Difference between revisions of "Known Issues"

Revision as of 22:47, 15 July 2009

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').

Editing Note: As this page grows, each section will probably start to be broken off into its own page.

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 50 the appropriate faction. If the player no longer has a level 50 of the appropriate faction, the player is no longer capable of making epic archetypes of that faction.

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

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.

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

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 ;"

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, <, >).

• 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.

There is no workaround for the broken petsay commands.

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.

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]:"

Suppress Extra Player FX

Doesn't work. It has no effect.

Window Transparency Setting

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

Colorblindness

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

• The red 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.
• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Missions

Manticore Task Force Protectors

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Critters

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.

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

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.

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 to clear the targeting field or targeting an attackable object will fix this and the auto power will start firing on its own again.

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.

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.

The Market

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.

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.