Known Issues

Overview

This is a listing of bugs identified by players which are not listed as part of the official list of known issues.

'Known Issues' are well known and reproducible game bugs where the game is not working as intended (presumably) by the Developers.

It is not a wish list of features or a critique of mechanics or style which is working (presumably) by intention. Nor is it a list of occasionally appearing bugs whose origin is unknown or not yet reliably reproducible (these may actually be problems of a player's graphics card, for example, and not a 'game bug').

See also: Pages marked with the Bug Tag

Characters

Losing EAT Access

Occasionally, patches will "unflag" an account with access to Kheldians and/or Soldiers of Arachnos. The player will not be able to create an epic archetype until logging into a level 20 the appropriate faction. If the player no longer has (deleted) their level 20 of the appropriate faction, the player is no longer capable of making epic archetypes of that faction until they gain another 20.

Close to 50,000 Days Offline

The log-in character screen sometimes reports that a character has been offline for close to fifty thousand days. This happens when your computer's clock is behind the server's record of when you were last online and generates a negative number of days offline which is interpreted in machine code as a really big number instead. If your computer's internal clock is correct, then this will resolve itself either in the next log-in or within a few days. This figure does not affect anything else in the game, such as determining when Veteran Rewards are granted or Day Job Badges are earned.

Costumes

Capes

Half Cape

The Valkyrie pattern on the half cape went missing. If the Valkyrie pattern is supposed to be available for the half cape, then presumably these other pay-for patterns should also be available for the half-cape: Occult, Arcane, DVD Edition Cape (Four Winds), COV DVD Edition Cape (Arachnos).

Full Cape

From level 1, all the other Double Shoulder mantle options (Full, Half, Asymmetrical, Over Shoulder Mantles) have the Valkyrie Pattern. So, presumably they should also have the Occult, Arcane, DVD Edition Cape (Four Winds), and the COV DVD Edition Cape (Arachnos) patterns -- but they don't. All those patterns, however, are available on the High Collar Cape from level 1 onward, which is inconsistent.

High Collar

From level 1, the High Collar has these options for Male and Huge Models:

• Basic > no detail2
• Occult > no detail2
• Arcane > no detail2
• Long Cape > all standard patterns
• COV DVD Edition Cape (Arachnos) > no detail2
• DVD Edition Cape (Four Winds) > no detail2
• Valkyrie > no detail2

Notice how having the Magic Booster High Collar Capes allows you at level 1 to basically have any cape in the game. You want a cape with the fire logo or the Arctic cape? Just chose High Collar and Long and you can have it from level 1. The only thing missing here is a High Collar Short Cape option with all the standard patterns.

Notice that these were the options for Male and Huge Models. For the Female Model at level 1 only this was available under High Collar:

• Basic > no detail2
• Arcane > no detail2
• Valkyrie > no detail2

Not only were the Long and DVD capes missing, but so was the Occult Cape which is very much a part of the Booster Pack. The Occult Collar was also missing for the Female Model.

Female Capes

Once capes are unlocked, the Female Model has High Collar > Short Cape as an option, but the capes are not short, they're still long. (Also, Occult is still missing.)

Crab Back Packs on Second Build

If you create a dual build Soldier of Arachnos and one build is a Crab and, thus, has the Crab Back Pack, then the other build, even if it is not a Crab Soldier, will also have a Crab Back Pack.

User Interface

/chantimeout Command Not Working

Certain global chat channels are unable to continue to use the /chantimeout command. While the command initially worked with the release of Issue 18, it was broken in a later patch on August 26th, 2010 or August 31st, 2010. It was escalated to a bug report by GM_Roland and sent to quality assurance for resolution by GM_Gabriel on September 3rd, 2010.

Oversized Windows Can't Close

This is noted on the Official Known Issues: "800 x 600 resolution prevents some windows from being closable, like the enhancement description window in the tutorial." The workaround is to zone or enter/leave a mission, or, use one of the following slash commands:

/dialog_answer choice - Answer dialog with button matching the provided text choice (ok, yes, no, cancel, or accept)

/dialog_no - Answer OK, No, or Cancel to current dialog

/dialog_yes - Answer OK, Yes, or Accept to current dialog

/gamereturn - Leave fullscreen, close dialogs, and close non-essential windows. Alias: /window_close_extra

Petsay Binds

As of Issue 13, code has been added to prevent players from crashing other players clients through tags that use angle brackets (the greater than and less than signs, <, >).

As of Issue 18 this has been fixed for almost all binds and macros with one exception: Newly made /petsay binds can't parse the angle brackets. However, petsay macros do work.

As a workaround, you can use the /beginchat in a bind to put the petsay command into the command line and then just hit enter. E.g.:

/bind <key> beginchat "/petsayall <emote dance>"

Will put /petsayall <emote dance> in the command line. Then just hit enter.

Help Channel and Help Chat Tab

Theoretically, when you chose the Help Tab as the Active Tab, then typing in the chat window should broadcast that line of text into the Help Chat Channel. However, this is now broken. When the Devs gave the /help command (which opens the Help Window) the alias of /h, it replaced the Chat Tab's own use of the /h command. And so, if you try to use either the /h command or the Active Help Tab in order to chat in the Help Channel, the UI will interpret both of those as /help and your text as the arguments for the /help command. But, since the /help command takes no arguments, you'll get a system error message telling you /help takes 0 arguments.

The only way to type in the Help Channel now is to use the /hc command.

Window Transparency Setting

It doesn't stick. Every time the options window is opened the slider moves toward zero.

Workaround: The transparency of the windows can be set with the /window_color command. It takes an argument of four integers from 0 - 255 each separated by a space. The four integers set the Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha (transparency) values. And so, e.g.,

/window_color 0 255 0 100 -- would yield very green window borders that are nearly half transparent with the window space on the inside nearly invisible.

/window_color 200 0 200 230 -- would yield very purple borders about 60% opaque and an inside window about 90% opaque.

Such commands can be set to a bind or macro or popmenu for quick resetting. Or it can be bound to an often used command so that it's constantly being reset without having to think about it.

Colorblindness

Here are UI design 'problem areas' for the colorblind:

• The blue v. green ribbon of the book icon in the contact window which indicates minor v. major story arcs. Workaround: hover your cursor over the icon for the tooltip. Or try a player-made overlay that replaces the major arc icon with something clearly different from the minor arc icon. See this forum thread.

Combat Monitor Attribute Name Issue

Some Attributes cannot be called properly using the /MonitorAttribute slash command. For example, the Attribute "Energy Defense" cannot be loaded this way: Using the name "Energy Defense" will only add the Attribute "Negative Energy Defense" and trying to use "Energy Resistance" will actually display "Negative Energy Resistance". (These two particular Attributes are a known issue, but has not been addressed yet.)

In Mission or In Supergroup Base?

Sometimes the status indicator of teammates will incorrectly list where they are. If they go to the Supergroup Base, it will say that they're in the mission. If they go into the mission, it will sometimes say they're in their Supergroup Base. There is no known workaround to make it show their correct location.

Real Numbers and Info

Team Teleport

The right click info and the enhancement screen info list the range of Team Teleport as 25 ft. It should be listed correctly as 225 ft.

Travel Power Status Icons

When you right click a travel power icon under your health bar the 'real numbers' that display are not necessarily understandable or reflect your actual Speed. However, the 'real numbers' concerning travel powers that display under the Combat Attributes and Monitor windows are correct. Here's a breakdown of the numbers shown by the travel icons:

• Sprint: The Running Speed shown is the base running speed plus the buff the Sprint power is adding. It does not include other RunSpeed buffs the character may have.
• SuperSpeed: The Running Speed shown is the base running speed plus the buff the SuperSpeed power is adding. It does not include other RunSpeed buffs the character may have. Since this may be over the RunSpeed cap, it can be a much higher speed than what you are actually running.
• Flight: The Flying Speed shown includes the base flying speed an extra three times, making that number ridiculously high. This happens more than likely because, internally, there are an extra three buffs/debuffs to flying speed which normally cancel each other out and each one is adding in the base FlySpeed to the final buff equation.
• Hover: The Flying Speed shown includes the base flying speed an extra two times, making that number ridiculously high. This happens more than likely because, internally, there are an extra two buffs/debuffs to flying speed equation.

Missions

Crash at Task Force Ending

While it is not unknown to experience an occasional disconnect or crash when zoning, it has become very common and even expected that several members of a Task Force will disconnect/crash upon the completion of the last mission of the TF.

(Moved to fixed on 3/17/10 -- there's been no complaints of this on the boards for a long time. And put back 9/13/10... it seems it's back in limited form.)

Lady Grey Task/Strike Force

In the last mission, there is a graphical anomaly in last room where at the entrance to the room large sections of the room are no longer drawn. Moving away from the entrance restores visibility.

Safeguard Safes

The safe door in Safeguard missions is invisible.

Mayhem Safes and MM Pets

MM Pets won't attack the safe door unless they are first moved to point blank range of the door.

Mayhem Ambushes Missing

The usual ambushes of Longbow that occur aren't happening. The Paragon Hero and cohorts show up when the safe door is destroyed, but no one else.

Arachnos Maps: Momentary Freezing

When approaching the huge multi-story room or the huge jail cell room on an Arachnos tile map, the game freezes from 2 to 10 seconds. That is 'normal' and everyone on your team will experience it as that extra large section of the map is populated with spawns and sent to your client and drawn by your computer.

Extreme Lag in Imperious Task Force

The third mission in the Imperious Task Force causes extreme sever-side lag which not only interrupts game flow, but also causes players to disconnect on frequent occasions.

Mission Door Waypoint in Port Oakes

Sometimes a waypoint for a mission in Port Oakes leads to an empty space or points to somewhere deep underground, but there are no tunnels down there on the map. Workarounds include...

If it's an empty space waypoint, the door is usually in sight nearby. One can click around to find it. Or, occasionally, the waypoint on the mini-map is right and expanding that map and moving yourself to that location will help find the door.

If it's a waypoint that points deep underground, it's usually a problem with the lobby of the main building in Port Oakes (the one that houses the VillainGroup Registrar and some Store Contacts), which is indeed physically located under the map (and not actually at street level in the building). One can try going into that lobby and clicking all the doors there.

Sometimes choosing a different mission and back to the problematic mission will clear up the wayward waypoint. Or sometimes zoning out and back into Port Oakes will fix it. Or, one can /petition it and wait for a GM. Or, the mission can be dropped.

Mercedes Sheldon's Arcs in Flashback

March 16, 2010. Mercedes Sheldon's arcs are not granting Ouroboros badges when flashbacked. (CoH Board post)

Critters

Coralax spawns in The Hollows

As of July 12, 2009, the Coralax are spawning as if they were normal spawns, in full view. Normally, they are hidden spawns, untargetable and only appearing when a player of the appropriate level gets near, or they are aggroed by a power.

Powers

Paragon Rewards Attacks Not Listed in Email

Some players will not have all of the three Paragon Rewards attacks available even if they qualify for them. This will occasionally affect only some characters on a single account (typically older characters that were created pre-Freedom and the change from Veteran to Paragon Rewards).

The workaround is to type the following into the chat line: /accountcertificationclaim alt_ltlbsamu

Oil Slick Not Working in MA

In Mission Architect missions, the Oil Slick will con as a blue friendly critter and not as an orange targetable and attackable critter. So, in MA missions, when you try to light the slick with an attack, you'll wind up actually hitting what the Oil Slick is targeting through assisting and not hit the Oil Slick at all.

Auto Power not Firing

When one targets an object or NPC which is not a valid object to attack, a power that has been set to auto-fire will not go off, even if it's not an attack power, such as Hasten. Hitting escape (ESC) to clear the targeting field or targeting an attackable object/NPC will fix this and the auto power will start firing on its own again.

This is technically not a known issue. This was implemented on purpose, mainly in response to the players who linger in the auction house with a click power on auto.

Team Teleport

In multiple, successive Team Teleports, teammates and pets sometimes are not caught up in the next Teleport and drop out... literally drop.

Group Fly

• Teammates and pets set on follow can be easily outpaced and then they drop out of Group Fly... literally drop. And speed buffs the caster has does not get passed onto those affected by Group Fly making matters worse.

• In the case of Masterminds with many pets set on follow, they wind up jostling each other while following causing them to sometimes pause to figure out the right path to follow, which then causes them to drop out of Group Fly.

Portable Workbench Accolade

If you summon a portable workbench and then move some distance away from it, it looks like it will appear near your new position. This is just the graphic though. Clicking on it will not allow you to create inventions. The workbench remains in the place it was originally summoned, though it is now invisible.

Ouroboros Portal Interrupting Zone Teleporters

When a player uses an Ouroboros Portal, the disappearance of that portal once the player steps through interrupts the use of any other players' zone teleporting power (teleporting to base, Pocket D, mission, Wentworths or the Black Market). This interruption is long range, about 500 ft., and even interrupts out of line of sight.

Bases

Broken Beacon Art

The beacons for Grandville and Pocket D point to the 'broken' art versions as if they were not working due to being destroyed in a raid when, in fact, they do work.

Mission Architect

Escorts on Timed Missions

Successfully leading an escort on a timed mission will cause that mission to fail. Workaround: Take out the lead escort out goal or the timed goal.

Fire on Kill All Maps

Maps with Fires on them (such as the Nerva Primeval beach) are counting those Fires as foes for the sake of a kill all mission. Since the Fires are untargetable, kill-alls on those maps are impossible to complete.

Fixed

PC and MA NPC Description Format

The description for a player character that is inputted in the ID screen and the description for custom critters in the Mission Architect lose all formatting when first written or later edited. Spacing and line and paragraph breaks are stripped out. There are no known workarounds. This was fixed around Issue 15.

No Animations or Auras in Creator

When creating a new character or at the tailor, the character isn't animating: there is no breathing, combat stance, cape movement, or auras displayed. The Devs are working on this as a high priority, Back Alley Brawler said,

"Just a head's up, we've verified this issue in this particular incremental build. Not sure what's caused it, as we can't even replicate with the latest code/assets, but the programmers are looking into it.

Right now, it appears to be purely cosmetic, and only affects characters in the costume creator/tailor screen. So we're considering it a non-critical, but high priority bug. If anyone knows of any similar effects outside of those areas, please let us know as soon as possible.

Workaround: Select scales over colors and the character will animate until you switch back to colors.

(Moved to fix on 8/11/09)

Semicolon Shortcut

The semicolon is a shortcut for the emote command. Typing ;wave is the same as /emote wave. It used to be the default that hitting the semicolon would open up chat with a semicolon, but now, it opens up chat with a slash '/' (which is exactly what slash does already).

Workaround: Rebind the semicolon with this bind...

/bind ; "show chat$$beginchat ;"

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Colorblindness

Here are UI design 'problem areas' for the colorblind:

• The pink v. blue Patrol Experience v. Experience in the health bar. Partial Workaround: Open up an Attribute Monitor for debt, XP, and/or XP needed for next level.

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Global Channel Colors Not Sticking

You can left-click on the name of a global channel in a chat window (not the command line) and chose to set the color of that channel. But the color selected doesn't stick when you zone or re-login except for the channel you most recently joined. Workarounds:

• If there's one channel you use much more than any other, you can leave and rejoin that channel so that it's the most recently joined, and thus, the color setting will stick on that one, and then you can ignore the rest.
• The color settings do get saved to a chat options file (the default is chat.txt when you click on the chat settings button in the options window). However, the client doesn't read that file each time you zone, it doesn't even seem to be reading it when you first load up the client as one would expect it to. So, you can set the channel colors, save them to a file, and each time you zone or load your client, you can recall that saved chat option file. You can do so with a simple bind or macro, or, you can add the command to an often used bind or key so that the file is loaded often without thinking about it. Examples:

/bind <key> "chatload"

/bind w "+forward$$chatload"

/bind <key> "chatload$$beginchat /send "Global Channel Name" [$name]:"

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Tooltips on Recipes

Tooltips on Recipes don't always pop up like they used to. If the Market window is open or sometimes other windows, especially if they're 'behind' the Recipe Window, then the tooltip won't pop up. If you have more than one recipe display box open, only the active one, which is the last one you clicked on, shows the tooltip.

Workaround: Right-click the recipe and chose Info. Be careful, that same menu has delete right next to info.

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Chat Buffer Bug

Characters typed for movement, powers, or other actions sometimes end up also dumped at the start of chat buffers, resulting in blocks of undesired, gibberish characters at the start of the players chats. Acknowledged by Castle as a known issue that is turning out to be quite difficult to fix.

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Drones Loop Explosion

Rikti Drones and Arachnos Drones (and probably anything else that uses the same explosion animation) will loop their defeat explosion over and over until they finally despawn.

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Necro Pets and IO Sets

The Lich is listed in-game as being able to be slotted with Defense Debuff enhancements and Defense Debuff IO Sets. However, none of the Lich's powers, even the upgraded ones, have a Defence Debuff effect.

The Dark Servant is listed as being able to take Recharge Intensive Pet IO Sets. However, they can not be slotted into the Dark Servant.

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Number of Bids for HOs

Even though there may be many of a particular Hamidon Origin Enhancement (HOs) for sale and many bids on that HO, the Market will only show one bidder and one seller.

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Manticore Task Force Protectors

The Manticore TF is a 30-35 level TF, but it's now spawning level 40 Paragon Protectors.

(Moved to fixed on 8/11/09)

Suppress Extra Player FX

Doesn't work on many powers and auras, and only if activated after this option is turned on.

This option does not stick from session to session.

This option was removed from the game because, as Back Alley Brawler admitted that it didn't do [hardly] anything.

(Moved to fixed on 2/11/10)

Patron Powers Descriptions

When you click on the plaques under the statues of the patrons in the main Grandville building to read what their Patron Power Pool powers do, the window formatting makes reading anything more than the first power impossible. Only workaround is to get the information from the websites of Paragon Wiki or City of Data or use Mid's Hero and Villain Planner.

(Moved to fixed on 2/11/10)

DJ Zero and Defeat Snaptooth

Snaptooth spawns as a Lieutenant, and then respawns as a Boss, then Elite Boss. The Elite Boss version becomes an untargetable friendly (who doesn't attack you or anything else in the mission). At that point the mission becomes unwinnable and unfailable, and thus, uncompleteable. There are no known workarounds. Since this mission can't be dropped, then only a /petition to a GM can get it cleared from your active missions window. So, the best thing to do is not accept this mission at all until it's fixed.

(Moved to fixed on 2/11/10)

Colored Speech Bubbles and Petsay

As of Issue 13, code has been added to prevent players from crashing other players clients through tags that use angle brackets (the greater than and less than signs, <, >).

As of Issue 18 this has been fixed for almost all binds and macros with one exception: Newly made /petsay binds can't parse the angle brackets. However, petsay macros do work.

• From one of the programmers:

  The new SMF code converts < and > to &lt; and &gt; (which show as < and > in displayed text but don't get recognised as meaning 'this is a tag' internally in order to stop players from breaking other people's clients with bad tags or whatever. Unfortunately this means the text colouring doesn't work any more. Probably needs a better solution but not a high priority until the start of next year.

This breaks the chat tags <bgcolor color>, <border color>, <color color>, <scale #>, <duration #>, and the ability to include emotes in the /petsay family of commands. For example, the following bind (y "say <bgcolor green><bordercolor green><color white>Affirmative$$emote nod$$petsayall <emote nod>") will display "<bgcolor green><bordercolor green><color white>Affirmative" in a chat bubble and in the chat window when the y trigger is pressed.

As of shortly before Issue 15, the problem with chat colors was partially fixed in that you can type in the angle brackets and they'll work, however, if made to be part of a bind, then they will not. So, a workaround for chat color is:

Use the /beginchat in a bind to put all the color tags into the command line. You can have this same bind input the text, or leave the text of the chat bubble out so that you can type in the text you want. Then hit enter and the client will think you typed the tags into the command line and they'll work. E.g.:

/bind <key> beginchat "/local <scale 1.50><color #00ff00><bordercolor #ffff00><bgcolor #9f00ff>I just leveled, kneel before me!!!"

Will put this into your command line: /local <scale 1.50><color #00ff00><bordercolor #ffff00><bgcolor #9f00ff>I just leveled, kneel before me!!! Then when you hit Enter, it will work properly. You can leave the text out like this:

/bind <key> beginchat "/local <scale 1.50><color #00ff00><bordercolor #ffff00><bgcolor #9f00ff> "

And that will put /local <scale 1.50><color #00ff00><bordercolor #ffff00><bgcolor #9f00ff> in the command line. Then you move the cursor to the end of the line by clicking there or using right-arrow and then End; and then type your text and hit Enter.

Petsay commands are broken for binds. They work in macros made before this change and they work when they are typed into the command line. Or you can use the /beginchat in a bind to put the petsay command into the command line and then just hit enter. E.g.:

/bind <key> beginchat "/petsayall <emote dance>"

Will put /petsayall <emote dance> in the command line. Then just hit enter.

(moved to fixed on 9/13/10)

Katie Hannon Task Force

In the first mission, Mary MacComber is supposed to be level 35 and then in her later appearances, she's supposed to ramp up to level 38. However, she's now level 34 every time.

(moved to fixed on 9/13/10)

Statesman Task Force UberRepairmen

The repairmen who fix the towers in the last mission are no longer chumps, they spawn with the ability to start 'healing' and 'rezzing' towers before they become targetable, making destroying the towers almost impossible. A GM in-game confirmed this is a bug. No known workarounds... yet.

(moved to fixed on 9/13/10)