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f13.net General Forums => City of Heroes / City of Villains => Topic started by: UnSub on February 24, 2010, 06:18:13 AM



Title: I17: Dark Mirror
Post by: UnSub on February 24, 2010, 06:18:13 AM
I17 update: (http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_17/issue_17_overview.html)

Quote
With the release of April's Issue 17: Dark Mirror, the newest free update of City of Heroes®, the game you love now has the visual depth, contrast, and richness it deserves! Dark Mirror includes a superior graphics rendering process, dubbed "Ultra Mode," that gives City of Heroes a heightened level of detail in lighting, reflections, shadows, and water effects. Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™ have never looked better.

In addition to Ultra Mode, as part of Issue 17, you will confront a new and nefarious foe who will be able to match your character blow for blow.

Other Issue 17: Dark Mirror features include:

    * Epic archetypes are now unlocked at level 20.
    * Animated character tails.
    * New missions, new badges, and new player emotes.
    * Quality of life enhancements to the UI and game systems.
    * Improvements and additions to Mission Architect.

Features

Ultra Mode

Ultra Mode includes a superior graphics rendering process for players who have higher-end graphic cards. Each feature can be enabled or disabled in the graphics menu options and will be scalable. Ultra Mode works on both Macs and PCs. In specific, it offers dynamic shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion, and dynamic environment reflections (including planar reflections and environment mapping of reflective surfaces).

Epic Archetypes Unlocked at Level 20

Previously, you had to have at least one character at level 50 to make an epic archetype character. No more! Now you can create an epic archetype character as long as you have any one character at level 20 or higher.

Animated Tails

No more tails lying about like dead weight! You will now be able to select tail body parts that will react to your movement and have a swaying or swishing idle animation mode. You will need to go to a tailor to upgrade to the animated version.
Content

New Story Arcs: Issue 17: Dark Mirror features two new Hero and two new Villain story arcs for levels 20-30. Each of these story arcs has four missions, and the story arcs highlight the Dark Mirror's sinister new enemy. Acquire first Hero story arc in Talos Island, and the first Villain arc in Sharkhead Isle.

Silver Mantis Strike Force Update: The Silver Mantis Strike Force will now be available to all Villains, not just supergroups. You now can access the Silver Mantis Strike Force via Silver Mantis, located in Sharkhead Isle. You can also run this Task Force from your supergroup computer.

Positron Task Force Update: This Task Force has been split into two halves and dramatically upgraded and updated to ramp up the fun. The final battle of the Task Force takes place in the Faultline Dam and incorporates the new Dark Mirror enemy.

New Badges: Along with adding badges for 500 Badges Earned, 750 Badges Earned, and 1,000 Badges Earned, we are adding new exploration badges to city zones, almost doubling the number of exploration badges. You can learn new Accolades for finding all of the exploration badges in each city zone.

New Player Emotes: We'll let you know more about the new emotes soon.
Quality of Life Improvements

Craftable Temporary Powers: You will now have a much cleaner and more consistent way of finding and crafting temporary powers.

Increased Mission Count: You can now have seven active missions (previously three).

Show Last Objective: This UI improvement lets you find your last objective on a mission map, making it easier to find something you've missed.

Auction House: The UI gives you new options for sorting search results, your Auction House inventory is now separated by clearly marked tabs based on the item's status, the Auction House text entry box now autocompletes, and a single click on a recipe displays all salvage needed for that recipe.

In-Game E-mail: You can now use in-game e-mails to send Influence/Infamy to your own characters or to other players' characters via in-game e-mails. (You still cannot send Influence, Infamy, or items from a Hero to a Villain or vice versa.)
Mission Architect Improvements

Experience: You can now handpick the powers for custom enemies and still receive experience for them (within game balance limits).

New Maps: We have added approximately 20 new unique maps.

Giant Monsters: You can now add giant monsters to some outdoor maps.

Exit Mission on Complete: You can now specify that players have to leave the mission manually on completion.

Escort Missions: "Lead to place" technology allows you more control over escort objectives.

Hooray on the Posi TF update. Don't like the retcon in the story on principle, but we'll see how it looks in execution. Otherwise, not that exciting an issue.


Title: Re: I17: Dark Mirror
Post by: Zetor on February 24, 2010, 06:49:50 AM
Lots of little quality-of-life improvements that are interesting (no more glowie hunts, yay?), and more story arcs / AE map variance is always good. But yeah, it looks like we are not getting 'really big stuff' until GR.

I'm kinda curious about the AE XP changes... that one line seems kinda vague. Need more info! (I admit I got kinda obsessed with creating AE arcs, even submitted an arc for the contest last week  :awesome_for_real:)


Title: Re: I17: Dark Mirror
Post by: ezrast on May 01, 2010, 03:17:12 PM
This came out a couple days ago. Ultra mode doesn't work on Wine, I loathe masterminds with every fiber of my being, and my current alt is juuust out of the 20-30 range, so the new content is all pretty irrelevant to me. The email and auction house changes make the whole damn issue worth it regardless, though the AH is non-functional until at least Monday.


Title: Re: I17: Dark Mirror
Post by: Koyasha on May 02, 2010, 01:38:39 AM
It should be noted that AE is, I believe, still completely broken because they put in a "fix" a little while ago that causes any mission with any allies or friendly characters or friendly objects in it to give severely reduced exp/tickets.  This isn't just combat allies, but anything that doesn't con hostile to you, essentially, so a rescue objective will lower the mission reward.  The mission I was working on went from being challenging and giving normal level 50 exp, to being challenging and giving almost no exp, because it's got an ally and a bunch of 'battle' events with friendly NPC's fighting hostile NPC's.  

The 'fix' was in order to prevent buffbot allies from being put into missions, but it would have been much better, and not broken the vast majority of AE mission rewards, if they had just removed the ability for friendly NPC's to provide buffs at all.  They plan to replace this with a 'better' fix that hopefully doesn't break all good content, but I have no idea when it's going to go in.

On the upside, the new story arc with I17 villain side was awesome.  It's one of the few times that felt pretty satisfying because you weren't just doing someone else's work, it was written so that you were working for yourself.  Even if it didn't fit my characters, exactly, it was still awesome to play through from that perspective.

The in game email upgrades are great and long time coming.  It's nice to finally be able to transfer money and items between alts, even if you still can't trade between hero and villain side in any manner.

Oh yeah, and the animated tails look pretty good.  I mean, they're not awesome (they just constantly wag, basically - should have had three to five animation cycles and randomly choose between them at the end of each one) but they're a lot better than the absolutely still tails previously allowed.

Naturally, there is a massive invasion of demons at the moment everywhere, since demon summoning was unlocked for GR preorders.


Title: Re: I17: Dark Mirror
Post by: UnSub on May 02, 2010, 06:38:58 PM
Only skimmed the surface of the I17 patch, but it really is filler before GoRo. Plus breaking both AE and the markets for the launch of I17 was  :uhrr: