Leaderboard

Hello Paragon City! We wanted to take a moment to both review our year in 2024, as well as provide a look-ahead to our plans for 2025! The year started out with a bang, having been officially licensed! We also saw the completion of Issue 27, both a new Anniversary Event accompanied with a 20th Anniversary Celebration that we did, and the release of Issue 28, Page 1! That was just our successes! Let's not forget some of the things you (the players) achieved in 2024! 2024 Player Stats: Number of Characters Created in 2024: 574,534 Torchbearer: 68,208 Excelsior: 255,972 Indomitable: 63,394 Everlasting: 120,017 Reunion: 66,943 Powerset & Archetype Data of 2024: Most Popular Archetype of 2024: Brute - 77,367 Blaster - 75,570 Mastermind - 67,112 Least Popular Archetype of 2024: Arachnos Widow - 5,183 Warshade - 5,780 Arachnos Soldier - 7,980 Peacebringer - 8,116 Most Popular Primary of 2024: Mastermind Robotics - 14,547 Mastermind Demon Summoning - 13,221 Mastermind Necromancy - 11,632 Least Popular Primary of 2024: Stalker Stone Melee - 377 Stalker Radiation Melee - 571 Defender Traps - 591 Most Popular Secondaries of 2024: Brute Fiery Aura - 12,721 Mastermind Dark Miasma - 11,681 Blaster Devices - 11,681 Least Popular Secondaries of 2024: Corruptor Sonic Resonance - 770 Stalker Fiery Aura - 777 Stalker Ice Armor - 783 Most Popular Combinations of 2024: Blaster - Fire Blast & Fire Manipulation - 5,205 Mastermind - Necromancy & Dark Miasma - 4,811 Dominator - Arsenal Control & Arsenal Assault - 4,518 Least Popular Combinations of 2024: Defender - Sonic Resonance & Archery - 4 Defender - Trick Arrow & Energy Blast - 6 Tanker - Super Reflexes & Stone Melee - 6 NEW 2024 Powersets: Arsenal Control -10,311 characters made in 2024 Arsenal Assault - 5,631 characters made in 2024 Marine Affinity - 15,127 characters made in 2024 Most Popular Task Force: Positron 1 Task Force - Completed 19,858 times in 2024 Least Popular Task Force: Eden Trial - Completed 909 times in 2024 Most Popular Story Arc: "What Was Lost" by Matthew Habashy - completed 112,892 times in 2024 Least Popular Story Arc: "Light & Darkness" by Abyss - completed 911 times in 2024 Support Tickets Resolved by Game Masters: 12,954 Game Master with highest ticket closure: @GM Crumpet (3,030 Tickets Closed in 2024) 2024 Forum Stats: Total Forum Posts in 2024: 101,569 Total Topics in 2024: 7,469 Highest rated forum users of 2024: Luminara (5,179 posts & +2849 Reputation) Snarky (8,394 posts & +2714 Reputation) Rudra (7,627 posts & +2588 Reputation) Highest rated forum post from 2024: NCSOFT & Homecoming License Announcement (+245) Welcome Home! - An Open Letter from Homecoming (+133) City of Heroes 20th Anniversary! (+97) Number of Kheldians Consumed: Infinite It was certainly an exciting year! While we can't start 2025 in as exciting of a manner like we did last year, we did want to take the opportunity to give you our tentative plans and roadmap for the year ahead! First though, we've had a lot of follow-up questions regarding the redesign of Homecoming's team structure that took place at the beginning of last year, so we wanted to shed some additional light on that. Homecoming Team Structure: You can always reference our Staff Directory for the most up to date listing of our current staff roster! However, the team is broken down into three major groups, which have a subdivision leadership structure within them. It's important to note that every member of our team is a volunteer, driven solely by their passion for the game and dedication to helping the community. From the City Council to the Game Masters and Developers, each individual generously contributes their time and expertise without expecting any compensation in return. We uphold strict protocols to ensure fairness and integrity within our ranks. Access levels are carefully monitored, and measures are in place to prevent any misuse for personal gain. City Council The first is our City Council. This is our group of administrators who oversee the entire Homecoming project, including both the Game Masters and Developer teams. While the team makes decisions collectively, within the ranks of our City Council, some members take on additional leadership roles crucial to the success of our project. @Conviction and @Globetrotter oversee the Game Master team, ensuring that our moderation efforts remain effective and fair. @Faultline provides guidance to our Developer team and supports our Lead Developers in coordinating the City Council's vision for the project. @Number Six spearheads the work on the game's code, expanding the bounds of what's possible in Paragon City. @Telephone and @Michiyo run our infrastructure and server systems, ensuring seamless operation. @Widower (no relation :P) supervises our Discord and Forums and is our community manager, providing community engagement and regular updates to players. @Arcanum serves as our operations manager, supporting both the Game Master and Developer teams in their day to day work. @Cipher is the head of the project. He is the final voice on internal discussion and debates within the council. @Homecoming is our general account we use for non personalized messages. All City Council members have access to post from this account. Game Masters Game Masters uphold the Code of Conduct, ensuring that our streets remain safe from villainous behavior. They moderate our official communication channels (Forums, Discord, and in-game chat channels) and address any concerns or issues that may arise within our community. Within our Game Master team, there are distinct roles that ensure the smooth functioning of our community. Lead Game Masters - Entrusted with the crucial task of collaborating with the City Council to shape moderation policies and guidelines. They oversee the broader operations of the Game Master team. Game Masters - The largely unsung heroes of our team! They handle all of the player tickets (both from in-game and forums) and are tasked with moderating our official channels and enforcing the Code of Conduct. Novice Game Master - You may see this role in our discord from time to time. These are newly onboarded Game Masters who spend time learning from the Game Masters and Lead Game Masters, with limited in-game access levels and moderation tools while they step into the role. @GM Bot - Our robot GM! This bot allows our Game Masters to perform numerous tasks and commands without being logged into the game. It also allows the team to post administrative messages across all shards (i.e. Notifying of our weekly server maintenance). While there may not be a human sitting behind this bot, it still has feelings! Be sure to send it a tell in game saying "Hi!" Developers Behind every thrilling mission and exciting update lies the hard work of our Developers. They're the creative minds drafting new content, enhancing gameplay experiences, and bringing your adventures to life. We internally have a structure of Lead & Senior Developers, who provide support & leadership across various development departments; including Code, Art, Powers, Story & Writing, and more. Together, these teams collaborate (under the guidance of our Lead Developers and City Council) to deliver new content and experiences to the game. @The Curator - Similar to our Homecoming account, this is a general Developer account. Several staff members have access to this account to post things like Patch Notes. It is not monitored by any one individual. Hopefully this provides some invaluable insight into how the team runs behind the scenes and can answer questions we've seen pop up from time to time. If you have any others, please don't hesitate to reach out to either our Game Masters or City Council for additional info! 2025 Development Goals: Now, let's get to the "fun" stuff and take a look at the upcoming calendar year! The team has been hard at work on several projects to make 2025 an exciting year! While we can't disclose all of the details yet, due to the fact it's a volunteer project and people's availabilities fluctuate, as well as the simple fact everyone enjoys a cliff hanger... We did want to share some tentative plans with you! Seasonal Event Updates: In 2025 we will be making some updates (varying in degrees) to all of the seasonal events hosted during the year! First up will be our Spring Fling event, which is set to run tentatively starting February 4th - March 4th. Issue 28, Page 2: We hope to release Page 2 of Issue 28, continuing on the exciting building blocks of Page 1, in Early Spring 2025! Issue 28, Page 3: Assuming everything goes to plan, we look forward to releasing Page 3 by the Fall of 2025! While the main goal for the pages listed above will be to continue the overarching storyline, we also hope to release new powersets, costume pieces, base items, badges, and customization features that allow you to play your character's story the way you want to! As a reminder, we are currently looking for a Tools Developer to assist us with some of these goals! If you're interested in volunteering your time to support the team in this capacity, please submit an application and our team will reach out! We look forward to sharing more with you all Soon™ - in the meantime, here's some in-development images to share with you all 😉. Please keep in mind, as this content is in development; it is not finalized and subject to change. Thanks for reading! We look forward to another heroic year in Paragon City and a less-than-heroic year in the Rogue Isles and Praetoria!

Hello! It's taken a little longer than expected, but as of today we are pleased to announce that we have merged in Michiyo's Victory server as the sixth Homecoming shard. Victory will function exactly like the five shards you already know and love, just with significantly fewer preexisting characters. On that note, the name release system will not be activated on Victory for the time being. We hope you'll give them a big welcome! Questions Which I Anticipate You Will Ask Frequently: Is this the original Victory server from retail CoH? No. Does this mean we can get our characters from retail back? No. We have too many shards! Are there any plans for shard merges? No. Are any other servers planned to merge into the Homecoming cluster? There are no plans to do so. We're only able to bring Victory in because it kept up with our updates over the years. Due to the divergence between our codebase and those of other servers, merging them in as we have with Victory would likely be impossible. Thanks for reading!

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE! 😄

I've been running Hamidon raids for close to 2 years now, and although this community is great most of the time, recently there has been a player with a grudge against me wanting to ruin that for the entire league, and they can with a single toon out of the league on hidden with a single power (Something like Dimension shift) which causes the whole raid to fail and if we want to regroup to try again, they do it again. This isn't a fluke as the first time they tried they did it early and we still managed to kill Hami, however the second time after they did it half way causing the league to wipe, and again today they did it half way and it failed. A GM witnessed it happen twice the first time but the person still comes back hence why I am making this suggestion. I am sure some people might say "Why waste dev time for 1 troll" and it's two simple facts, ANYONE can make a toon to do this and it's no cheese, it's clicking a button. The second is the simple fact this game is kept alive by the community and those within the community who run events, if every Hami I try to run fails because 1 toon presses a button then I'm not going to keep running them and waste mine and everyone else's time.

I would suggest Null have a on/off for Knockback. Global to character. 1) default. Powers act as normal 2) knockback to knockdown. ALL powers act as if they have a KB->KD in them 3) bonus option. All powers do knockback. Muah hah hah

This is the Geiger Ghoul, a HAZMAT technician who died from exposure to radiation and came back wrong. Like Koi Dragon, he was part of a self imposed challenge to make costumes with colors I don't normally use.

Here is my take on a beastly cyborg. Introducing Wyvern Mk-V, an Invulnerability/Savage Melee Tanker. I really like the transition of the cyborg spine to the tail.

They did it to spite you.

Whomever has been donating to keep the unofficial wiki's light on, my hat is off to you. I glanced at tonight's amount while I did a search, and my jaw hit the floor. I hope that will help in recovering some of the deficit from when players were not part of the funding process. It's a great tool and well worth the effort. Y'all rock! 🫡

Introducing Thunderstrike, an Electric Melee/Invulnerability Brute who is an ode to a the old story of Goldilocks...

I see this as more proof a Port Oakes SF would be a good idea haha. Either way keep up the work. Looking forward to whatever you have in the works.

Good to see supremacy.

Another supernatural design - "Flora Slaughter":

Hi everyone!👋 I'm working with the developers to sort out possible solutions to this, however, it will take some time. In the meantime, please be sure to report any player intentionally griefing directly to a GM so we can handle it appropriately. Keep in mind we do not share disciplinary actions taken with other players. 👍 A hidden status does not impact the GM team's ability to view or investigate players. So they are unable to skirt policies due to this. Feel free to report any player suspected of violating our multi-boxing policies and/or griefing, and we will review.

Decided to finally buckle down and take down each armors toggle usage to compare them to their peers. Nothing mind blowing, there may already be something out there already and I just didn't see it. Basically, I checked each armor and left all the possible toggles on to see how much endurance they would consume per second. These did not include any enhancements or recovery discounts. Just flat out endurance usage from the toggles as is. There might be some folks curious about them, or maybe it is just my tiny frozen mind that finds enjoyment out of these.

The three new chars I've been levelling since I came back. Had to try the New Hotness with Marine so came up with Manannan mac Lir Storm / Marine corruptor (hadn't tried Storm either). Tried to go for a "celtic god in modern day" vibe about him. To feed my ever growing Corruptor obsession I combined two sets I've got to 50 multiple times but I love : Atlantean Arrow Water Blast & Trick Arrow. To contrast with the other watery hero above tried to go for a "humanoid made of water in a tech suit" vibe, using the Victorian Decor aura to give a "shifting forcefields" look to the costume. Finally I wanted a Shield Tank so went and tried for a clockwork dwarf / Skyrim Dwemer Tech vibe to give Grimli Gearsmasher : Shield / Axe Tank

The Redneckromancer

Wouldn't this just encourage the behavior as people will want the badge.

The Duchess of the Deep, Fire Control/Marine Affinity Controller

Nothing like quitters leaving in the middle of TF because they were defeated for being reckless. Their needs to be some kinda badge for that behavior. I'd like to know beforehand who is who. Badge title: The Quitter Description: "Your reputation has finally caught up with you. Many heroes are now reluctant to team with you. The stories about how you've deserted other heroes in crisis permeates at the mention of you codename. Badge symbol: A raccoon with its "tail" in the air. Ten quits will earn you the badge. That is more then enough wiggle room for an emergency.

Homefront, Shield/energy tank

It seems that this discussion has run it's course. The request for some kind of RGB function to costumes has been noted. I cannot say whether HC will do it in the near future or ever, but the fact that another server has done it has no bearing on whether we do it or not. The point that Crumpet was making was that we try to avoid having discussions about other servers on our forums because it frequently ends up being an argument over which server is better than another. It's OK to like HC; it's OK to like other servers; it's OK to like bits and pieces of different ones. It's not OK to poke at each other for having opinions and preferences. B.E.T.E.O.

Good for them. I'm happy with what we've got here. Costume jank is my least favorite part about how other servers have made things possible. Homecoming has made plenty of quality costume additions that aren't jank.

Group heal with repel so you have to fight for it.

More street level than my usual style of heroes, this is Skyway, reformed member of the Trolls striving to be a hero.

"The Abyssal Ferryman":

Running through mission is "easy work" when you have nothing to fear after defeat. Oh look, I click the rez and get back to my feet, as if I wasn't just on the brink of death! Their should be heavy penalties for not only repetitive use of rez in a missions. But stacking debuff for multiple hospitals visits. Regenerative powers/enhancements could receive more value, closing the gap on the mitigation scale. They could target these specific debuff, lowering, or flat out negating the time it takes to recover. Something resistance and defense couldn't do. These are some examples of the debuffs to name a few. Concussion: Recharge debuff and protection debuff. Endurance debuff. Broken Bones: Resistance debuff. Damage debuff. Lacerations: Constant DoT debuff. 3rd degree burns: DDR debuff. Healing debuff. Damaged Armor: Endurance cost increase for toggles. Poisoned: Regen debuff. Maxhp debuff. End debuff. Each could be tied to a specific damage type. No, all debuffs wouldn't hit you at the same time. For example. If you were defeated by a toxic attack, and used rez. You would be hit with the Poisoned debuff penalty. You would receive ONE of the debuffs from poisoned category for a time frame. If you fall again to toxic attack, you get the next random poisoned debuff, and the timer increases. Every hospital visit becomes less effective as you're not following the doctor's orders. Health restores at lower increments every visit 100/75/50/25. (Opens the door to sophisticated Super Groups medical equipment regular hospitals don't have.) Team wipes should come with a penalty as well. Did your team of 8 get squished by the map? All enemy mobs will receive a buff making their resolve stronger! Now that I think about it. Why isn't their a team wiped badge? This option opens the door for great rewards for heroes who play in this game mode. X3 xp? X2 influence? Think of it as a "hard mode" for Pug or solo gaming journey. If team leader is playing in this mode. A prompt should appear, informing you about his settings.

48 people's fun being ruined by one jerk is something that really does need to be changed. I honestly think this needs to be moved to the top of the priority list. Hami needs to be unable to be affected by intangible, because it's only a griefing tool in these raids and is ruining an iconic part of the game.

Outleveling a contact.

When I try to fill up a team these days it is extremely hard except for only one hour in prime time on weekdays. They should be merging and eliminating shards. Not adding new ones.

That's exactly how it should work. Healthy social interaction is NOT drawing invisible lines around ourselves and exerting Herculean effort to stay inside those lines. That's not socialization, it's voluntary imprisonment. It's living in fear and lying about who you are, and that's not good for you or the people with whom you're engaging. Someone else drawing the lines and telling us when we're crossing them is what gives us license to be honest, to be who we are and say what we really need to say. It's more disappointing to see people apologize for having an opinion, beg forgiveness for disagreeing, dissemble and prevaricate about how they feel and what they mean, bend over backwards to avoid crossing the imaginary boundaries they've constructed for themselves. I'd rather be surrounded by honest assholes, and be an honest asshole, than cowards and liars whos personalities are entirely dependent on the prevailing winds. My warnings were for being myself, and you're goddamn right that I'm proud of them. They say that I have the courage to expose my true personality instead of hiding behind a façade, and explore the boundaries of what's acceptable rather than constraining myself to the limits I would otherwise impose on myself. This is me, in all of my magnificence and my flaws, naked before you and with my head held high, unashamed.

Might we get a costume option where the cape does not exist (or is completely invisible) but the brooches are available? I'm not sure about the double-shoulder brooch arrangement, but I could see several good uses for the single brooch, both centered and off-centered (shoulder). Several of the brooches have a recognizable look, such as the lightning bolt, rocket, crown, and crescent, and would provide another decorative option on their own without forcing the player to take a cape. Three other options with the suggestion: 1. Have a left-shoulder option as well as a right shoulder. 2. Have an optional neck chain for the centered brooch, so that it appears to be hanging from the neck chain. 3. If the concept is adapted, add additional recognizable shapes to the brooch list (Eagle or Eagle's head, hammer & sickle, snake, leaf(s), heraldry lion, etc.)

Saturday Night Synapse, run weekly at 8pm Eastern on Torchbearer by @Kalikamata. Synapse run in league format, with the Babbage spawns coordinated. Most fun you will ever have running Synapse. A new record was set this week with 31 Babbages spawned.

I've been in teams where someone has been power levelled to 50 with no knowledge of the game and it's painful. No inf for enhancements, terrible slotting, often no travel power. When AE was in atlas I had someone ask me how to get to Kings Row and be surprised there was a transit system. "It's marked on the map".... "What map?".... Games like WoW have a lot to answer for. So many games kind of ignore the grind to max level as a necessary evil and concentrate on the end game content. Diablo 4 is a really good example of that. Very short story, get that out of the way, then grind for gear to increase the chance of a good drop. Then have the chances of the best drop so low most people never see them. I've had one Mythic drop in the time I've been playing and that was because of an event. At least Diablo 2 and 3 had a long story to follow. People come into our game conditioned to think the low levels are a waste of time and the good stuff starts at the level cap. Then get upset because there actually isn't that much to do, and updates concentrate on content for lower levels.

I was warned today that the Devs considered my posts in the Suggestions Knockback thread insulting. And that further infractions will lead to consequences. Actions do indeed have consequences. I will no longer be posting on the message boards.

I tried to prestage a migration of database and server configs but the prestage went ahead and also moved DNS to the new server. I'm having to wait for a VERY large database to move before I can migrate the actual files to the new server, I have no ETA but it'll be up as soon as I can get it.

Shockpoint Elec/Thorny

Well unless you start using specifics like what level your character was, what level the enemy was, how many enemies there were, what enemy faction it was, or even just writing what the name of the attack itself that caused this was, folks aren't going to be able to answer much.

Nyeheheheheh... ...World domination

The Victory Dev "team", is me, and I've been on the HC Team with various duties and titles for years.

I suggest all powers do Knockback by default. It can be switched off at Null, one power at a time so you can properly think about the benefits of keeping KB in every power. (I mean, do you really want to turn off KB for your Heal Other power? Really? Are you sure?) Also, all powers reset to doing KB on respec, just in case you changed your mind.

Alternative perspective: Synapse is a horrible tf. It's long, boring, repetitive, and made worse due to lack of access to many powers. Most people who thought "OK, I don't need to speed..." are going to be smashing their face into the keyboard by the 1.5 hour mark, screaming "When will it end?! Please, God, can it just end?!" I only ever do it for the accolade, and hate it every time. Also, take a deep breath. The sky isn't falling.

Another - "The PiezOverlord":

Gonna revive this. Cause it's 2025. And it's about time for this modern MMO convenience to enter the game. If they are gonna continue to release new power sets, they need to provide a way to use those sets without needing to completely remake a character. Cause to head off the "Just make a new character" crowd, the gameplay loop is not varied or engaging enough to support a grind to full build every time a new power that works more interestingly for your character concept comes out, not after the 10th or 11th time. You know it, I know it. You spend most of your time playing the same content with a group of friends or hanging in the D, go sit down. The game will survive a bit of modernizing. You'll still have to farm out new Enhancements for each change anyway, there's plenty of build in user retention without needing to make a whole new character. It's just good UX. It's time for this feature to exist.

It would not have made sense in this community of City of Heroes. It's been made clear numerous times in the past by the Homecoming Team that shards will not be combined or consolidated. There are no plans to merge shards. Players from the shards with lower populations have made clear numerous times that they do not want their shards combined or consolidated with other shards. Shuttering other shards or servers is a terrible idea.

We don't discuss what other servers do or don't do. We do our thing, they do theirs.