Issue 8

This article contains information that may not apply to the current version of Homecoming: City of Heroes/Villains. It is provided for historical purposes.

Overview

Issue 8, titled To Protect and Serve was a major revision to City of Heroes and City of Villains released on Tuesday, November 28, 2006. The title refers to the Police Radio Missions and Safeguard Missions that were added. Other important features were the introduction of the Veteran Rewards Program, and Faultline getting a revamp.

This article summarizes some of the major features in Issue 8. For more complete details, see the release date's patch notes.

• On October 14, 2006, Issue 8 Open Beta began on the Training Room.
• Issue 8 was released to the Live Servers on November 28, 2006.

Common Changes

Veteran Reward System

System that rewards players for every three months that their account has been active. At every three month milestone, various badges, powers, and costume items will be made available to all characters on the account.

Please see Veteran Rewards for more information.

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 Changes

• 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
• 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.

New Costume Items

• For all characters
  • (Back Options): Wings: Angel Wings and Demon Wings are introduce via the Veteran Rewards Program. (Other wings became available in Issue 9 via Inventions.)
  • (Head – Detail 1): Galactic Glasses, Government Glasses, Blast Goggles up
  • (Head – Ears): Floppy, Bunny, Cat, Rat, Teddy, Wildcat
• For Females only
  • (Upper Body - Chest - Tops with Skin): Angelic, Assassin, Excess, Savage, Tanker
  • (Lower body - Legs - Bottoms with Skin): Angelic, Assassin, Excess, Savage

• 

  Blast Goggles Up

• 

  Government Glasses

• 

  Galactic Glasses

• 

  Wild Cat Ears

• 

  Teddy Ears

• 

  Rat Ears

• 

  Floppy Ears

• 

  Cat Ears

• 

  Bunny Ears

• 

  Pony Tail Fat

• 

  Tanker(Front)

• 

  Savage (Front)

• 

  Savage (Back)

• 

  Excess (Front)

• 

  Excess (Back)

• 

  Assassin (Front)

• 

  Assassin (Back)

• 

  Angel (Front)

• 

  Angel (Back)

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

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.

New and 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

City of Heroes Changes

Faultline Revamp

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.

City of Villains Changes

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.

See Also

• Issue 8 Badges

External Links

• Positron E3 interview with the confirmations mentioned above.
• UK site preview of Veteran Rewards
• Official Feature Overview
• Dev Diary: Safeguard Missions Overview
• Safeguard Missions - Mini Strategy Guide
• Dev Diary: Faultline Reborn