1.12 testserver notes

Update notes for 1.12
These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live

NEW!
(Testserver) A new dungeon is now available for testing: The Manufactory! To access this dungeon, players will need to speak with FATE and choose option 6, followed by option 6 again. Players will also need to have completed the Back to the Beginning story mission. Once these requirements are met, interact with the door that has been placed in Agartha to be sent to the dungeon. Once inside, players can choose to fight the first boss in the room ahead of them, or use any of the buttons found to the left to be sent directly to any other boss. There is also a return teleporter before each boss that can send players back to the beginning. (Note: The return teleporter for boss 3 is at the anima well before the encounter. Use /reset or run to it to return to the lobby from boss 3.)
(Testserver) A new raid is now available for testing: Agartha Defiled (10-man)! To access this raid, players will need to speak with FATE and choose option 6, followed by option 6 again. Once this is done, the mission and raid entrance can be found in Agartha. (Hint: The entrance portal is located where the first Whispering Tide portal was )
* (Testserver) Please note that the Issue 12 Currency Revamp is still a work in progress for this build. Many of the loot tables have been adjusted to accommodate the removal of old currencies, and the Token UI has also been updated. However, we have not performed any conversions of old tokens at this time.

GENERAL
Shortened the distance at which test dummies in the training rooms lose aggro to the player from 21m to 15m.
It is no longer possible to purchase the Signal Hunter title if you already have it.
The emote dance_hitman_lean will now work with the Shoes of Synchronicity.
A cap has been placed on the amount of Black Bullion a player can carry.
* Marks of the Pantheon have been added. Players can earn a limited amount of this new currency per week, and can only carry up to a certain amount at any time.

GUI
The Looking For Group UI has been overhauled into the Social UI.
Signing up through the Social UI now allows you to select an activity, location, and difficulty level in addition to Roles.
Signing up through the Social UI now allows you to add a comment up to 120 characters that will be displayed to other players.
The Social UI now displays name, roles, activity, location, and comment for players currently signed up.
A filters button has been added to the Social UI to filter the results shown.
Players can filter results by activity and difficulty.
Players can update their entry in the Social UI without removing themselves from the listing by using the update button on an existing listing.
Meet Up has been added to the right click and player menu in the Social UI.
View Entry has been added to the right click and player menu in the Social UI.
View Entry in the Social UI can be used to show you additional information about an entry, including difficulty and full length comment.
The Social UI will no longer display entries for players who are on your ignore list.
The Social UI will now run a background search every 15 minutes and display how many players are signed up matching your filters in system chat.
Added a "Show Social Reminders" option under Notifications to enable or disable the 15 minute background search.
Added a new interface option under Advanced -> Privacy that blocks incoming group join requests.
Show Sign Up Notifications option has been split into Show Social Notifications and Show PvP Notifications.
Joining a team no longer prevents you from signing up for the Social UI, nor does it remove your listing if you are already signed up.
Players signed up for the Dungeon activity will be automatically removed when their team size reaches 5.
Players signed up for the Raid activity will be automatically removed when their raid size reaches 10.
Fixed an issue where swapped hotbar abilities would not visually enable or disable properly.
Fixed an issue where some abilities would not be disabled in the GUI when they were locked.
World Domination UI no longer displays tick based rewards for Fusang Projects.
Updated the rewards display in the World Domination UI to show new rewards.
Updated the rewards display in the PvP Scoreboard to show new rewards.
Updated the Tokens UI to display caps, weekly gain, and weekly caps.

ITEMS
All Venice items have been updated and converted to Custom items. They will now function just as their Custom counterparts for the purposes of upgrading.
Nightwatch Glyph toolkits have been added to the Nightwatch vendors.
Criterion Upgrade and Astral Fuse have been added to the Nightwatch vendors.
The Deep Mystery Box has been updated to include the new Mark of the Pantheon.

ACHIEVEMENTS
Reaping the Whirlwind achievements have received a new icon.
Rear Windows can once again be obtained.
* Annalist now requires all The Black Signal lore from its specified categories.

COMBAT
General
* Most enemies now finish executing a current ability before they turn against a target they hate more.

Elementalism
* Updated the short description of Critical Control to correctly state that it increases critical rating.

Assault Rifles
* Fixed an issue where Shot of Anima would not be treated as a resource consumer in some cases.

Pistols
* Fixed an issue where Killer Flow could generate secondary weapon resources when not hitting a target.

Fists
* Gore should now deal damage properly when having the duration refreshed rapidly by multiple attackers.

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS
General
The final bosses of Elite difficulty dungeons will now drop Black Bullion.
The final bosses of Nightmare difficulty dungeons will now drop Marks of the Pantheon.
* Elite Raid bosses will now drop Marks of the Pantheon.

SCENARIOS
General
* The final bosses of Nightmare difficulty scenarios will now drop Marks of the Pantheon.

PVP
General
Significantly increased the overall power of the Equal Footing effect.
Distinctions of the Council have been removed, and will no longer be given out when increasing Battle Rank.
* Battle Rank requirements have been added to the PvP Uniforms. These uniforms are available at the Contrivance Quartermaster.

Holy Shit >>> Criterion Upgrade and Astral Fuse have been added to the Nightwatch vendors.

Because 10.5 is no longer the max. "Special" upgrades will allow upgrading to 10.7 and later to 11.0

Looks like no tricking Wayeb-Xul into cancelling his Concuss anymore. (It says "most", not "all", though)

Sure hope new dungeon and raid are good. But why cap BBs?

so that people won't be able to just buy everything that's new at launch.

not exactly a good explanation, as there is a reason for why people have huge amounts of BBs, like lack of stuff to spend it on 😈

BBs will be capped because they want to remove the lockdown from NM dungeons (or so they said in the stream) plus a lot of other means to get bullions, so, the cap is to avoid farming.

Basically, you can run them until your eyes bleed, but, no bullion drops (or, you won't be able to loot them anyway)

Well I'd call bullshit on that. I think that real reason are the people who already have thousands of BBs and sequins, which from my understanding will be converted to BBs. So instead of allowing them to get all the stuff they want in terms of upgrades, they cap them so that they have to run the content to progress, despite having run it a thousand times before. Which is same as shuffling fallout of their own doings on to the players, and I doubt that the conversion rate to PAX will be good, as big payouts will not benefit TSW's struggling economy. Once the cap is in place you can just go and spend BBs as they near the cap and go back to farming, hence their explanation is total bullshit, and the cap is pointless. It will just turn people, who do not care for making more pieces of gear at the moment, away from running dungeons.

Since they will also increase the BB prices, it's likely best for all to purchase any pieces they are planning to get now and then just allow sequins to be converted. Unless they plan to add other benefits to same items ofter the update, making current items obsolete.

I don't know, every MMO i've played over the last 5 years or so has put a cap on raid currency* whenever a new raid came out, expressly to stop people with huge piles of said currency from skipping the new content and gearing up immediately. LOTRO used to do it, RIFT still does it, now TSW are doing it. You can argue that it penalises the most dedicated players - and it does - but the flip side is, everyone with huge quantities of BB buys the new stuff on day one, then stands in Agartha bitching for the next 2 years that there's nothing to do...

• the other option being creating a new raid currency that implicitly devalues the existing currency - oh, hello Marks of the Pantheon!

The really interesting question is: why are they doing this now? Typically, gear resest/ currency devaluations happen with expansions, as expansions are aimed at getting new players in (and by necessity, nerfing dedicated players, to give the new players a chance to catch up). Updates, such as issues in TSW, are typically aimed at existing players, to get them to play more. Unless Funcom's data indicates that there's a large pool of ex-players (the other target of updates) who would return if there is new group content? The devs have indicated recently that they don't make any choices unless those choices can positively influence KPIs - so I wonder what KPIs are improved by a gear reset? Can only be returning ex-players, to my mind.

The problem of KPI's is that they are meaningless without context, and based on the way they have handled build diversity they do not understand their product well enough to understand their KPI's. While I'm sure there is a large pool of old players, I wish I knew how many of them would return for a new raid and dungeon, since apparently only a small part of TSW population participates in end game content, and i12 is definitively endgame focused. But meh, we'll see how this plays out in the end, they need increase in profits and for now I do not see how this update ties into it, so I expect it to be phase 1 of a bigger set of changes to keep more players to play for longer and buy FC points

if i was being cynical, i'd say this feels like a change to prepare for f2p.

I think the currency cap is aimed at the players without bullion currently. If a player already has a load of bullion, then the amount of upgrades they are likely to want or need is already low – you get that many by not spending because you already have stuff. The diminishing returns means that we’re not going to be able to vastly change our existing setups anyway, just add more HP or heal rating.

The players who have been grinding sequins though would potentially be able to buy lots of stuff without needing to keep grinding. Plus with their new epics, they’ll suddenly find the game a lot easier.

In most games, gear cap increases come with large amounts of new content balanced around better gear, otherwise it just trivialises all the existing content. What we’re seeing is just going to make getting to endgame easier, because you won’t actually need to be involved in end game itself to get the rewards. Even the Kaidan dungeon drops are a mistarget. 10.5 blues to give a step to ql 10 epics, when you’ll have to have your aegis at 1.5 to enter. So in grinding your aegis, you then get the bullion to buy the epics. If you haven’t bought the other issues, giving you access to epics already, then you’ll still have a load just from grinding missions and levelling generally. I’m pretty much expecting it to be rare to see people in blues in Transylvania.

We’ll have to wait and see what purpose Marks of the Pantheon serve – if they gate 10.6 with them or what, we just don’t know atm.

Btw, do we have enough subscribers and lifers around to put a testlive flappy raid together? Could be worth a giggle.