoy playing all the cool content being generated by your fellow players. You can actually level from 1 to 50 by playing through mission architect content! And don't forget - by playing and rating you can help raise the best stories/missions to the-top-of-the-heap and get the players creating them their well deserved props!




Welcome to Issue 14 Open Beta! We hope you have fun!




Go here to read the Release Notes.




Please provide all Open Beta feedback in the Issue 14: Feedback & Discussion (Open) and Issue 14: Bugs (Open) forums!




For the full scoop on Issue 14: Architect including content specifics, fun video episodes from Rooster Teeth, and the latest press coverage, go here.

Copying Over Your Open Beta Missions For Release On The Live Servers!

If an Open Beta player wants to copy their Mission Architect missions from the Training Room to the Live server at the Launch of Issue 14, here are the folders that they will need to copy.

<h2>[u]On a PC[u]</h2>

Folders:
<ul>[*]Custom_Critter [*]CustomVillainGroup [*]Missions[/list]
NOTE:

Optionally, if they have created a custom costume for a critter that they wish to use in the future and the costume was saved, they will want to copy over the following folder:
<ul>[*]costumes[/list]
However if they have saved costumes on live, they will want to just copy the contents to the costume folder into their existing costume folder.




ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE:




Please be aware that if a player copies over a Mission Architect Mission that contains unlocked Maps, villain groups or costume pieces, then they will need to unlock those locked pieces by earning the appropriate Mission Architect Ticket rewards to unlock them or remove any "errors" before re-publishing those Missions on the Live Servers.




[u]Instructions: [u]
Players will need to copy the following folders from C:\Program Files\CohTest\ to C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\




From:
C:\Program Files\CohTest\Custom_Critter
C:\Program Files\CohTest\CustomVillainGroup
C:\Program Files\CohTest\Missions
C:\Program Files\CohTest\costumes




To:
C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\Custom_Critter
C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CustomVillainGroup
C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\Missions
C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\costumes





<h2>[u]On a Macintosh: [u]</h2>
The file structure of the Mission Architect is very similar to the PC, however Macintosh users will need to go the City of Heroes Test installation within their Applications folder to find the files.

1. Within the Applications folder, the user should right-click the "City of Heroes" (Training Room version) application icon and a menu should appear,
2. The user should select "Show Package Contents' on the menu so that a new window with the contents of the "City of Heroes" application appears.
3. The user should expand the "Resources" folder
4. The user should expand the "transgaming" folder
5. The user should expand the "c_drive" folder
6. The user should expand the "coh" folder
7. Within the "coh" folder, the user will find the following folders
   1. Custom_Critter
   2. CustomVillainGroup
   3. Missions
   4. costumes
8. The user should copy the folders and their contents and place the copies on their Desktop.
9. Next, the user should go to Applications folder and find their "City of Heroes" (Live / Retail version) application icon.
10. The user should select the "City of Heroes" (Live / Retail version) and right-click it so that a menu appears.
11. The user should select "Show Package Contents' on the menu so that a new window with the contents of the "City of Heroes" application appears.
12. The user should expand the "Resources" folder
13. The user should expand the "transgaming" folder
14. The user should expand the "c_drive" folder
15. The user should expand the "coh" folder
16. The user should then copy the following folders to the "coh" directory:
    1. Custom_Critter
    2. CustomVillainGroup
    3. Missions
    4. costumes

TIP: If the user has admin rights within the Mac OS, they should verify that the folders have Read/Write access enabled on all the folders and files contained inside them for all users.




IMPORTANT NOTE:
Please Note that if a player copies over a Mission Architect Mission that contains unlocked Maps, villain groups or costume pieces, then they will need to unlock those locked pieces within the Mission Architect Mission or remove any "errors" before re-publishing those Missions on the Live Servers.