El D

Gotta say, it's really funny for a proponent of generative AI to demand that anyone else provide exact details, data, or sources for anything. Though, reading that post again... off-hand dismissal, demands for additional sources, shifting of goal posts, diatribes via personal opinion, ignoring legitimate criticisms... You sly dog, you asked chatgpt to write a superhero movie thread post didn't you?

@ZacKing I couldn't help but notice that in your 'get over it or leave' post, you didn't address the actual points I made. You got real hung up on dismissing my personal opinion over AI and the idea of criticism of AI in-general but seemed to have skipped the important 'and this is how it's current affecting Homecoming' bits in there. Regardless of anyone's personal stance on whether AI or 'good or bad,' Homecoming's official allowance of AI has had a direct impact on sustaining the community by negating outside interest in the game and is incredibly hypocritical considering the devs own efforts and how much work they put in to crafting content. Why should the playerbase fund the devs artistic views and personal creations for CoH when the largest part of our art community showcases a blatant disregard for that same respect being given to players? It also runs counter to Homecoming's 'you want to help and make decisions? Volunteer yourself. Put in effort on Beta and apply to join the dev team' approach. The devs either had to learn the skills they use to manage the game's code, write engaging content, and craft costume pieces and powersets or already possessed them and have refined them through working on Homecoming. Generative AI doesn't do that. It doesn't teach anything or hone any skill sets. There is no 'generate a new dev' button. The skills that our devs utilize are only gained by work and maintained through practice. CoH's art community though? Their skills and earnest efforts can be ignored if you want to use generative AI. Homecoming will even make special channels for it. A constant reminder that many of the folks here readily push the 'don't hire an artist or learn how to draw/paint/demo edit, just get the end result' button while the devs require that anyone who wants to work with them actually be able to show their work. Of course, all that becomes a moot point if the devs do actually use generative AI to make content. Personally I don't think they do or ever have but hey, I'm not on the dev team so I can't know for sure. All I and anyone else thinking about playing on Homecoming have to go off of is what we can see, which is 'wow, they sure have a lot of AI art. They must really like their players using it.'

OP's point is more that the second Judgement doesn't accomplish anything if the mob it would have hit is already dead. Which does kinda suck, but isn't remotely the kind of thing that calls for instituting a mechanic that allows players to deliberately lock others out of using their own powers, even on the basis of 'it only lasts a few seconds.' If another player is using judgement too often or in a fashion that impedes the enjoyment of the game, everyone can already control how often the offending player uses judgement by exercising some of their own and choosing not team up with that person. Alternately, run content where mobs can survive more than one use of judgement. If you've got access to incarnate powers, chances are you can run that tier of endgame content.

That players can subvert the intended, canon progression of the story isn't indicative of any story extension in Praetoria beyond what exists, it's indicative of the devs allowing the small handful of 'perma-Goldside' characters some path to participate in endgame content rather than have those characters entirely locked out of a large amount of level 50 content. The jump to Primal Earth was the hard stop 'this goes no further' point for Praetoria for a reason and the overall story of the game has long since moved past that. The ability for perma-Goldsiders to participate in iTrials is for player convenience. It has no bearing on narrative.

I'm saying all of this as someone who enjoyed Goldside and its arcs... it was a complete ghost town back on Live too, after the initial Going Rogue boom. It had absolutely no legs outside of Incarnate content and even that made the pivot away from being Praetorian-based when it grew stale with the playerbase. Or at least, it was starting to before shutdown. It's possible an arc about fighting back against Praetorian Hamidon could renew broad player interest, but that's a very specific narrative path versus the much more open-ended story arc continuations Homecoming has been focusing on thus far. Also there is merit to be had in bespoke time travel content, but only if it tells story beats not available in the game's on-going timeline. Like the Cyrus Thompson stuff or the Phalanx fighting the Jade Spider. I have doubts any of that could be found for Preatoria much less curry any strong amount of dev and/or player interest, but I can't say it's impossible. If anything though, I'd expect any future Preatorian-involved content to be firmly based on Primal Earth, involving the surviving Preators, the New Praetorians supergroup, and what's to be done with the captured, de-powered Emperor Cole. Kallisti Wharf certainly leans that way, given the involvement of post-iTrial Praetorian mobs.

Given the gold name reply to my initial post, I think they're already well aware. Also, I never said AI was evil. I said that using generative AI as a replacement for creative efforts is feckless, dishonest, and without talent or skill. AI itself is a machine. A very sophisticated one, but still a machine. It possesses no morality. It can only do what it's made to do or is utilized for. In this instance, said use is 'bloating what was once an earnest art community with hundreds upon hundreds of unlicensed 3rd party regurgitations of NCSoft's IP.' Speaking as a current user and as someone who was active in the art community on Live, that's a really bad look. A game about the imagination of building your own superhero can't manage to support an art community without AI? Case in point. FFXIV's art community alone is larger than Homecoming's total active population. That's a lot of prospective players being turned away. It's not like Homecoming doesn't host tons of contests, both dev and player run, showcasing the creativity of its community between costumes, bases, bios, etc. What happens when people who hear about Homecoming and the possibilities allowed by the game show up to look around? They're going to see that the largest, most popular areas of Homecoming's art community are just generative AI. Really it just feels like a game with such a focus on genuine creative efforts can do so much better than pervasively permitting AI. I can't imagine the Homecoming devs would support having their own contributions eclipsed by generative models. They know how difficult the code of the game is to work with, how much time and effort they've spent on crafting new story arcs, forming enemy groups, building zones and mission maps - but none of that would exist as it is without them. Without their perspective and point of view, their interests and particular creative flairs. Could a generative AI have written storylines for the Kallisti Wharf revamp, the Dr. Aeon Strike Force, or expanded Cimerora? Maybe, but it didn't. I imagine the devs who wrote that content would be horribly insulted if anyone implied AI had even been involved (and rightfully so!). However, if that's the standard that the staff sets for themselves, why then does Homecoming permit our artistic community - what should be an institution celebrating that same creativity and path of outreach for our playerbase to emphasize what CoH is about - to be actively displaced and disrupted by AI they themselves wouldn't use?

The core thought behind the comparison was 'overly popular tunnel vision fast tracks to their respective end goals.' AE is the quickest, most efficient way to reach high amounts of XP/inf and hit the level cap, so it's what a bunch of people do. Doesn't require engagement with the community or any other game content. Fast, easy, can even be done without actually playing the game. Similarly, AI is the quickest, most efficient way to produce images, so its what a bunch of people do. Doesn't require any initiative or actual creation, just 'I want a picture as fast as possible with the minimum of personal cost and time investment.' Fast, easy, no artistic skills or talent required. Though, overall that might be giving AE too much flack. Even with the prevalence of farming, AE at least requires some level of human interaction when it comes to testing, playing, and writing the non-farming content. Generative AI just copies things that neither the users nor the AI companies had any hand in making at all (or, often, have any ownership of). Bit jarring to just throw in at the end of the prior post, I'll admit, but the prevalent methods of how both were used only struck me in that moment. Train of thought writing and all that. Pretty much the same. I look at the AI posts like this one and think back to the Stan and Lou shorts or the Dance Gun Word Up video from the ole days and it's just depressing. Back to OP's post, while AI voices as a creative replacement would be abhorrent, implementing a limited text-to-speech accessibility option wouldn't be a bad idea. Some folks have already suggested that in other threads. I'm not really all that sure how much use it would get given MMOs in-general are very text heavy and CoH is at the deep end of that spectrum, though. Combined with how fast players move through maps, any use of voices - AI or text-to-speech - seems like it'd just become a huge jumbled wall of sound. But hey, if text-to-speech would earnestly benefit someone and the devs have interest/time to make it work, why not?

It's the only measure that's relevant. If you don't support something, you don't allow it to be used under your name or promoted through your venues. Homecoming has no problem removing or prohibiting content they don't approve of, as they clearly state in their own code of conduct/terms of service and have clearly shown through on-going moderation of the forums/discord. If a user does something Homecoming's staff do not support users doing, the unsupported content is removed (and so is the user, depending on the nature of the unsupported content). In this instance, said thing being actively permitted by the Homecoming staff is 'hosting hundreds upon hundreds of AI images made by 3rd party companies utilizing NCSoft's IP without a license.' Now, maybe NCSoft doesn't care about their IP being freely used by outside AI companies and recreated at-will. A lot of Korean businesses are embracing AI nowadays. Maybe some amount of the Homecoming staff see no issues - practical, ethical, or otherwise - with using generative AI in that fashion either. Hell, maybe some of the Homecoming staff use generative AI themselves. Free art is free art after all. However, strictly from the view of Homecoming being official, licensed stewards of the CoH IP - an IP that NCSoft has historically been very tightfisted over - actively permitting their users to post unlicensed 3rd party recreations multiple hundreds of times and encourage other users to help AI companies make more (and do so more accurately) on their watch and via the official site seems really dumb. Or maybe AI art is just the modern replacement for all the fan art, commissions, and demo record videos we had back on Live. Outside of the 'post your best costume here' thread, AI generated content comprises the biggest art thread on the forums by a wide margin and is the largest art channel on the discord. This is, apparently, what the majority of Homecoming's art community is now. An unlicensed copy of a real comic book cover someone else actually drew that manages to infringe on two companies at once. It's quick, it's easy, it doesn't require a commission fee, and it has totally eclipsed any other form of community-made art in both usage and views. Reminds me an awful lot of how AE has functioned in-game, come to think of it.

I looked around the forums before making the post, but it seems my search fu was too weak. Not surprised other folks have had the same idea though. Or that Champions Online already has that sort of costume functionality. Their character creator does a lot of things I wish were available in CoH.

Certainly not opposed to fully separate chest emblems if they could make them into 3D elements, I just figured using scaled down shield models would be an easier path to 'belt buckle with logo' on it since shields are already made with bearing emblems in-mind. Though, the option to just slap a smaller chest emblem in the same space sans belt could also work. Similar to how Minx has the pointy M logo at her hips (though that is actually its own unique piece).

Tons of superheroes have custom belt buckles that bear their own personal symbol or supergroup logo - Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, pretty much all of the X-Men. It's a minor touch that helps tie together a costume but also something that the game has never offered as an option. So I had the thought that the various brooch pieces and the shield models could excellently fill that niche. There's a lot of plain belt options from the early years of the game that would work pretty readily with a customizable buckle and most of the more fancy belts could benefit from them too. There would need to be scale adjustments to increase the brooch sizes and shrink down the shield models to make sure everything aligns properly (and even then some belt options still wouldn't function well with them due to clipping), but it seems like a fun way to add a decent amount of extra options using pieces the costume creator already has in it. Bonus points, they could have emblem details too provided the chosen buckle has enough surface area for a logo. I did some quick image editing as a proof of concept, with some tweaking on the Shield one to match up the color palette.

QFT. Had to blow the dust off for that one, but it's exactly what would happen. The devs don't have time to manage the entirety of the forums and discord at all times as is. They absolutely aren't going to bury their level of interaction with the playerbase under an unending avalanche of even more messages for even more things they weren't going to do in the first place. Also, the concept of 'the players give the exact same counterpoints the devs would, but it's mean when they do it' is odd. If anything, it seems that'd be more efficient than waiting who knows how long for the devs to personally reply to every post. So long as someone can actually back up their counterpoint with an accurate explanation via game mechanics or engine functionality as to why that something is unfeasible, what's the difference?

The dev team's time and availability is always a relevant consideration because it's a limited resource and without their taking action there is no new content of any sort for Homecoming. If we're just going to hypothesize without any consideration for the logistics of how an idea could actually be implemented, the potential return on investment of dev time, or the practical need/playerbase desire for it, we might as well just post stuff like 'What if every time you killed a mob, the game gave the player donuts?' or 'Why doesn't Homecoming sponsor an international PvP E-sports league and build their own arenas?'

Fair point, the new take is a bit jarring. Especially in contrast to the other prominent media depictions of Supergirl - by which I mean the recent CBS show and somewhat less recent JL/JLU cartoon versions. The version from the Flash doesn't really count, I think. She isn't bad but given that she effectively just 'find and replaced' Superman's role in that storyline and it was the first introduction to her, the movie didn't do much at all with it being Kara there versus just having an alternate Clark. As a first step with the character I get why it could be off-putting (especially in-light of the prior decade+ of DC films...) but I trust Gunn will have the new Supergirl grow and adapt aspects of her other iterations. Her being a chaotic partygirl makes messy counterpoint to Superman's genuine wholesomeness, and provides a dynamic start for her to grow from. If she's only recently been released from whatever stasis they opt to go with, it makes sense that someone with actual memories of a life on Krypton would cope by leaving Earth (a planet she possibly doesn't even consider home yet) to go out and find escapism among the stars. Confronting that with Lobo, an embodiment of excessive force, bad/selfish choices, and partying gone wrong and her having to deal with Krem's depredations the whole time and all the evil nonsense he does seems rife with opportunities for her to rise to the occasion and become more heroic. Also, as a matter of practicality, a lot of Supergirl's comic arcs (at least the modern ones) tend to involve a ton of characters the new DCU hasn't put in yet. The Red Lanterns, Nightwing and Batgirl, Wonder Woman and the Amazons... Heck, even her becoming one of the Furies requires Apokolips, Darkseid, and all that. That's not even getting into the headache of meeting a Pre-Crisis version of herself. Seems like slim pickings of storylines she can engage in solo without cutting out a lot of important context (or involving context that's just outright impossible for a new film universe). I suppose a more traditional Supergirl approach could have been her finding Kandor out in space, run with the whole 'searching for home and finding it, but not how she wanted' plot with her taking on Brainiac. Though, that could still be a really good ending set up for this initial adventure with Supergirl. She's gotten over her hang ups and embraced being a hero, even found remnants of Krypton, but now she has to defend it from an evil AI overlord the same way Superman saves Earth from Lex. On top of the ticking clock that would be 'Brainiac now knows about Earth and Clark and is going that way fast.'

Seconding this. Mr. Terrific's look in the film is, well, terrific. As is the man himself, honestly. Going forward I really hope this approach becomes the default for superhero outfit design, especially given the general malaise over nano-tech and CGI suits. When something is practical and functional and also accurately embodies the colorful, dynamic comic depictions? That's when it was done correctly. At that point it's just up to personal aesthetic tastes, which is much more reasonable digression. I can fully understand how some folks might not care for specific aspects of this Superman's suit (like @Excraft said about the S symbol design), but he still looks as vibrant and bright as Superman ought to and like the suit actually functions as an outfit he can put on and wear.

Try dealing with the fogies in an HOA or a retirement community. Advanced age imposes absolutely no limitations on the potential for arguments or pettiness. ... it has made me consider senior living in Paragon City, though. That would be either the best or worst experience, possibly vacillating back and forth in the same day. Sure, Old Man Rogers will ramble entertaining stories all about how he punched out the 5th Column back in the day, but good luck convincing him to turn down the TV and take his pills when he can still bench press a car.

It's been plenty clear that if a someone posts or promotes content that Homecoming doesn't officially approve of or want affiliated with them, the staff will remove it. Both in-game and on the forums/discord. So allowing spaces explicitly for the hosting of AI generated content, where players can freely post it, share the sites and prompts used to generate it, and actively encourage others to engage in using AI is a pretty clear signal that 'Homecoming supports players doing this.' Especially true with discord, considering the channel in your own example was directly made by the staff. The solution to 'some players complained about AI art' being 'we'll give AI art its own channel' is pretty cut and dry permission. If Homecoming didn't support generative AI or support their players utilizing it, those channels and threads allowing it and promoting its usage wouldn't exist. Frankly, it just feels like an unneeded can of worms. We can't make Superman in-game because that's stealing DC's copyright, but I barely had to scroll back into the ai-art discord channel to find this. That's not the only example of a player using AI to directly violate copyright in there, either. Maybe Homecoming's stance on AI content already is 'don't post direct evidence that you used AI to flagrantly steal an IP, especially not to our official channels' and this just slipped through the monitoring cracks, but even if generative AI is just limited to CoX-based content that still leaves the question of 'is this piece of AI content safe to post or does it violate some copyright?' as I guarantee none of those generative models are just trained on City of Heroes artwork and screenshots. Backing up a step though, lets say there is an AI solely used for CoX-based content. That's all this generative art AI has been trained with and does. That still has the core issue of allowing generative AI to copy City of Heroes IP in the first place. Homecoming doesn't permit players to 'pretend to be signature characters or canon factions' while playing the actual game due to strict ownership concerns, but it certainly seems to allow players to feed CoX's IP into AI generators that neither Homecoming nor NCSoft have any authority over. Is that a sanctioned usage of the IP that the NCSoft license allows? Players telling AI how to more accurately make unofficial, unapproved City of Heroes content outside of Homecoming's control? Seriously, personal distaste for AI and ethical problems aside, it just feels really dumb for y'all to have any official spaces allowing for this. I can't imagine the NCSoft agreement included a 'make sure Homecoming permits players to actively disregard our IP ownership by giving our content to third party generative AI companies' clause.

This. It's already galling enough that Homecoming supports AI 'art' but that's at least avoidable by skipping over that thread. Implementing AI voices or any 'generating' AI in the game itself would be a death knell for my interest and likely that of most of the players I know. The voice work in the Galaxy City tutorial isn't the best, but I'll take actual voice work over fake AI slop every time.

Any alteration to Invulnerability is going to have to account for the fact that the set is incredibly solid as is and overcomes it's minimal weaknesses very easily with IO slotting. Which admittedly is possible for most sets but Invul does it very well. Also like @tidge said, Dull Pain already exists. If used proactively there's no need for in-combat healing beyond procs and innate regeneration - an Invulnerability character should have enough health and blunt enough incoming damage that their HP bar remains green for entire combats against most enemy groups. Not that I'm opposed to additions or modifications, I'm just having trouble seeing where they'd factor in given the current performance of the set. Any alternate to Dull Pain would need to be equivalent to it after all, at which point... just use Dull Pain. Unstoppable is probably the easiest option to modify, given how outdated the original tier 9 design is by this point between IOs and Incarnate powers. Maybe it could be a toggle that adjusts resistance/defense buffs depending on in-coming damage-types (though that feels a bit too Bio Armor-y). A toggle or auto +Absorb mechanic could work too. Armor Tier 9s not being early 2000s god mode powers but just useful extra options would make them... well, useful.

Yes, the evergreen nature of early CoH content, containing such amaranthine concepts as the timely context of Operation: World Wide Red, the repeated use of 'ex-Soviet Union' mad scientists, and Freakshow l33tsp34k. Or references to gang leader NPCs like Frostfire and Tub Ci having been active in the 70s and 80s or Back Alley Brawler spearheading the Regulators in the perennial War on Drugs. The game wasn't even 'evergreen' through the first year of it being live, much less over its entire original lifetime. Every new event, zone, story arc, and task force after launch progressed the timeline when they were added. Also, First Ward was literally a lead-in to the finale of the Praetorian War storyline. It was put in the game in the middle of the then on-going Incarnate content and introduced concepts and plot points that directly linked into subsequent Incarnate trials and arcs that capped off Praetoria. Regarding OP's post - if I understand the gist right, I agree. More options for the existing Incarnate powers to fill concept gaps (more Judgements types, Lore pet options, etc.) would be fine additions. Higher tiers of powers or more level shifts though, no.

If Rage were to get a rework, I think it should reflect the intentions of the existing ATs better. Spitballing various ideas, Tanker and Brute Rage could increase the effect of taunts and available aggro limit while active. Give greater damage boosts to the lower tier attacks and proc effects to Knockout Blow and Foostomp rather than just flat +damage across the board. -Resistance/-Defense could work, the classic 'I put my back in it this time' of hitting harder to break through the opponent's protection. The more you hit, the harder you hit the next time. Works with Fury as a mechanic and with Gauntlet. Hell, maybe even tie it into the inherent powers - Brute Rage builds in-conjunction with Fury for even higher damage numbers and enemies affected by Gauntlet while Tanker Rage is up have their Resistance debuffed. Brute spends Fury to negate the lessened damage of the crash and keep punching, while Tankers - even with the -damage - can still be the center of the mob and dole out debuffs. Bonus points, having AT bespoke Rage seems like it would make it easier to proliferate to Scrappers and Stalkers. Maybe call their variant Frenzy or Rampage to illustrate the difference. Have it boost accuracy and damage but also offer crit chance effects. Greater crit chances for lower tier attacks, proc options for Knockout Blow/Hurl/Foostomp. Scrapper could proc additional effects like holds or immobs while Stalker could proc Hide. Hit someone so hard they just recoil in pain for a moment or lose all track of where the opponent is. Thematically the idea of 'precisely applied' Super Strength feels more fitting for those ATs than Rage as is.

This. It's incredibly easy to make boatloads of influence already, to the point where any even moderately played 50 is capable of fully financing other alts. Hell, if someone engages in AE via door-sitting or AFK farming it's possible to make boatloads of influence by not even playing the game at all. The whole 'it's just a repeated grind over and over' comments earlier in this thread never actually account for the fact that A) the game asking players to commit to playing once is fully reasonable and B) doing 'the grind' once already means the effort needed the second time is immediately halved by the sheer amount of rewards earned. Subsequent alts similarly reduce the amount of effort needed. Influence gain is practically geometric growth in CoH. It balloons extremely quickly under practically all circumstances and any amount gained increases the amounts gained later. The barrier of entry posed by inf is, essentially, 'did you bother to log in' and I'd rather not have the game 'win' itself before I even accessed my account.

You absolutely can transfer character concepts, redux builds, and recreate established characters with new powersets/archetypes. I've remade established characters at numerous different points, especially when new, more fitting powersets were dropped or proliferated. My original main from 2004 was a Fire/Fire Blaster who became a Fire/Fire Scrapper in Issue 12, which was a full retcon of his identity up until that point for a more fitting concept. Another character was an Energy Blast/Ninjitsu Sentinel who was deliberately rerolled as Water Blast/Ninjitsu when the right story milestone was hit for unlocking their true powers and things carried forward from there. I've got a character who spent three years with his identify defined by being an Electric Melee/Energy Aura Scrapper and now has a 'depowered' Katana/Willpower variant due to plot reasons. Both versions exist simultaneously and are canonically the same guy - just armed with different abilities depending on if he's using magic or not. So to answer your question yeah, you absolutely can. Also given the usage of the name 'Barbie' for Kendo Barbie, you probably should. As a forewarning, if that character is what the name implies (blonde woman in a pink outfit armed with a samurai sword, may or may not be from Malibu and possibly lives in a dreamhouse dream dojo) that's skirting an IP line Homecoming has limited tolerance for.

That's a very interesting point. The original mission map designs feel a lot more like FPS maps of that era than MMO maps, much less anything like the map designs CoH got later or that MMOs institute now. Travel powers being accessed much earlier - and the overall cranking up of gameplay speed - definitely adjusted how open and free-roaming mission maps became. Though, remembering the original map progression, by the time players had travel powers a lot of those big 'area of city zone/destroyed zone/forest' maps were more available around then too, so there was some semblance of player-related progression there. A lot of the endgame maps back then were also the giant open-air ones. Also I'll echo some earlier posters - the massive Oranbega maps with all the little side rooms and buildings to explore is a fantastic set piece, but a major pain on any character taller than the default height. My main for a long time was an 8'+ tall demon man and he'd end up getting caught on every one of those green crystal chandeliers. I imagine its even worse if your character is a Huge player model. I have friends whose mains use the Huge model with near max height and body sliders and I don't see how they've managed all these years.

The Homecoming wiki is a quicker source than scouting through the forums. The pages for the newer Issues detail which arcs and contacts were added in which Page. Issue 26, Issue 27, & Issue 28. Edit - if you are in the right level range for them, hitting the Find Contact button in-game does point to newer content first, so that is also an option.