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Prefacing this that I didn't agree with Jack's approach to on-going design for CoH (or his particular methods of interacting with CoH's playerbase), but categorizing him as 'one single lone developer who forced his personal vision onto the game' is bit of a stretch when his position was 'lead dev for the entire game whose whole job is to execute their vision of what the game should be.' We were always playing Jack's vision of the game because at the time he was the head dev in-charge of development. CoH was his sandbox, for better or worse, and he was within his capacity as the lead dev to modify how it worked (RIP to all the OG regen scrappers and freakshow herding dumpster diving tankers). Also, the Invention System has been around for going on 10+ years now. That's the vast majority of the game's playable lifespan. No IO's ED was a thing for about a year and a half and pre-ED was also about a year and a half. I know gamers love to hold grudges but the majority of the game has been with ED in-place along with wide swathes of better content and character progression. I was around back at launch so I get the formative memories and emotional attachments to what first drew folks into CoH, but I also remember what CoH played like back in 2004. I much preferred 2012 CoH to that and prefer 2025 Homecoming to that, too. IO CoH's game design of 'any decently balanced team is a steamroller on cocaine where everyone can contribute something' is a lot more fun than 'watch the tanker herd the whole map, watch the blaster blow them all up, repeat' (or 'watch tanker use energy transfer, kill the mobs and die themselves, get rezzed, repeat').

Not all that many, I expect. I had forgotten this was added entirely, despite the fact that it's been in the game for over a year now and that I even ran the first parts of Piecemeal's Vahzilok/Freakshow content back when those came out. Having read through the Pay Phone on the wiki I'm not really struck by the need to run the arc, either. Personal Story Arcs are basically post-credit scenes. They need to be concise, punchy, and immediately get player investment, especially considering they're committing the MMO cardinal sin of 'the player character ceases to be the dynamic focus.' This one doesn't seem to do that. A drawn out flashback focused on canonizing in-universe explanations for game changes from 15+ years ago via an OC NPC using super special techniques to accidentally Forrest Gump themselves through past updates and game lore along with a handful of cryptic hints that may or may not even be relevant for who knows how long is not in-line with the prior Personal Story arcs. Having the particular lens for all this be Bile also doesn't help. He's certainly written with a distinct personality and funny dialogue, but there's a lot of it and considering all the divergent content involved and the dense dialogue trees it doesn't make the arc come across as any more engaging. It feels like Bile's commentary is trying to hype up the player and explain why they should totally be interested in the series of random interactions and lore links, when the moments themselves should have been the hooks. A Personal Story focused solely on the fall of Galaxy City and the fallout of the Shivan attack could have revealed the same teasing hints and been much more direct about it. Hell, they could use one of the umpteen characters actually present in Galaxy's Last Stand for it. Put the player in the shoes of Coyote as he navigates the chaos to rescue people, sees civilians disintegrating, and takes on a giant monster Neo-Shivan. There'd be something poetic about one of the contacts from Outbreak helping to introduce the modern end game and still fighting the good fight after all this time (especially for Coyote, considering why he was put in the game to begin with).

Certainly possible! Though remembering how... 'intensely focused' Jack could be on his particular vision of the game and its lore, I always figured he either really didn't like Atlantis as a pop culture 'fish people society' concept or just went 'Well, I'm already using Mu and Oranbega - Primal Earth don't need anymore ancient humanity magic societies.' @JMacClear glad to see you got the concept up and running! Or swimming, in this case. I dig the organic sea-life inspired take with the guy's costume. Hits that visual 'Atlantean' look while still being unique.

If HC does something with Galaxy City, it needs to be something new - just bringing back the old starting zone would probably leave it as another mostly empty blueside map, initial nostalgia burst aside. As it is, even if underutilized Galaxy's Last Stand at least offers the most modern tutorial showcasing game mechanics that neither of the original tutorials do. Overall, I have doubts that any of the 'destroyed' blueside zones will ever get major revamps by this point. Between the amount of work it takes to redesign an entire zone map, then set out NPCs and mob spawns, write dialogue, mission arcs, plaques, badges... It's a lot. Then multiply that by the sheer number of 'this area of Paragon has been in total ruins for 20+ years' zones and it turns from Mt. Everest to Olympus Mons. It'd be a big ask for a fully funded staff working full time. All that said, I fully support something being done with Galaxy City, I'd just expect it to be more manageable, content-wise. Some new mission arcs or a big task force could easily work, whether that takes place amid the ruins against the Neo-Shivans and advances the Coming Storm or involves Ouroboros to flashback to the original Galaxy City and teaming up with Galaxy Girl and Dauntless (and/or some of the other Galaxy heroes honored with statues - Cassiopeia, Wayland, M1). Ouroboros flashing back to historical heroes and city zones 'before they fell' could actually be a really neat way to do a pseudo-revamp and tell a lot of stories CoH has never really touched on in the process.

A guarantee?! That changes everything. Let's get this accolade in the game right now! I've even found some art for a badge icon, to save the devs some time.

Not sure how many folks here are keeping up with Daredevil Born Again, but as of the latest episodes (5 & 6) it seems like a fantastic continuation of the Netflix series. Every article claiming Disney Marvel was going to water things down - level of violence, religious content, dialogue, fight choreography, even the presentation style - seems more and more unfounded. It's possible a lot of that is due to the revamping the show went through to get the main actors back on board and happy with the direction of their roles and the series, but I'll happily accept 'it's good due to course correction' over 'they were stubborn and it tanked.' Slight spoilers -

They probably added it in when they revamped the Rikti Crash Site into the Rikti War Zone and brought Vanguard into the game. 'How do we explain how this military force stands against the Rikti?' 'Fancy make-believe armor and weapons!' Tracks with Issue 9 introducing invention salvage and IOs then Issue 10 being the second Rikti invasion, too.

I have sincere doubts that Homecoming would allow XP boosters and freely encourage them to be used for years, then all of the sudden add any sort of badge that a character only obtains by never using them. Much less including the other restrictions of no AE, no enhancement trades, and no influence over X amount. The 'You played the game The Real Way™!' approach to reward design is both entirely arbitrary in an MMO like CoH and its own slippery slope of recursive difficulty that just keeps increasing. 'I got the badge for not using AE!' 'Well I got the badge for not using AE and using Brawl as my only attack power!' Badges are rewards specifically for playing various aspects of the game. The only abstention badges are for rejecting inspirations/recipes and day jobs earned while logged out, neither of which lock players out of any content or choice of progression.

The Level Availability changes are some of the best things HC has done. It expands build options across every AT, allows players to finish their primary and secondary out by level 30 (which is useful for new and vet players alike), and meshes perfectly with the Super-Sidekick system to make replaying lower level content much more fun. Allowing players a more direct route to experience all the powerset combos the game offers and find ones they enjoy most, then making just about every level of content in the game more fun to play with said powersets in one fell swoop is pretty nice. Heck, just for making lower levels not a power slog and negating a lot of the 'Well okay, I'll exemplar down for the badge but I'll hate it the whole time' it was worth it.

This is correct! Also fully agreed. Colors being on the same layer with the skin is why lighter patterns have much stronger bleed-through - the more saturated and/or darker the pattern is, the more a character's skintone gets covered by that particular shade. Though not entirely, like the original post pointed out. If skin options weren't keyed just to their specific palette we might be able to test this more fully, but the skin palette (which just sounds wrong to type out) was very carefully locked down by the Live devs. They didn't want folks running around 'naked' or putting various flesh tones on non-flesh costume pieces. Which is incredibly hypocritical given the number of nearly naked costume options and the fact that 'non-human' characters can easily be made 'nude' but that's a whole other kettle of catgirls. That might just be how it works due to the way the game handles Skin as a separate thing to Tights (or Not Skin or whatever the code name for it is), but if it is just a matter of opacity... I'm gonna get annoyed that the Live devs never tweaked that. If that won't do it, I do wonder if it'd be possible to make Tights/Non-Skin alt. versions of all the Face options, with the same face texture maps, and if the game would just apply the Tights usage of patterns to them that way. That would require adjusting the palettes though, since any Non-Skin option as is wouldn't be able to select any flesh tones, unless the alt. versions get locked to whatever the current Skin selection is the same way sleeve options in Jackets and Robes do.

There is no easy method for cross-platform integration on a 20+ year old niche MMO managed by a volunteer dev team. Matter of fact, there's no difficult method for it either, because that implies there being an existent method at all for that to take place. As for it being a 'trivial ask' - if that were at all true, doesn't it seem a bit odd that it hasn't been done already? The servers don't have a neglected, dusty 'Enable Cross-Platform Gaming' switch on them that the devs just choose to ignore year after year.

Homecoming's Code of Conduct Copyright Policy is pretty direct. You cannot use any outside IP. There is the 'without permission' catch, but I assume that accounts for both the permission of the IP holder and the permission of the Homecoming team, and HC's policy is pretty much a blanket 'don't do that.' So you can't run around as 'Conquest the Viltrumite' in-game - which, thank god, because Paragon doesn't deserve the Viltrum Empire inflicted on them (not that they'd last long against CoH-style debuffs and a few Warburg nukes). If you wanted to make up your own violent alien society inspired by the Viltrumites, that's allowed. They just can't use the same names or copy the character design/background. Alien overlord in a bodysuit with facial hair and a robot arm is okay. Alien overlord in white spandex with a mustache, scars, and a gold robot arm, not so much. Also, to echo everyone else about Season 3, it definitely kicks things back up after Season 2. The finale fight was absolutely worth the budget focus and gives me hope they'll be provided more money in the future (those poor animators).

What @Snarky said - you can only bring over costume files you have saved. That's done easily enough by copying any or all of the desired costumes from the preexisting folder and pasting them into your Homecoming costume folder (if you haven't saved any new costumes yet, you could just copy over the old costume folder itself into the Homecoming directory). Any other information, like character stats, builds, enhancements, badges, names, etc. was all server-side and lost when NCSoft took the game down.

I'm surprised nobody has offered an alternate universe antagonist. Energy/Energy Blaster with powers colored bright white named Lens Flare. Just make sure they keep jumping in front of all the other characters and block the view during cutscenes, while reminding everyone how much edgier and therefore cooler and better their timeline is. When pressed for details about said timeline, just respond with Beastie Boys lyrics.