Updates/2008-06-23

Deployment 9 is now live!

There are a few items that we've added to the Public Test Server with this build as well. These items include the new Control Point Wargame test map, clan lockboxes, and our latest instance, Velon Hollow. These will stay on PTS for Deployment 9. For more information on these new features, please see the Feedback Fridays for 5/23 and 5/30.

Maps and Missions

 * Eight Control points across the game have had modifications made to walls and layout, as follows:
 * Concordia Divide (Hydroplant): Added war tent, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter.
 * Torden Plains (Lightning Fields): Expanded CP, added another entrance, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter, added services tents.
 * Torden Incline (Ortho Post): Levelled terrain around CP walls, simplified wall layout, added war tent, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter, replaced services building with tents.
 * Valverde Plateau (Northwest AFS): Expanded CP, added another entrance, added turrets, added war tent and other services tents, added dropship pad, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter.
 * Valverde Marshes (Research Point): Expanded CP, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter, added war tent and other service tents.
 * Ligo Thunderhead (Outpost Aurora): Expanded CP, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter, added war tent, replaced services buildings with tents.
 * Torden Abyss (Charon’s Crossing): Added war tent, replaced services building with tents, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter, added turrets to East and West walls, modified terrain to divert lava flow at South entrance.
 * Howling Maw (Dead Zone Power Station): Added war tent, placed catwalk walls around entire perimeter, added turrets.
 * The entrance to the upcoming instance “Velon Hollow” has been added to Valverde Plateau, southeast of A.F.S. Camp Resistance.
 * Added sick Foreans to the Velon Das Ruins on Valverde Plateau.
 * New Plateau mission “Village Of The Damned,” available from Luminary Sampeii at New Velon Village, introduces the new “Velon Hollow” mission arc.
 * Plateau Mission "Clean Slate" has been reworked as a spawned escort, allowing multiple players to accept it simultaneously.
 * Boss level Magmonix will no longer spawn randomly with regular Magmonix. This should also increase the drop rate of any missions that require the player to kill Magmonix.
 * Plains: The mission 'Scout Atta Hive Entrance' is no longer required to take the mission 'Into the Hive'.
 * The “Negative” Logos Shrine on Concordia Divide now displays the correct symbol.
 * The “Negative” Logos has been more clearly defined as “Negative, Subtract” in player’s Logos Tabula.
 * A new control point (Control Point: Abyssal Zone) has been unearthed south of Irendas Penal Colony on Arieki: Torden Plains. AFS Corps of Engineers is busily setting up base defenses and infrastructure.

Avatars

 * 'Heavy' and 'HazMat' Armor sets optimization is complete! In the process of optimizing textures and meshes on these sets the art team has added minor refinements to the female to enhance their beauty.
 * Fixed several issues with the Hybrid Heads to make them work with all of the Human Helmets and Berets.
 * In the process of optimizing the avatar heads, female faces are now fully optimized. Much of the remaining inconsistencies perceived in the quality of faces is a result of inconsistent lighting models, which is a much larger task will be tackled in a future patch.
 * Adjusted lighting and ordering of face choices in Character Creation screen.
 * Female characters are no longer bald when wearing berets.
 * Fixed a bug where a black area would appear on the Female Upper face 5 option.

Classes & Combat

 * EMP damage against biological targets will ignore armor piercing modifiers and apply the full amount of damage to armor. If the target is mechanical, it will function as before.
 * The Clones created by an Exobiologist and a Reconstructor Bot will now do slightly more damage.
 * Creating a Reality Ripper will no longer cause Targeting Problems.
 * Players were not rewarding the proper amount of Kill Credit when healing outside of group; but only by a small amount. This has been corrected.
 * Fixed a minor graphics issue with Cryogenic Polarity guns.
 * The visual effects for Polarity Field are now consistent with the damage type of the debuff.
 * Tactical Evasion Pump 3 is now properly applying the debuff to enemies.
 * Polymorph Pump 2 Mini Turret can now attack and be attacked in PvP.
 * EMP Bombs have been added to Hospital vendors.
 * Several items can now be sold in the Military Surplus that were not allowed previously.
 * The following abilities have had their casting times decreased.
 * Tectonic Strike
 * Scatterbombs
 * Resistance
 * Cure
 * Bioaugmentation
 * Reconstruction
 * The following abilities have had their visual effects toned down.
 * Feedback
 * Reflection
 * Called Shot Rank 5
 * Target Painting
 * Lighting Rank 5
 * Feedback Changes
 * The casting time of this ability has been decreased.
 * The damage to the target has been increased.
 * The duration of rank 5 has increased.
 * The radius of rank 5 has been increased.
 * Sacrifice Changes
 * The casting time of this ability has been decreased.
 * Rank 1 - 10% damage increase, 0% health drain
 * Rank 2 - 20% damage increase, 0% health drain
 * Rank 3 - 30% damage increase, 5% health drain
 * Rank 4 - 50% damage increase, 5% health drain
 * Rank 5 - 75% damage increase, 15% health drain
 * Immunity is now Resistance
 * Each rank increases the target’s resistance to one damage type. The amount of damage resisted increases as the user spends more skill points.
 * Rank 1 – Viral (20% resistance if this is the highest rank learned.)
 * Rank 2 - Sonic (40% resistance if this is the highest rank learned.)
 * Rank 3 - Electric (60% resistance if this is the highest rank learned.)
 * Rank 4 - Ice (80% resistance if this is the highest rank learned.)
 * Rank 5 – Physical (100% resistance if this is the highest rank learned.)

Clan System Revisions

 * The clan system has been revised to allow for new rule sets for clan participation:
 * A character can only be in one clan at a time.
 * PvE Clans:
 * Players can be on various PvE clans per account. Each character can choose the PvE clan they wish to be a part of with that character.
 * Leaving a PvE clan no longer requires a 7 day period to run out before joining another PvE clan.
 * PvP Clans:
 * Players may be in only one PvP clan per account. All other characters of the account can join the same PvP clan, but they cannot be in another clan that is PvP.
 * Leaving a PvP clan still requires a 7 day period to run out before joining another PvP clan.
 * The clan creation form has been revised to show requirements needed for creating a PvE or PvP clan.
 * Players can now see whether they pass all requirements needed to create the clan.
 * Clan Leader inactivity timer has been implemented:
 * If a clan leader has been inactive for a period of 21 days, leadership will be transferred highest ranking member that has been with than clan the longest.
 * This timer is not retroactive and will begin once the patch is implemented.

Prestige System - Item Wagering

 * It is now possible to wager items for increased Prestige Gain in combat actions.
 * Wagering items will provide a bonus to prestige gained for:
 * Fighting control point minions and bosses
 * Fighting mini bosses
 * Fighting other players
 * Items can be wagered by placing them in the wagered slot of the Prestige Pane (default key 'I')
 * Items wagered are restricted to the following:
 * -4 to +4 levels of your character
 * Items must be of a high quality level:
 * Modified (Green) items - 20% bonus to Prestige
 * Experimental (Blue) items - 35% bonus to Prestige
 * Prototype (Purple) items - 50% bonus to Prestige
 * Once wagered, an item becomes locked as soon as you go into combat. This item cannot be removed/swapped out unless:
 * You out level the item or...
 * You swap in an item of a higher level or...
 * You swap in an item of a higher quality level
 * Wagered items will be lost to your opponent if you are killed.

Prestige System - PvP Prestige

 * It is now possible to gain Prestige by fighting other players.
 * PvP Prestige can be gained through clan wargames only.
 * There are two ways of gaining Prestige related to PvP kills - stolen Prestige and generated Prestige.
 * Stolen Prestige:
 * The winning player will earn a percentage of their opponent's prestige based on a 10 level relationship to the opponent. Outside of this level range, only a percentage is given based on level difference.
 * Generated Prestige:
 * The winning player will earn a generated amount of Prestige for killing their opponent. This prestige is scaled based on a 10 level relationship to the opponent. Outside of this level range, only a percentage is given based on level difference.
 * Generated prestige is not provided for killing the same player within a fixed period of time.

Interaction

 * Added /who to the right click chat functionality.
 * Squad merge functionality: We have modified the invite command and created a join command that will allow you to combine groups. Examples are as follows. When Bob (the leader of his squad) invites Sally (a single person or leader of her squad) that means that Sally and her squad (if they exist) will join Bob's squad. In this case, Bob remains the leader. If Bob does a join to Sally, that means that Bob and his squad (if the exist) will be moved into Sally's group with Sally being the leader. Note: invite and join will only function if the resulting party is under 6 people; this will not allow you to form groups larger than 6.
 * Request to join has been added to the right click chat functionality, as well as the player context section of the radial menu.
 * Clan names will now appear on opponent players engaged in a Clan Wargame

Framework

 * Fixed a bug with teleporters failing to load the first time.
 * The Realtime Quality Scaling (RQS) system has had some improvements
 * The RQS System is now active by default.
 * RQS can now be viewed with /fps.
 * Animation update rate is now part of RQS.
 * Particle update rate has been added to RQS.
 * Added shadow distance and light distance to RQS.
 * Shadows will "pop" and draw no further than 20m.
 * Lights culling will move in gradually from 50-100m to 20m depending on quality mode. So lights will not be visible past that distance.
 * Added disable specular/static shadows to RQS.
 * Added disable refraction to RQS.
 * Added flora density to RQS.
 * Added dynamic shadows to RQS.
 * Fixed fogging for low/RQS. Fog no longer pulls in so close to camera (clearer).
 * Friend and Ignore relationships are now user-based instead of character-based. So, if you friend another player, all of your characters will be friends with all of their characters; there is no need to add a separate friend relationship for every character. (The same goes for ignores). Your social window will display only one entry for every user that you are friends with or ignoring, so you may see significantly fewer entries than you had before.
 * Various hardware and client game settings are now sent and logged on the server. This information will be used to help further improve performance only.
 * Fixed an issue where an already dead predator would comes into view, it would show up in its unexploded shape, sitting on the ground.
 * Fixed an issue where sometimes a creature/player has been killed, but it continues to stand up, and play idle animations. Client shows target as alive, but with zero hitpoints.
 * Fixed an issue where a creature/player is stuck in the lying down pose, but can be seen moving around. Client shows the entity as dead and un-targetable.
 * Fixed an issue where a creature/player is stuck in the lying down pose, but can be seen moving around. Client shows the entity as alive and targetable.
 * Fixed an issue where an already dead entity would come into view, and the death animation sometimes failed to play, leaving the entity in a T pose.
 * Now when any character on your account leaves a PvP clan (by their own decision - not including kicks) it will keep any other character from joining another PvP clan for 7 days.
 * Descent: Take a Flying Leap - The telechute will now appear in the Equipment tab of your inventory.
 * Descent: Take a Flying Leap - The telechute is now correctly removed from your character upon completing the mission.

Known Issues

 * Missions: Crucible: Refusing to help the AWOLs completes the Other Side of the Coin mission, and fails the Stray Cats mission. This should be the opposite.
 * Decent: Refuge: Mission: Race to the Finish: Timer does not sync for all party members
 * Once a clan leader has been inactive for 21 days, the clan leadership will be transferred to the longest standing officer in the clan. The Leader is demoted to officer. Once the new clan leader has been inactive for 21 days, the clan leadership will be transferred to the previous clan leader as he is now the ranking officer with the longest history in the clan.
 * Map: CP Wargame: Map loading screen is missing recon intel.
 * Some tools are appearing with weapon mods on them. However those mods are not active.
 * Item Wagering: Can not replace a locked item with a higher quality item
 * Prestige: Gain/Loss is being filtered out from the HUD/Chat Window, however new installs have this on by default.
 * RQS: Slider bar for setting frame rate does not display frame rate selections
 * Abilities: Player constructed crab mines that detonate while within a bane shield, reflect all damage done back to player
 * Abilities: Traitor not functioning as stated in tooltips
 * UI: Vendor: Recently sold items with a sold value range of 1000 to 8400 are not displaying correctly
 * The Shadow Distance Slider does not work.

-Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa, [Patch Notes]