Thursday, April 17, 2008

Test Center Patch 1.3 - Patch Notes (04/16/08)

Test Center Patch 1.3 - Patch Notes (04/16/08)
Update: New build.

These patch notes are for the build of Patch 1.3 currently deployed on the Test Center server.

Test Center Patch 1.3 Notes
April 16, 2008

New Features
  • Ranks and Expertise:
    • After characters hit Level 50, they can start earning experience towards gaining Ranks.
    • There are 50 Ranks, each of which will take an increasing amount of time to earn.
    • Rank is displayed under the character’s level and is visible to other players.
    • Each Rank grants you one Expertise Point which can be spent on an Expertise.
    • There will be 15 different kinds of Perks with four levels each.
    • Expertise will be displayed in a skill-tree-like fashion – with icons and pop-up text describing what the benefits are of the Expertise. Hit U to view the Expertise screen.
    • The first level for each Expertise will cost one Expertise Point. An additional Expertise Point will be needed to increase each level after the first, much like with upgrading an item using Nanoshards, for a total cost of 10 Expertise Points to max out an Expertise.
  • Shared Stash:
    • Now all characters on subscriber accounts can share their items! Current trade conventions do apply: items will not be able to be traded across play modes. Also, “no trade” items can not be placed in the Shared Stash.
  • Hide Helmet:
    • Players can elect to hide their headgear and show their characters’ faces without removing it. This toggle can be found at the bottom of the character screen.
  • Emotes:
    • A host of emotes are now at your disposal including beg, bow, cheer, cry, flex, kiss, laugh, point, stop, taunt, and wave. While others are also available on Test Center, these are being reserved as rewards. Type “/” and the word, then hit enter to perform it.
  • Inspect Players:
    • Players can now inspect other players’ equipment. Right-click on a nearby character and select the “Inspect” option to bring up a ragdoll interface showing the character and its equipment.
    • Players can prevent their characters from being inspected by toggling the Inspect option at the bottom of their character screen.
  • Premium Item Merchant:
    • Presently located in Stonehenge, Premium Item Merchant Ko has items for sale which are unidentified and do not reveal their actual rarity level. Players can risk their hard-earned Palladium to take a chance on these mystery premium items.
  • Optional Chat Bubbles:
    • Chat bubbles are now an optional chat feature and can be toggled in the Game Options menu. Different chat channels will appear as different text colors.
  • Donations:
    • The medics in our stations are now collecting donations to help the overall cause against the demons. When enough palladium is collected, all players on the server will gain the same random temporary buff. When a player gives a large single donation, an announcement across the entire server will herald their generosity. The overall collection goal might change occasionally. If everyone pitches in some palladium, we all will benefit. So give often. Give generously. For the living!
    • The Donation amount resets when the limit is reached. Over-donating does not add anything.
    • You can stack Donation-gained buffs by reaching the Donation limit multiple times.
    • Buffs persist through death and log-off/log-in.

General
  • The maximum Palladium a player may carry has been increased to 100,000,000.
  • The in-game mail database system has been rewritten, please provide feedback on it!
  • Premium Item Merchant Ko has been moved Covent Garden Station. He is subscriber-only.
  • Weapons will now hide when performing emotes.
  • Since many players enjoyed doing Oculis boss runs, we've done some work to allow these runs again, but this time in a more complete fashion. The portal from Monument Station to Angel Passage is now permanently blocked. Players who would like to fight Oculis after reaching Monument Station may use the Station Travel Terminal to return to Temple Station. Any player who has activated, or completed, the "Scrub the Deck" quest and does not have a Cleanser, may speak with Ser Sing in Temple Station to get another one. The Cleanser is no longer removed when the "Scrub the Deck" quest is completed.
  • The change which scaled proc damage to be based on weapon speed was inadvertently left in this build. Please ignore this mechanic as it will not be implemented. Proc-on-hit mechanics and damages will remain the same as they did in Patch 1.2 - they will not be changed in Patch 1.3.

Stonehenge
  • Whenever a player enters a level, all monsters (and their equipment/treasure) are scaled up to that person’s level and the monster’s health is filled, if both: the level is one that is supposed to scale to the player’s level, and if the player is higher level than the player who created the level.
  • Change to the new Monster Scaling mechanic: Players now have a 3-level buffer before monsters are upgraded. This means that monsters will only be re-scaled if a player 3 levels above the level of the monsters enters the adventure area.
  • Characters must now be level 15 to enter Stonehenge.

User Interface
  • Party members’ names now show up on the automap when the Alt key is held down.
  • The name of the recipient of a trade request is now displayed in the trade window.
  • Players may now choose to abbreviate the names of other players in the chat window down to a maximum of nine letters. This option can be toggled under Game Options.
  • Fixed a bug causing items to register as not equippable if they give enough of an attribute to make up for the amount of feed they will cost.
  • Fixed a bug causing some items to unequip when the player enters the game or zones.
  • Improved the accuracy of attribute and feed changes in the character panel when hovering over an item.
  • The “Hardcore” indicator icon now shows up to the left of the player’s name.
  • Fixed a bug causing clicks in the server list drop-down menu to sometimes click through to buttons underneath it.
  • Buttons have been added to the chat interface allowing for quick access to chat commands and emotes. They can be found in the lower right corner of the chat panel.

World Movement
  • Players can now warp to any friend or guildmate who is in a town by right-clicking on the person’s name. The buddy list and guild list will have the player’s current location noted.

Combat
  • Fixed a bug which sometimes caused shields and/or power to decrease in larger chunks than they should when getting hit or using a skill.
  • Fixed a bug which caused proc effects to not be properly normalized based on the weapon’s speed.
  • Fixed a bug which caused proc-on-attack effects to never trigger.
  • Fixed a bug which would sometimes cause skill cooldowns to not trigger.
  • Fixed a bug which caused fields to often not damage monsters in indoor areas.
  • Fixed a bug which caused Armor Percent bonuses to be applied twice during damage reduction calculations.

PvP
  • Players with PvP enabled may no longer open party portals.
  • Consumable items other than Medpacks are no longer usable in PvP.

Skills
  • If a player removes an item that grants them the only point in a summoning skill, or otherwise forgets a summoning skill, all pets summoned by that skill will now be dismissed.
  • The Phase Elemental’s (Summoner) spectral nova particles have been redone to improve performance.
  • Monsters now receive damage from Rebounder Rounds when they are aimed at ground.

Ranks/Expertise
  • Active Expertise has been removed. All Expertise is now passive.
  • The “Perks” tab has been renamed “Expertise”.
  • Various Expertise skills have been renamed.

Items
  • Gyro Stabilizers may now be used while stunned.
  • Fixed a bug which sometimes caused a crash when the player attempts to drop a quest item.
  • Fixed a bug which caused many skill-group related properties to not properly provide their bonuses.

Fixes
  • Expertise bonuses have been updated.
  • Fixed a bug that caused players to be unable to assign Expertise Points when all of their Skill Points had been spent.
  • Premium Item Merchant Ko now sells items that are closer in level to the level of the player.
  • Fixed a problem with the character’s paper doll after inspecting a player.
  • Fixed a bug causing various characters to fail to load.
  • Fixed a bug (introduced in 1.3) that was causing grouped players to not receive the proper group benefits to experience and treasure.
  • Perk icons are in.
  • Many new skill and status icons.
  • Fixed a bug causing Rebounder Rounds to not do damage if the missile/bullet hits the ground first.
  • Fixed a bug which caused monster nameplates to not always update the level of the monster.
  • Fixed a bug which caused Moloch to sometimes not drop loot for players in the area.
  • Fixed a bug which was allowing Nanodyne Ballistic Cannons, including The Exterminator, to make multiple attacks on a single target much more quickly than designed.
  • Fixed a bug which caused the quest reward dialog to not always disappear when multiple people receive their rewards at the same time.
  • Fixed a bug causing the New Email icon to flash upon logging in, even when there were no new emails.

Known Issues
  • While Rank experience is not being saved, Rank is. If you log out, experience gained towards your next Rank will be lost.
---

Patch Notes Disclaimer: While we make every effort to include all upcoming changes in our patch notes, please be aware that occasionally some changes are unintentionally omitted.

---

Happy testing, Hellgaters!
-- Scapes

__________________
[ community manager | Hellgate: London | Flagship Studios ]
[ in-game names | Scapes, Scaper-X, ScaperX, Scaperilous, Scapesalicious, Hellgaters ]
[ quote | "Nothing reveals humanity so well as the games it plays." ]

Last edited by Scapes-Flagship : Yesterday at 05:17 PM. Reason: Update.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Underground Communique #3 (Week of April 14th)

Two Weeks, Two Patches, Five New Versions Total

Last week was certainly a busy and productive one. It was the second week in a row that Friday yielded new builds of both the Single Player Patch 1.2 Beta and Test Center Patch 1.3. Additionally, yesterday saw a third new build of the latter uploaded to the Test Center server, increasing the already lengthy patch notes by half.

Single Player Patch 1.2 Beta is on the cusp of completion with just one more bug preventing its ultimate release. A new build is due out later tonight and should address the persistent bug which prevented players from creating Elite Mode characters. An announcement will be made on the forums when this penultimate version is ready for download. As always, please backup your saved Hellgate: London data before installing this patch.

---

Exercising Our "Evil Eye"

A recent update to our game servers introduced some database software which will allow our gameplay metric system, The Evil Eye, to document a wide assortment of Hellgate: London statistics for the education and edification of our players. Just today we took a "Game Snapshot" for this past week on the Test Center server and generated "Top 5" reports on the game's richest guilds, top average richest guilds, top friended characters, and most popular character classes.

As this was a test run, we culled data from the Test Center rather than the live servers but weekly Game Snapshots are planned and should offer even more tantalizing details about Hellgaters' habits and superlatives. Check out the Top 5 lists yielded here on the forums.

---

Forum Section Created Solely for Patch Notes

Looking for a bit of Hellgate history? Trying to determine when X rebalance or Y bug fix was first introduced? Look no further than the Patch Notes subforum on the official Hellgate: London forums. This section has been made to house all final release versions of Hellgate: London's patch notes since the game's launch in October 2007. From Patch 0 to Patch 1.2, they're all there. The website's Patches section is also being updated to include this information.

---

Hellgate: London Celebrates the Most Successful Online Korean Launch in Three Years

San Francisco, CA (April 11th, 2008) - Flagship Studios today announced that its action role-playing game Hellgate: London has become the most successful online video game launch for Korea in the past three years with over 1 million accounts registered within the first two weeks of its open beta test. Hellgate: London is the first online game in over three years to use a monthly subscription business model.

You can read the full press release either on the Flagship Studios website or the Hellgate: London forums.

---

Hellgate: London's Community Manager Playing Hellgate: London?

It's not as fantastic as it sounds! Scapes, Hellgate: London's Community Manager, can often be found chatting it up with other Hellgaters in Chat-1 on the Shulgoth (US) server using a character of the same name. So stop by, hang out, ask some questions and I'll do my best to answer them and/or crack witticisms in the midst of multitasking any number of other odd tasks. (If I'm a bit slow to reply, you now know why.)

To join Chat-1, enter "/channeljoin chat-1" without the quotation marks into the chat pane. To enter text into the chat channel, enter "/chat" (again, no quotation marks) to set your target channel, then type away.

---

Well That Was a Long One

I've a feeling this could be the average length of these Underground Communiques. Would seem the format is leveling out some, too. However, if you have suggestions, I'd like to hear them. Click the "Talk About This Story!" link below to be taken to the forum thread where you can post your ideas, grammar corrections, recipes for Seared Carnagor Salad, whathaveyou.

Hope it was an enjoyable read! Take care of yourselves in old London town, Hellgaters!
-- Scapes