Lazarus

Finally someone else is taking a look at what this patch entails. I was beginning to feel it was already a lost cause.

Here is the list I've begun of the power changes and concerns I have about them. Look over that list and tell me that you think it's all better balanced now.

I've started a list of all the changes I have found so far. Use this thread to list changes you've found and what concerns and suggestions you have on them.

I know people are getting sick of hearing me today but I want to get the ball rolling on this before its too late to stop any bad changes from making it to live.

Here is a list I am starting of the changes I have found with the way AE critter powers are being given on different difficulties after the 4/27 patch. This is also a discussion on the issues these changes cause.

The entire thing about being unable to give Minions Mezz resist anymore is another issue in itself. Personally I hope they give us back the option to give it to them on the Extreme settings. Taking away options does not make the system more flexible, no matter what anyone wants to claim.

Energy Aura:
* Cannot give Minions Power Shield at all but can give them Energy Drain on Extreme.
* Cannot give LTs or Bosses Entropy Shield without going to Extreme. Since Energy Drain is given on Hard, this poses a big problem. (Suggestions: Move Entropy Shield to Hard and Energy Drain to Extreme, or remove Energy Drain from the set entirely.)

Archery:
* Minions and LTs can no longer get Blazing Arrow, but get Rain of Arrows on Extreme.
* LTs still get Aim on Hard. (Suggestions: Move Aim to Extreme.)

Trick Arrow:
* Glue Arrow was moved to Extreme.
* Flash Arrow was moved to Hard.

Claws:
* Minions cannot get Follow Up at all anymore.
* Minions get Shockwave instead of Slash when set to Hard. Not sure why they needed this when they already get Focus on Standard.
* Minions get Spin on Extreme.

Dual Blades:
* Minions and LTs cannot get Sweeping Strike at all now, but they get 1,000 Cuts on Extreme.
* Minions get Typhoons Edge on Hard.
* Minions no longer get Blinding Feint.

Energy Assault:
* Snipe moved to Extreme.
* Setting Minions to Hard gives them Whirling Hands and Power Push.
* LTs and Bosses get Power Burst on Standard. This is a rather powerful attack to be giving a LT on Standard.

Electrical Melee:
* Cannot give LTs Thunderstrike at all. Instead they now get Lightning Rod on Extreme. (Suggestions: Change it back to Thunderstrike, Lightning Rod on a LT?)
* LTs get Build Up on Hard instead of Extreme now. (Suggestions: Move Build Up to Extreme.)
* LTs get Chain Induction on Standard instead of Extreme now.
* LTs get Thunder Clap on Hard now, before they didn't get it at all. (Please reconsider this.)

Dark Armor:
* Minions cannot get Obsidian Shield or Murky Cloud at all now.
* Minions get Dark Regeneration on Hard. (Why does a Minion need such a powerful heal instead of resistance?)
* Minions get Cloak of Darkness on Hard.
* Cannot give LTs Obsidian Shield without giving them Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Darkness, Death Shroud, and Oppressive Gloom. (At this point it might as well just be a Boss.)

War Mace:
* LTs and Bosses get Build Up on Hard now instead of Extreme. (Suggestions: Move Build Up back to Extreme.)

Fire Blast:
* Minions get Rain of Fire on Hard.
* Only Bosses get Blaze now.

Gravity Control:
* LTs and Bosses now get Propel on Standard rather than Hard.

Dark Miasma:
* Tar Patch is an Extreme only power for Minions, LTs, and Bosses.
* Minions, LTs, and Bosses get Darkest Night on Standard.
* Minions, LTs, and Bosses get Twilight Grasp and Shadow Fall on Hard.
* LTs and Bosses get Petrifying Gaze on Standard now, this used to be an Extreme power.

Radiation Blast:
* Proton Volley is now Extreme only for both LTs and Bosses.
* A LT set to Extreme will now get Atomic Blast.

This is only what I've come across so far. Some of this looks ok, but a lot of things make me go "Huh?"

No, the extent of it is that they went too far into the OTHER direction.

You people could go to Test and check it out for yourselves rather than making assumptions.

Really, there is a lot of stuff in the new patch that is going to severely change if not outright break your custom critters. Copy your arcs and critters to the Test Server and find out for yourself all the things that are going to change. If we want to avoid a huge number of arcs being ruined we need to tell the Devs now what does and does not work while this stuff is still in testing.

Save a copy of your published arcs by opening them for editing and clicking Save As. Then go to where you installed City of Heroes and copy these directories into your Test Client directory.
Missions
Custom_Critter
CustomVillainGroup

Then start the test client and you'll have your arcs and critters available on Test Server.

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being able to give enemies defense allows them to survive longer for effect.

That's important for a boss if I want to trigger an ambush as they are going down, or have them say text as they are being defeated.

For lt's it is nice to have a healer survive and not just get taken out with one blow.

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Or for a Mastermind critter to actually summon their pets. Without defense and KB resist you can just knock them down a couple times and they will never summon their henchmen.

I went on an tested it, with so much defense lost my critters went from a fun battle that that lasted for more than several seconds to an utter curbstomp. Anyone with AoE blast powers could finish entire spawns with a couple attacks and then move on like nothing had happened when before they actually had to think about what they were doing.

It was like somehow the difficulty went into negative levels. There is little point now in making custom critters if they are going to be easier to kill than generic CoH enemies.

Funny how mezz resist was such a big deal when most of my critters had it and still people were soloing the arcs with Controllers and not having a problem. But now the crybabies are having their way and a LOT of good arcs are going to be ruined because of it.

Give us the option to have these powers on anything we want. Don't take them away and then claim that the new system is more flexible to use!

Seriously, all of you go to Test, bring your arcs over, and see for yourself how the patch is going to effect your arcs and critters. The Patch notes don't tell you enough!

Well enjoy "The Portal Bandits" while you can, I took a look at the big patch on the Test Server and if that goes live then this arc will be effectively destroyed.

Now after hoping onto test and looking at the changes in MA.

WTF ARE THEY THINKING?

Here's just a few of the changes that effect my own custom groups:
* My Archer Minions and LTs can no longer have Blazing Arrow but they can now have Rain of Arrows instead?
* My Energy Aura Minions cannot have Power Shield (Fire/Cold/Nrg/Neg) or Entropy Shield (Mezz) anymore but they can have Energy Drain?
* My Energy Aura LTs cannot have Power Shield period, but can get Energy Drain on Hard and then Entropy Shield on Extreme? DO YOU KNOW HOW ANNOYING MOBS WITH ENERGY DRAIN ARE? This is friggin' backwards!
* Once again, my Energy Aura Bosses cannot get get Entropy Shield without getting Energy Drain first.
* I cannot give Dark Armor minions Murky Cloud but I can give them Dark Regeneration?

Those Energy Aura changes make the set effectively unusable in MA now.

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There are currently some changes on test that limit the minions to no mez protection on the low setting.

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Long as we can still turn them to Hard and get it back I'm alright with it. If not then that is lame as it takes control away from the author.

This is another one of those times when I really feel like smacking the player over some of their comments.

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I need to note that there is no mention of the fact that Vikki is expected to be an Elite Boss in this mission, and that I know will be a turn off for some players, despite the fact that you are given an Ally with the ample capacity to deal with Vikki. You don't have to spell it outright in the mission intro, but at least give a fair warning that the Vikki is suppose to be extra challenging or at least not a normal boss, preferablely by color highlighting the relevant text to call attention to the fact that something important is being said that the player needs to pay attention to and not gloss over.

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There is an entire line of bright red text saying "Vikki is quite a brute, you might want to bring friends."

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I noted in the inital mission synopsis that there was to be AVs and EBs present. A color highlighted warning in the Mission Intro Text really needs to be present to put that point home. Finding AVs lurking in dark corners of mission maps unexpectedly isn't something that thrills most players, even with two EBs in tow.

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Once again, you were warned to "Get whatever friends and equipment you need" before entering the mission.

Add those two warnings with the AV warning in the description, that is three warnings. I don't know how many more damn warnings people need, and why it is any fault of mine that some people keep missing them somehow.

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all of the Custom Group (Minions, LTs, and Boss) all had 100% Status Resistance to all Mezzing and Knock effects, with the sole exception of the Nagan Archer (LT) which wasn't a whole lot of comfort.

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The Brawler doesn't have mezz protection either. The Archer doesn't have it as it is honestly the most dangerous thing for a team to ignore since it is a Trick Arrow user.

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IF I was playing a solo Controler, this first mission would have gone down hill really fast and I would have probably one starred it for Killer GMing.

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Funny thing is that many Controllers have soloed this arc already, and not on Heroic. It's hard to decide whether or not to put another warning on and any more warnings and there will be no room for the description anymore.

There is a good reason why this is set up as a high-level arc.

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This allowed me to encounter the Nagan Engineer for the first time, which is much like the Nagan Roboticist, except she has all three tiers of robots, which may be overkill. Add to the fact that she also had 100% Status Resistance and some inherent defensive powers, and then got bubbled by the Protector Bots, she became really annoyingly hard to defeat as she would just mostly run around or away with her high Defense after dropping the bots and occasionally fire the Pulse Rifle as she then didn't really have anything else to do.

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Usually people complain that this boss is too weak, actually. Also, the mezz resist is actually critical on both her and the Roboticist. Otherwise you can simply run up, knock them down one or two times, and their AI switches to the Pulse Rifle and never bothers to summon the bots. If they summoned the moment they spawned instead then it'd be a different story.

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This is the first mission with an Ally: Anna Nethema, Elite Boss. I think if I wanted to, she could have just soloed the entire mission on her own if the A.I. was up to it, as she was typically one-shotting everying before I could really open up with my Blaster. I don't think she needs to be that high for this mission (or the next), and I personally consider her OverPowered for the mission.

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It's necessary, as a Boss she died easily all the time and would be smashed to death by Vikki. Generally she should not be able to dominate the battle unless you're playing some really low-damage character.

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I actually wonder if Anna the Elite Boss could solo Naga the Arch-Villain on her own.

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I rather doubt it. Anna doesn't have a strong heal and is resistance based, plus has weak resistance to Naga's damage type. It'd be like when she tried to face Vikki as a Boss instead of EB.

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I had more trouble with the Minions, LTs, and Bosses than I did with the AV.

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Your mileage may vary. I know that none of the regular critters can come even close to two-shotting a Scrapper like the AV can.

There is another thing that people seem to keep missing or outright ignoring: all of the allies are OPTIONAL. They're in place so that if someone decides to solo the arc but cannot solo the EB/AVs they will still have a way to complete the missions. If you don't want the allies, then don't use them. It's that simple and it's making any complaints about them very wearing.

And of course if I just made everyone bosses instead and had no EBs people would just complain that the arc was not climatic enough or something.

It appears that all Oranbega maps have a chance of crystals spawning in them. Anyhow...

Changes made to "MacGuffin Delivery Service":
* Changed the objective in mission 3 to indicate how many books you have to look at rather than saying "just find something!"
* Added an Inventory Computer to the front of the warehouse map in mission 4 and a mention about it in the mission entry pop-up. Clicking this glowie will give you a clue as to which part of the warehouse that the Containment Case is located in.

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Hmm, is this really possible? All I can think of that has +Perception reliably is Devices, but is Targeting Drone available to minions?

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Super-Reflexes has Focused Senses even on minions.

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As does Willpower (Heightened Senses).

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* Architect toolbox allows players to better and more easily polish their content before sharing it with the public.

No clue what this is, so, no reason to get excited about it yet. I could speculate but I'd rather go with what we've been given. If it was actual NEW features, like new goal types or new content, I doubt it'd be described as "polishing" tools, though. If it's just wizards and spellchecks, then eh. Nice, but eh.

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I hope that this means we'll get a "Rough Draft Mode" or the ability to republish from the local file so that we can test changes to our published arcs without making them visible for everyone.

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* Enhanced searching and navigation options like key phrase tagging and arc difficulty display help players find the content they're looking for even faster

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I hope they relax the arc file size limit if this is going to be stored inside it as well, space is already at a premium for a lot of arcs.

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I named a destructible object (a computer) "Please don't hurt me". What no one will notice is that the Ambush that spawns when you destroy it is labeled within the MA as "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero".

A cookie to whoever knows what that's a reference to =P

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The trope is strong with this one.

I have at least one of my characters in each of my arcs as either a ally or enemy. Most people won't recognize them but when I played one arc with some friends and they saw who the EB was for the mission several went "Oh crap!"

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Maybe a sense that the MacGuffin really was worth fighting over.

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It wouldn't be a true MacGuffin if you really knew what it did. In fact nobody seems to be sure what it does and that becomes most apparent in the dialogs of the final mission. Really it's of no worth to you, it's sole purpose is to drive the plot.

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I did get a red crystal in a bad spot, but worked around it.

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WHAT? I picked that map because it didn't have any crystals in it and suddenly crystals do spawn inside it? ARRRGG!!

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Wow that's a lot of battles! Still, considering the briefing, entirely appropriate. One of them was buggy, though, as a Freakshow took out another Freakshow.

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It is a bug, an unfortunate side-effect of battles is that it sometimes happens and the more groups involved the greater the chance. I'm going to handwave it as a case of friendly fire and Freaks being overly violent to begin with.

Ok, just so everyone knows: next week is final exams so reviews will be mostly on hold for the next couple weeks. I'm not closing the submissions queue but just don't expect to see more than 1 a day if even that until after May 8th.

In "MacGuffin":
* The reason you want all the villains to see you leave the Emerald Parakeet in the box is so that they will stop coming after you as they'll see that you no longer have it. Then the idea is that the next one to pick it up will have the curse on them instead. (However the souvenir shows that it didn't quite work, but that was for laughs.)

In "Portal Bandits":
* The Vanguard guys show up mostly to lock the level of the missions to be 35-50. I didn't have to do that with mission 2 as I could make a custom Crey group instead to do the trick. The contact did mention the guy being inside in mission 1 and Sgt. Witting does have dialog mentioning that he was there to observe Doc Kryten's experiment for reasons I didn't think were important to the plot. It's more like he just happened to be there at the wrong time and got his rear handed to him.

In "The Amulet":
* The Red Caps are a complete red herring. Buck has no idea who the Midnighters may have run into out there.
* Midnighters only come in minion and LT classes, the only Bosses in MA are the Living Armors. Any how, I didn't think it'd make sense for Luis to just run off and abandon Jeremiah and Jeremiah would want to get some more answers before returning to the Club. Anyhow, this is why Buck tells you that they can teleport them out but some spell is masking their location so they need to be freed first for the teleport spell to work again.
* There is a clue in mission 2 but I made it optional as it could drag out the mission since it often spawned in odd places and people kept missing it. It's nothing essential to the story but does provide a bit of foreshadowing if you do find it.
* There is no mission between 3 and 4 as it would drag out the plot unnecessarily. There is a time factor here, it may be slowed down for you but Mindskewer is devouring her victims in the meantime (probably why Nomaris and McNeil run off, they're already extremely weak as they were first on the menu). I didn't want to make it a timed mission though as then people would get angry if somehow they did lose and got a "Congratulations, you're dead!" speech at the end of the arc.

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The LTs were all set to Hard, which apparently still gave them the Sentinel and Tesla Cage. I have now dropped them to Standard, but I may switch it back if they turn out to be pushovers.

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If you don't mind red lightning, try Electrical Assault. It only gets the Sentinel on Extreme and will also give them some melee attacks.

Some things just set off a flight reflex, like using fear or debuff anchors. I have seen several EBs go on a marathon the moment you put Darkest Night on them.

Changes made to "The Amulet of J'gara":
* Totally rewrote the souvenir.
* Fixed the missing parts of the mission 3 briefing.
* Redid the mission 3 debriefing and mission 4 briefing. The nature of the illusion spell should be much clearer now.
* Some minor dialog additions.

Changes made to "MacGuffin Delivery Service":
* Numerous grammar fixes.
* Added some unique wall safes with different contents in mission 1.

I'd like to give dialog to all the battles in mission 4, just having trouble thinking up a line for each side in all 11 battles on that map. I think it'd make that map feel even more alive.

Anyhow, I'd prefer more plays of "The Portal Bandits" right now. It's had so many changes that I need feedback on while my other two arcs are pretty much "final". Not that they're set in stone, but I don't plan any further major revisions of them.

I have a mission in Oranbega (boo, I know...wusses) where you are looking for a book and there are several false bookcases. Each one has a different book with a humorous title or content but you'd only notice if you look in the system chat log.

As if many of the names weren't enough, nearly all my custom enemies have descriptions that contain dead giveaways to what kind of powers they have. Still people act surprised when a LT named "Archer" starts shooting Trick Arrows at them.

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Elite Paragon Protectors attack one another and friendly allied mobs.

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I've seen this happen when mixing 7th Gen Paragon Protectors with Crey as well.

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As far as the live Cimerorans, the mission is supposed to take place in the ancient version of Cimerora. In retrospect, it doesn't make sense to not have Dr. Dave be a Midnighter, or at least have some kind of honorary membership.

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Well when he said that he wasn't in the Midnight Club and mentioned Heather getting lost in the Cimeroran ruins, I got the impression I was going to the current day ruins, not the ruins that already existed back in ancient Cimerora.

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I'm not exactly an expert player, so I don't know what specifically makes an arc a balanced challenge. But that's what feedback is for!

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Endurance drain is something to be very careful with and Electric has it in spades so setting it to Extreme can cause problems. (I assume Extreme because of the Voltalic Sentinel.) Also the Energy Transfer on a boss was somewhat obnoxious as it allows him to effectively 1-shot a Scrapper, even through 50% Energy resistance.