September 6th PTS Tests

Testing

• Free stuff on PTS
• Event boost
• Minor Arkfalls and Arkbreaks overwritten by Major Events
• On full reload cooldown times

In an attempt to aid testers, the Defiance team added grants for different currencies. This includes Bribes for faction Reputation, Scrip, Salvage, Arkforge, and Keycodes. There was an issue recently with these grants that made them not work for testers who had put in the grant code prior to recent additions. One of the current changes on the PTS is to repair this problem and it appears to have worked properly. On a recent visit into the test server, I was greeted with 70+ items in Claim. Please note that these grants are only valid on one character!

In addition to these grants, they are also testing a weekly Reputation Boost (50%) and Experience Boost (100%). These are scheduled to Sept 10, 2014 at Noon PT and stack with all other active Boosts!

This patch includes a potential fix for a problem that could cause Minor Arkfalls and Arkbreaks to get stomped by larger events. It took me a while to get the right situation to come up, but here's what I found:

Around 11:30pm (Mountain time) I found a Hellfire event in SV. I wanted to speed up the testing process, so I went through each section and destroyed the Secreters to finish the event. Shortly afterwards, three events popped up. A Hellbug Extermination (4783,9300), a Minor Arkfall Site (5467,9648), and a Major Arkfall Site (5160,9370). I went to the Hellbug Extermination and killed a few Skitters, then waited outside of aggro for the timer to run out.

Soon after the end of that event, another Minor started up at 5091,8981. It was the "Destroy the Crystal" Hellbug Minor, but I can never remember that name of it. I did the same thing at this one as the prior event and noted that both Arkbreaks were still active on the map. Within 60 seconds or so, all three events vanished and the Miner Conversion event started up.

PhantasieTrion stated that this patch may not fully fix this problem, and I'd be inclined to think that it needs more work. I'd like to add that I may not fully understand what the patch is intended to change and that the Miner Conversion could be outside of said fix.

Still on the PTS for extended testing is the change to "on full reload" Perks and weapon attributes adding cooldown times. I've tested some of these changes and don't see a major impact on normal game play. The only thing I could see it having a major effect with are builds designed to keep a constant EGO power running. Any build allowing a player to spam an EGO power could be considered as favorable over all others, and with this in mind, I welcome the changes.

Here's a video I shot while testing out these updates. It starts off by showing the build I was using at the Kenn Farm Incursion. I understand that this is just one situation of many in the game and that these results will not be identical to others with regards to different Threat Levels, events, loadouts, and/or player skills. This was meant strictly for educational purposes and not to challenge anyone's opinions on the proposed changes.