Veracor

Hey everyone, Veracor here. For five years now I have run a daily schedule of public content as regularly as I could, pretty much only losing days to power outages and health emergencies. Though I am thankfully not the only one anymore, today is my fifth year mark for running content and I have decided to finally hang up the oversized axe/sword and retire. This decision has been in the making since the start of this year. During my tenure I have led a total of 3,664 successful Hamidon kills, led 2,298 badge runs of incarnate trials, led 954 successful "Master of" task forces, and led an astounding 2 MSRs. I was not expecting the numbers to get this high when I started this journey so long ago! Especially the MSRs! Anyways, it is time for me to step down and let others take the spotlight. Due to having perpetually disagreed with the direction of Homecoming's development for several years now, I am choosing to no longer stress myself over it and will be moving onto other games after today. I know I wasn't a perfect leader or even a perfect player, but I do hope that I have left a certain positive impression on the community over the years: the value of consistency. I would like to thank all who showed up to my content and contributed in its success; without many of you, the itrial and raid scene in Everlasting would have really struggled! In particular, I would like to give special thanks to everyone that ever did targetting at my Hami raids, because I know the job is really damn boring: Alimorel, Amperella, Apron Strings, ARandomWizard, ArcticRazor, Aushen, Austin Smith, Baney, Battlecruiser, Bellerophon, BERNZO-MATIC, BlackHearted, Blaspherion, Blue Archaura, Bruin, Burk, Cal-of Thrain, Chili Bear, CU Krow, Dandys, Dazl, Divi, Dr. Altair, Elmyder, Ephah, Ethan, Fermi, Fiery Inviso, Fomsie, Garghuul, Heat-Transfer, Helen A Handbasket, IcebellaCoH, InnerWill, Iron Joe, Jazual, Kallisti Gold, Katja Wolfheart, Keen Stronhold, Khrystina, Kid Mojo, Kistulot, KomradeKommunism, Krogoth, Kya Sapphire, Laceratrix, Lady Warsprite, Lazuli, Lemming, Lionors, LGN, Major Britain, Maligne, Marazel, MetalSiryn, Metaphorical Wolf, Mr. Bear, MsAligned, Mulli, Neutron Decay (RIP), Omnimancer, Paish, Paraflex, Phenomriel, Poison Shadow, Pop Tart, Prestidigitator, Q1, Ravlin, ROBOKiTTY, Ruaidhri, Sakkaku, sbloyd, Shadeknight, SSR, Star-Siege, SubtletyMars, Sue, Sundew, Tanklet, ThornRune, Vagabond Prime, White Nightingale, Wylde Fyre, zenblack, Zoey Walkers. Everlasting has been the best game community that I've ever had the joy of leading content in. Sorry if I forgot anyone, 3,664 Hamidon raids is a lot to keep track of! I couldn't have done it without you all! (Actually I probably could have by telling everyone to go clockwise, but it wouldn't have been pretty lol) --- Stats: A lot of people have asked me about what kind of stats I've accrued on a character that I've played almost exclusively since Homecoming's launch, and that I've always led content on. Well, here they are. The Damage Taken and Damage Received stats shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone as they're 32-bit signed integers. The Villains Defeated stat is high since I rarely ever touched AE. The market stats are kind of just whatever since I stopped caring about influence a long time ago: My "Incarnate" salvage tab looks like this. Whenever my shards and threads maxed out I would spam them into commons and uncommons to keep them going. I also never really bothered with the WSTs: My "Special" salvage tab is almost full, but not quite. Obviously I did not care for the Giant Monster update. The amount of influence contained in this screenshot is left as an exercise for the reader: The "Event" salvage tab isn't anything particularly impressive, but here it is anyways: The login message I see every day: No comment on this one: --- Random other stats that come to mind: Over the last five years I have received tells from approximately 3340 unique accounts. Over the last five years I handled ~280 cases of multiboxing/leeching, ~130 cases of harassment, ~40 cases of itrial griefing, and have received a total of 9 death threats. These numbers are fairly low compared to most games, and most came from the earlier years of Homecoming. In my Hamidon raids, I asked for volunteers for melee targetting a total of 15 times, for ranged targetting a total of 77 times, and control targetting a total of 80 times. Melee really is the ol' reliable! In Hamidon raids exclusively, I kept track of how many unique typos on "Veracor" that appeared in league chat. I apparently have 26 alternate identities! Vergcor the Dinosour is my favorite. The highest number of veteran levels I ever achieved in one 24-hour period was 102. I never attempted to push this number further, mostly because I had run out of Brood Wars tournament vods to watch. I may or may not post my Raid Leader Antics stories at some point, as there were approximately 130 entries and I wasn't screenshotting them as I went through them. It was a nightmare to get those things squished and formatted into the game's biography field, so it's possible I might just post them later as raw text in a googledoc somewhere. --- So that's it, I guess. I may still occasionally log on to join a task force or an itrial as a non-leader, but unless there's a drastic change in Homecoming's development I'll likely become a rare sight in this game. I am not tied to MMOs nor to superheroes in general, so you could run into me anywhere! (Obligatory cringey Warhammer 40k copypasta since it'll probably be a while before the next person reaches this number): If you have any questions, you should be able to find me on the Everlasting TFs discord as a retired content leader. SSR will also be retiring from leading content this week for similar reasons but I'll let him make his own post. The Everlasting TFs schedule will continue with substitute leaders for the time being. Thanks for coming, everyone! I might not see you all later this time, but I will remember you! -Veracor

If you designate one Tanker or Brute on the team to be the one to hold aggro, they're the only person that actually needs Ambrosia (usually only two or three). They can flip the Titan to face away from the team, and can optionally hover to also prevent its footstomp from being used. Everyone else can just kill it in its back/ankles and then rush the four objects in the back before people start dying to cascading defense failures that come from all the ambushes that activated as the Titan was taking damage. The person holding the Titan's aggro should probably also bring green inspirations, as Ambrosias alone may not be enough depending on powersets and the team's damage.

The league is teleported outside of a building when three of its terminals are activated, with a several second delay usually. Each terminal gives 30 points when activated. If the league activates the third and fourth terminal at the same time, they can get an extra 30 points before being teleported out. This can sometimes result in that phase of the itrial being one building visit shorter.

It's normal for this time of year to see a downtrend in activity, especially during earlier hours of the day. Aside from that, the overall population has been stable between older players leaving and newer players joining. I'm still seeing the expected attendance in my daily content but most of the globals I'm seeing now are from 2021 and 2022. The 2019-2020 attendees that I used to see regularly are often absent from the game now (except for a small set that entertains themselves via infinite numbers of badgers). Usually the holiday downtrend fixes itself by the third week of January, but I think new content typically drops around that time anyways and drums up interest. I guess we'll find out!

There was a secondary exploit involving the different "Teleport to AH" powers that was tied to the old enterbasefrompasscode functionality. Basically the original devs took some serious shortcuts when they made these and you could break into mapservers that you had no business being in which led to some additional exploits. Sounds simple but apparently it was a nightmare to fix on the backend. Homecoming changed the enterbasefrompasscode stuff back in i27p1 when they made LRT an accolade, and simultaneously opted for just disabling the AH teleport powers; most people were using base portals and LFG queue to get around anyways.

Old School LRSF is a boring slog in my opinion, but I like the two hard mode TFs introduced so far -- those are quality pieces of content for SGs and groups of friends to organize for. However, 4-star is not PUG-friendly. 4-star is something with actual difficulty for already-established groups that take the time to reflect on their gameplay and builds and make the effort to improve. 99% of the content in this game can be PUG'd or soloed, so it's nice to have something that can actually kill that one player who always runs off and tries to speedrun a mission without their team. If I had one complaint about the hard modes, it would definitely be the number of unskippable cutscenes, especially in Aeon where the cutscenes are literally just monologues that don't handle or disguise any entity movement or spawning. That number (for repeatable content such as task forces) should always be zero if everyone on the team has seen them already, much like how BAF and Keyes work. Also, the argument of "Splitting an already-small playerbase" isn't really a thing in my anecdotal experience, as (1) The people who choose to run hard modes weren't going to be joining random PUGs or MSRs anyways and (2) You're splitting these players off from a block of content that can be 99% soloed. This might not be necessarily be true for everyone, but it is what I have observed with the majority of hard mode enjoyers. ... Related tangent: I don't mind when someone says "I can't do it" because of timezones or because of not knowing enough people. But it irritates me when someone says "I refuse to do it" because there's literally nothing holding them back from learning a game like this and getting better at it. This isn't an RTS where there's APM and peripheral vision checks, nor is it an FPS where there's aiming and hearing checks. A player that can't navigate high speeds in maps can still be a good player in a team by learning game mechanics and to hit Barrier when the leader calls for it, and a player with visual disability can still use macros and follow commands to target and position correctly. Don't lock yourself behind the mindset that you refuse to do something because it's too hard or you're too old. Learn, self-criticize, and adapt -- don't use video games merely as a way to wallow after a bad day at work. All games are systems, and there is glory to be had in truly understanding what makes them tick!

I am a tank main. I live to tank. I spend 99% of my time here on my tank. I justify this preference by analyzing my gameplay to try to be the best possible tank my team could ask for. My hobby of being punched in the face is often marginalized by Destiny and the high levels of player power, but moving the team quickly and controlling aggro on more than one group is still useful. Tank/nuke/support is a trinity that exists among a small section of players. It isn't enforced due to the inherent low difficulty of this game, and it isn't enjoyed by most as it invalidates many ATs and powersets, but the speed and power of a trinity-focused team far outclasses the hodgepodge of other ATs you usually see in a team. An organized tank (be it a Tanker, Brute, or Scrapper), a Fire Blaster, and a Cold Corruptor can carry whatever the rest of the team is through the majority of task forces, and it becomes very apparent in iTrials when the league splits up for badges. That said, I don't think the trinity should be required or even leaned into for future design. When you look at 4-star Aeon runs for example, the number of compositions available for a time-efficient run are slim due to Barrier chains greatly narrowing the possibilities. It sucks if a new piece of content comes out and your main/badger/whatever can't contribute well, or even participate to any unique effect, because the content is so skewed towards a small selection of powersets. If the trinity should ever be designed for, then it needs to be done in some way as to not say "better luck next time" to the majority of powerset combinations -- especially at this point in the game's life when people have long settled on their character choices. I do feel bad for the people that wanted to be healers in this game, though. It's a legit role in other games, but here if players are at least moderately aware of their surroundings then there's almost no situations for a healer to shine over another buffer or debuffer. This was different very early in the game's life when player power levels (especially enhancements) were much lower, and thus healing was much more on par with other methods of support. Perhaps the nostalgia towards the holy trinity comes from this moreso than the meta that the trinity design actually causes in gameplay.

Don't use a computer/laptop with integrated graphics. There's a specific line of integrated graphics, Intel I believe, that doesn't handle OpenGL very well, particularly with how the game renders water planes and sewer fx. I would also personally recommend against the AMD RX 5000 series for graphics cards, sometimes called Navi. I tried this one and got microstutters like crazy on CoH, and no setting seemed to fix it. Ended up having to send it back.

Each critter maintains a list of enemy targets that it has non-zero threat to. Threat is gained by vision, damage, directly taunting, or allies in the group fighting, and is lost overtime based on time and distance. The threat loss from time is static, but the threat loss from distance is greater if the enemy target is far away, especially when out of line of sight. Hence, enemies that teleport away are at risk of forgetting about the fight if no substantial debuffs or taunt were applied to them. Note that there is a very low threat threshhold that must be passed before the critter will attack -- that's what you're observing when you run past a mob and they see you, but haven't built enough threat to begin attacking. Staying in their vision increases that threat until they attack; if you're close, that threshhold will be reached almost instantly. The actual "threat" list that the critter maintains works like a leaderboard when there are multiple enemy targets. The critter initially picks the first person to generate threat with them, and anyone else that generates threat goes on the list below them. If the person with the second-highest threat value becomes twice as much as the current person, the critter switches to them, and then the next second-highest threat must become twice that to cause another aggro switch (even if it's the first person trying to get aggro back). The reason why this function exists is to stop an AV from rapidly flip-flopping between two tanks. Lastly, if what would be the current target is already at their aggro cap, the critter will merely attack the next most-threatening target on the list until a space opens for the current target (with the Homecoming update, the critter may still throw a few attacks at the aggro-capped primary target, but will largely attack the next person on the list). For building threat, the AT's scalar multiplies with damage, debuffs, and taunts being applied. For damage this is straightforward: damage is multiplied, i.e. if a Tanker were to somehow not have their inherent of Gauntlet, the Tanker would be doing 4x as much threat to an AV as they are doing damage, since Tankers and Brutes have a threat scalar of 4. For debuffs, this is not as well understood: the AI's interpretation of the threat caused by various debuffs is different -- for example, the AI thinks RechargeTime and Slows to be extremely threatening while it thinks Damage and Resistance debuffs are not very threatening. It does appear that the duration of the debuffs also play a role in the threat that they cause. For the "taunt" effect in particular, the AT scalar is multiplied with the duration, which is effectively how threat is internally stored. This is why a slotted Taunt (as in the power) from a Tanker is extremely sticky: when the Tanker uses this, they're effectively splatting a threat value of 80+ seconds on a target, which far exceeds the threat caused by, say, a Blaster's raw damage. It should be noted that Tanker's Gauntlet and Brute's Punchvoke have their own unenhanceable taunt that all of their attacks apply (Tanker: 15 seconds AoE, Brute: 13.5 seconds ST), so even if the Tanker or Brute doesn't use Taunt, just their auras and attacks should be enough to hold aggro over a Blaster. However, a low-damage Tanker or Brute that isn't using the power Taunt may get their aggro stolen by a Scrapper's damage, as Scrappers have the next highest threat scalar of 3, and especially if the Scrapper has their own taunt aura (such as Bio) or is applying slow debuffs (such as Ice). The Scrapper may have enough juice to overcome the unenhanceable 15/13.5 second taunt that is being applied by the Tanker/Brute's attacks. This page has a list of the different AT scalars that the mechanic of Threat gets multiplied by: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Threat As to how exactly Threat stacks per target, I am uncertain. It appears to decay faster the higher it has been stacked, but this is merely non-experimental observation. It is entirely possible that it just doesn't stack and only uses the highest threat applied by a single instance (after regular decay).

Bump, been having this forced redraw and delayed damage very often in iTrials. Nothing gamebreaking but can be irritating for some events (such as UG bomb badge).

Try not to get frustrated at powerlevelled newbies. They probably learned about the game from an experienced player who was just powerlevelling their own alts to 50 and merely offered to do the same to their new friend, not realizing it's cutting a ton of contacts out for a new person and leaving them at the hands of LFG to figure out what to do. The saddest AE baby I've ever encountered in iTrials didn't even know there were zones other than Atlas Park and Ouroboros -- they thought Atlas Park was Paragon City and that Ouroboros was a DLC from live. Sometimes there's a lot of stupid to unpack. Best you can do as a content leader is to have patience and then journal the experience afterward for comedy (after redacting names of course).

Bio is okay I guess.

Pure chance. I was randomly scrolling through imgur's "user submitted, newest first" out of boredom in February 2019 and saw someone post an image of CoH's login screen. They were posting about news of the secret server getting found out. I wasn't too into CoH back in the day for a numer of reasons but thought it would be interesting news to follow, if just to see how the situation legally panned out. Two months later Homecoming launched.

Thanks to everyone who made effort to show up at the voting booths to recast their votes! It was a lot of work but it feels good to have done the Community Choice thoroughly and in-person. Your time was not wasted! Congrats to all five bases! I'm happy so many people showed up to check them out!

Congratulations to the winners, the finalists, and everyone who entered! All of the bases in this contest were fantastic to tour! As one of the judges I helped go through all 74 of them, and let me tell you, what a rush for anyone looking to get into building their own base! Ideas and inspirations were everywhere! Well done everyone, and thank you @Dacy and @Easter Bunny very much for bringing the Homecoming Base Contests back!