PeregrineFalcon

Yes, I am aware that "this game is maintained by volunteers and I get to play for free." There, now that I've said the magic words here's my feedback on this release candidate: Piecemeal's Personal Story - I really dislike missions (in any game) where my character is transformed into someone else's character, so I won't comment on this. Co-Op Striga Isle & New Story Arcs - I like this and I really like that Striga Isle is being opened up to villains. Now we just need a Strike Force where we help the 5th Column take the isle back from The Council. Rikti War Zone Revamp - I see the point. Infrastructure is important, but not exciting. It seems to work. Advanced Mode - Lady Grey's Task Force - I don't play AM so I'm not qualified to comment, except to say that I do like that it appears that more D-Synchs will be entering the marketplace. Team Badges - I don't care about badges, but I do like that you (mostly) listened to the players. New Player Experience Improvements - I like all of this except removing XP from exploration badges. So now combat is the only way to get XP. We're not allowed to get XP from anything that isn't combat? New Powersets: Arsenal Control & Arsenal Assault - Didn't test these, and won't play them. New Epic / Ancillary Power Pools and Epic Balancing Pass - I don't believe that nerfing the most useful ancillary powers in order to get players to try your new ancillary pools is going to work. Also, why spend the time to rename the ancillary pools? Ok, whatever, it's your time. So why won't you remove 'Epic' from the pool names as well? It's clearly a misnomer at this point. Arachnos Soldier / Arachnos Widow Updates & Power Customization - I like this. Well done. Sheathed/Holstered Weapons - Great! Thank you. Storm Blast - I mostly like the changes Devices - Time bomb > Remote bomb - Wow! This power might actually be useful now. Good change! Other powers - I like the changes to Thunderstrike, really hate the nerf to Bonfire (again). I really like the change to Shadow Fall, Steamy Mist and Arctic Fog! High-Level Council & Circle of Thorns Revamps - I really like this!!! Giant Monster Balancing Pass - Seems like a good idea, but I didn't test. I reserve the right to whine about this at a later date. New Vanity Pets - Apparently I am the only person on the internet who does not like non-combat pets. Costume additions/improvements - Always a good thing. I especially like the customization to Teleport & Combat Teleport, very nice. New Supergroup Base Items - Yay! It's really nice to finally see developers working on SG bases. Thank you. Loads of bug fixes - I especially like the change to the sound volume. It was so ridiculous that I consider this a bug fix. Thank you!

I will be respecing a lot of characters to remove the Ancillary power pools from them once this goes live.

Oh it was definitely dismissive, but it was not disingenuous. Agreed. And for the record I don't believe that Bonfire on the live servers is OP. I already showed how it's inferior to Rain of Fire in every way. Yes, Bonfire is far more popular than most of the other Ancillary powers, but that's not because Bonfire is OP, it's because its competitors suck and they should be buffed up to Bonfire's level of usefulness. I know everyone's screaming "power creep!", but nerfing a single power into the dirt isn't going to fix the power creep that's happened in CoH and bring the other Ancillary powers up to Bonfire's standard isn't going to increase the power creep, just diversify it. However, I'd still love it if someone could explain to me why something is automagically bad just because it's outdated and/or old-fashioned.

Ok, so what would you suggest? If nerfing OP powers is old-fashioned, outdated, and "hated by all gamers" then what alternative do you suggest that the developers use to balance powers? Mostly I'm just annoyed with the apparent claim that if something's been done a certain way for more than a handful of years then it's old and therefore automatically bad. Sometimes things have been done a certain way for centuries because that is the best possible way to do something. Progress is worthless if you're not progressing toward something. And, once you get there, it's time to put the axe down and move on to something else. You can't just change something every 10-20 years and then say "ooooo... we're making progress!!! Whoooo!" So if nerfing a power that's OP is something that the Homecoming developers shouldn't do because it's "old-fashioned and outdated" then how should they handle powers that, for whatever reason, are OP or unbalance the game?

Ya know, Massively OP published an article on this very topic just a couple of days ago: https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/08/into-the-super-verse-whats-wrong-with-city-of-heroes-incarnate-system/

Canada Day? What's a Canada Day? Do you mean Canada Dry? 😁

Sure. As I said I just wanted to add something to it. I figure that if the devs are going to work on the respec and/or enhancement screen anyway, then they might as well look at that as well. And, since I so graciously responded to you, you now owe me five bucks as well. 😁 Yes, it's really slow at work today. Happy Friday!!!

Not only is this a great idea, and no Luminara did not bribe me to say that, but I'd like to add something to it. Being able move a large number of enhancements all at once, either into or out of the tray, would be a huge improvement. I used to craft and sell level 25 IOs by the truckload. It made me a bit of money but, more importantly, it kept a ton of the standard 8 IOs available at low prices for people. I quit doing it because moving 60 IOs, one at a time, 3 times in a row, in order to sell them for cut-rate prices just wasn't worth it to me any more. It also makes crafting them to put into my SG base storage for use by other people a complete pain the in neck. Being able to grab all 10 IOs and move them all into base storage, or into the Wentworth's interface, or being able to grab 18 damage IOs from the storage with 2 clicks and typing the number '18' would be a huge improvement. Now where's my five bucks, Lumi?

Do you wear pants? Why? People have been doing that for centuries. You should stop wearing pants to work. Wearing pants is outdated in this day and age. Yeah, see how silly that sounds? Just because something was done a hundred years ago doesn't mean that it's automatically wrong. If a power is vastly OP compared to everything else then it should be nerfed. The alternative, which is to buff every enemy and power in game to compensate is 1,000 times the work for the same result. That doesn't mean that I think that all nerfs are correct or justified, nor does it mean that I think everything should be nerfed (gotta get those disclaimers in because you internet folks love to deliberately strawman people's arguments) but it does mean that sometimes stuff does have to be nerfed.

Have any of the Homecoming developers ever said why they're sticking with this formula that says that Ancillary powers have to be numerically inferior to primary & secondary powers? Has it ever been explained why Ancillary powers can't be exactly the same as primary & secondary powers?

Tuesday, February 20th.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. 🤣 .

Unfortunately, I'm far too busy, but you're welcome to use the name. 😁

Normally I'd agree with this. Certainly I've argued many times over the years that the Medicine pool should have some alternatives to the tri-corder. But the Sorcery pool isn't a standard power pool, it's specifically an Origin Pool. The Sorcery Pool is specifically meant to represent magic powers, just as the other Origin Pool powers are specifically meant to represent abilities from other Origins. Sorry, request denied.

Hypothetical example in-game email: "Hi! This is GM Pumpkin. We recently received a request from a player regarding your character "Sir Kills a Lot". They had a character with this same name for many years on the retail servers and they'd like a chance to recreate and play that character that they have many fond memories of. This player is too anxious to contact you directly and ask you to change that character's name so that they can have their old character name back, so I am contacting you on their behalf. Please understand that I am contacting you only as an intermediary to ask if you would be willing to voluntarily change your character name so that this other play can have it. You are under no obligation to do so. If you are willing to do so then please respond to this email and let me know. If you'd like I can even walk you through the steps necessary to change your character's name. Thank you, GM Pumpkin"

You know, I probably would too. I have about 60 characters across the servers, and there's exactly 3 whose names I wouldn't voluntarily give up if a GM politely asked me to. Those are my namesake, my main, and another character who's named after my oldest son.

Your statement here implies that GM Crumpet is a complete idiot. Worse, it makes it apparent that you think we're all idiots, because that's the only way that anyone could agree with this disingenuous post. Now I've had some serious disagreements with the moderators in the past, and I have the warning points to prove it, but I don't believe for a minute that any of the Homecoming GM/Devs/Staff are stupid. I find it far more likely that if GM Crumpet had seen a bunch of accounts with names like Test0001 -> Test 0857 it's highly likely that he they (sorry, didn't mean to assume your gender) wouldn't have said anything because they understand that no one is upset that they can't name their new main Test 0157. People want "cool" names like "Captain Skyway" and "Knight of the Hollows", so it's far more likely that the hundreds of camped names, that they're referring to, are names that fall under the subset of "cool", not utilitarian stuff like Test 0485. And you know this Excraft. Your entire post is utter disingenuous nonsense. No one is gonna get banned for having 800 variations of Test 0123, no one is getting banned for having a ton of characters named "Bzzrzrzrzrrrk" and "Urmomomoommmmmz" and you know it. In your zeal to win the argument you've gone completely overboard and you're trying to make a point that no one with a 3 digit IQ is going to believe for a second.

Thank you both for confirming what I said, years ago, in the last thread where we talked about this name release policy. Just to recap: we have a GM confirming that many accounts have hundreds of unplayed, name-camping, level 1 characters. And, we have a player confirming that he logged on shortly after Homecoming started and made characters with all of the forum names that he could remember from the retail servers in a deliberate effort to keep them from getting the name that people associate with them. Please remember, just as I said before, that these are the people (players, not the GM) that don't want you to be able to take their character names. Not because they're using those characters, but just because they don't want YOU to have those names.

I wonder how many players would voluntarily give up a name if contacted by a GM. How many of you in this thread would?

There are 5 different MMOs that I play off and on, as well as a half-dozen or so other games that I play now and then. Do you know how many games forums I read often? This one. There are two more that I will occasionally read if I'm bored (or on a temporary vacation from this forum) or I'll read the patch notes if I see an update being downloaded. The rest? I just don't care. I don't go to the forums, I don't read the patch notes, I just play the game. There have been a couple of times where I've logged in and seen a big change to my character: name, outfit, skill tree, etc., I just shrug and ask another player what changed or I google it. I don't get upset, no matter what, because if I cared enough about those details I'd read their forums or at least their patch notes. And this is what's more likely to happen if someone who hasn't played Homecoming in three years logs in one day to suddenly find that he's lost a character name. If they cared enough to get upset about a character name they'd have cared enough to log in more than once in the last three years.

You already know why. Blackbird was right.

Well, I guess I can no longer say that the developers don't listen to our feedback. Between that and the mods no longer banning people for giving negative feedback in the feedback threads, I'm going to have to find something else to be grumpy about. Seriously though, thank you for the change.

Yes. If you're talking about moving characters between Homecoming's servers then yes. If you're talking about moving characters from Rebirth or Thunderspy to Homecoming then NO.

I would like to point out that adding gravity as a controllable variable allows the Homecoming developers to finish the Moon Base zone that Paragon started.

All rules are fictitious things invented by people. And all rules occasionally need to be broken when necessary. Neither the Cottage Rule, nor the Prime Directive, are supposed to be sacred texts or life-long ideologies. They're just important rules that you only break when necessary. You make a good point, but no, the change to Energy Transfer did not break the Cottage Rule. Energy Transfer's core functionality was "high-damage attack with a stun". Currently it's a "high-damage attack with a stun." Its core functionality has been preserved. I'm not sure if this is an example of breaking the Cottage Rule or not. As Cheli pointed out, determining the core functionality of a power can be a little tricky sometimes. One could argue that its core functionality was "ranged control", or that it was "ranged hold." The new version does seem more in line with the name of the power which, for me, makes it difficult to decide. Ultimately though, it's still no longer a ranged hold, so I guess that I have to say that Core Functionality has changed, if only slightly. Which is just a long-winded way of saying "you're right."