Drakwatch

Hey everyone! I wanted to share an awesome gift I received recently, and what better occasion than the 20th Anniversary of City of Heroes! I work in games QA and one of my coworkers actually used to work in QA for NCSoft back in the day. I'm not gonna share any names, but they did work primarily on City of Heroes from launch to a few years after it moved to Paragon Studios. Just to address the elephant in the room with that - no, I'm not going to share any info about anything regarding their work during that time as there may be some NDA agreements floating around. So I'll leave it at that. However, they did send me an amazing package recently of a bunch of near mint retail boxes of the game! Apparently, NCSoft gave out a ton of these to employees, so my coworker has even more stuff that I don't know about. I'll share a few images of the most interesting parts: The lineup above ^ : City of Heroes Collector's DVD Edition, Good Versus Evil Edition, City of Villains Collector's Edition (nothing in it, unfortunately), City of Heroes and City of Villains PRE-ORDER editions, and the German City of Heroes Deluxe edition (essentially the same as the DVD Collector's edition without the Hero Clix figure) ^ Here's what's inside the Collector's DVD Edition. The comic promo is just a pamphlet, not the full issue. Also, if you can't tell, the Hero Clix figure is Statesman. ^ German "Deluxe" edition. I'm gonna keep it sealed for now, but if anyone wants to see what's inside, I could be convinced to open it. ^ These were pretty interesting to me - I didn't know there was a box retail for the pre-order of the game. Also, fun fact: Lineage II released a day before City of Heroes. (April 27th, 2004) Anyways, I hope you guys found this interesting at least. You can find more info on the retail releases here: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Disc_Releases

So, with this option enabled (and it's enabled by default), it makes it -really- difficult to mouse-click drag resize windows on the HUD. Holding left click to resize the chat window will disengage with the mouse prompt and then go into Quick Look mode, so you can no longer click and drag the window. As a note, you can click and drag with left click to move target, navigation, player, and power windows around, but with Quick Look enabled, you cannot move the chat window around.

Do those powers have cooldowns longer than 5 seconds? I think by default they do not display numbers if a power has a cooldown that is less than 5 seconds, if that's what you're reporting.

This is awesome news, I'm so happy that NCSoft has been able to work with the team on this. Congrats and well done to everyone sticking through all the legal shenanigans. I'm sure working with a huge company like that was a challenge. One thing I am wondering - could this new agreement allow some help from NCSoft for development? Would they be able to release some older builds of the game to the dev team or animation files or support tools that were used in live? I'm kind of doubting it since the dev team from live has been long disbanded. But just curious if it's even possible that NCSoft has been holding onto some old files.

I think my main problem with all of these spin-offs is that none of them have any art direction. They look like ugly UE4 asset flips. They just don't look good graphically or technically. Period. I'm sure the devs are working hard to justify the money backers have given them, but considering some of these have been in development since 2012? I don't think they'll ever look any better or come close to the complexities, charm, and style that City of Heroes had at launch.

If you could make any new archetype or epic AT, what would you make? Is there a role you'd like to play that the current archetypes do not fill? Or is there a type of comic hero / villain you'd like to play that isn't represented in the game currently? Anything goes for this topic. I always thought a Tank-mage class would be cool; Primary is an armor / support mix, and secondary would be melee. Also, an epic archetype with size-shifting powers would be amazing. Who knows how many technical issues it would bring up (doorways being one of them), but it would fit right into a superhero game just fine.

My dad got me CoH for my birthday about a month after release, May 2004. Eventually we got another account, and him, my brother and I all played together up until closure. Now on Homecoming, I'm 30 and we still play here and there. CoH has always been a game we play together, for 19 years now.

Actually, it just occurred to me that there's some contradictory text on if Veles escaped or is behind bars: Skull Buster badge description: "You formed the New Regulators and put a stop to the Skulls' Superadine Ring in Kings Row. You destroyed their lab and put one of The Petrovic Brothers behind bars, leaving the Skulls scattered and weakened. " Eagle Eye's debriefing: "Great work! The Facility Manager is already being treated at Crowne Memorial Hospital and The Skulls' Superadine Lab is already being put out by the Fire Department. Veles and Morana may have escaped, but without their lab The Skulls are going to have tough times ahead. You've done it, Character, you busted The Skulls Superadine Ring!" A Skull Shaped Mask souvenir: "Though you defeated Veles he was able to escape when he revealed that the Royal Refinery Facility Manager was being held hostage somewhere in the burning structure. Once outside you watched as the Superadine went up in smoke, and the Lords of Death went down in flames." Whether or not he's in jail just leads me to believe there's more to be heard from the Skulls and the Petrovics'.

Any thoughts on Back Alley Brawler's investigations into the Superadine surge? The problem was pretty much solved during Eagle Eye's arc, but Veles did technically escape. Plus, since BABs was taken down by Deadlock, he may have found something that Eagle Eye and the player didn't. Also, Deadlock is still lurking around looking for the next hire. I'm sure Back Alley Brawler wouldn't want let that be after getting beaten by him.

Because I've been thinking about it so much, I'm making an actual suggestions thread about it now. Can we please get actual diamond mask models for Head Detail 1? It's probably a bit of work to model it and place it in the game, so I understand this may be a pipe dream. But I have so many costumes that would be improved with this iconic look. It's such a classic super hero piece, it's really frustrating how hard it is to achieve in this game. Ideally, we could get a version with opaque eyes and clear eyes. As well as a version that goes above the nose and then over the nose. It would look so great as an actual mask rather than what we have with flat Face detail textures.

Bumping this thread, also was seeing it during Janet Kellum's story arc. Seeing level 31 Field Agents spawning among groups of level 45 Infiltrators. Running a level 44 hero at +1 x2.

Thanks and farewell, @Piecemeal! Your contributions were awesome and I always appreciated the amount of respect and knowledge you had for CoH lore.

Magic users need jobs too, don't they? Why not join the Hero Corps? Hero Corps5.costume

Everyone likes archers, right? Hero Corps4.costume

The "gold standard" of Hero Corp recruits! Hero Corps3.costume

Here's a few of my favorite costumes I've made lately: Flightpath: Lazulite: Swordbreaker:

Just wanna say I look forward to these every week! So many good costumes, really shows the creativity and skill of the community.

This is awesome! All the new features and mechanics, as well as the custom maps and enemy types make everything about Aeon SF so memorable. It's so fun leading teams for this SF, because the people who never played it before are always amazed, especially when they get to the 5th Column ripple or the upside down Aeon City. Loved everything about it and I'm really excited to see what you guys can do in the future! /e praise

It seems that the cardboard box texture has been changed at some point. Now it seems to be a billboard or sign for the "Scheherazade" hotel. Here's how it looked before: Here it is now:

Using the Mission Teleporter power to this door location: [108.3 51.9 1468.4] in Cimerora will teleport players into the ground, preventing the use of /stuck and they will be unable to enter the mission. Had a few people get stuck during the second mission in ITF when someone used a Mission Teleporter to that location.

Just wanna say - I heard the new music for the first time yesterday and it's the PERFECT choice and mixing. Really captures the feel and breakbeat style of the original music that shipped with the game. Kudos to whoever did the music! Hope to hear more in the future.

Thanks for addressing the rewards! I understand that the incarnate rewards table at the end of the SF isn't -quite- in yet so maybe it felt extra rough for my team at the end of a long run to select "40 merits". I also didn't realize how many Astral / Empyrean merits were rewarded - I only noticed the Astral Merits after defeating AVs. I'm looking forward to seeing how the reward payout is when it's more finalized.

Another thing I forgot to mention - During the Ripple cutscene / flashback with Dr Aeon, there were duplicates of several party members. I'm assuming this was to "fill" the missing squad members for a full team of 8. There were also a few duplicates of several characters during the Midas doppelganger boss battle. (Two brutes, two tanks, ect.) Not sure if that was intentional.

Today, I lead a team on Vicious difficulty. 5 Incarnates. 1 brute, 1 tank, 2 scrappers, 1 corruptor. Enemies were at 52+ x8. Feedback and spoilers below: Overall, not a whole lot of bugs, and everyone agreed that it was miles above Synapse and other long TFs. The map design, enemies, mission flow, and writing all received much praise. Everyone agreed it was a “solid” Strike Force. As people become more and more accustomed to playing this Strike Force, I think the challenge runs will become less punishing. This was my first run this weekend, and I plan to do a few more. Unfortunately I did not have my skip-back recording on at the time. I’ll try to get a recording so I can have more media / screenshots for this.

Content might be slow, but do any other servers have as many under-the-hood improvements as Homecoming? We've got 64bit support, Mac support, our own launcher with security improvements, and countless bug and performance fixes. The content we do have is also professionally made and tested, while also improving the quality of life in the game with every update. The devs here, as small as they are, are always working on something cool and interesting too, the content we have been getting has been top quality. I'd rather stick with Homecoming at this point. Sure, I guess it would be nice to have gun straps or more tights like Rebirth has, but Homecoming has proven itself, to me at least, to be the highest quality experience.