Doc_Scorpion

My Bots/FF mastermind doesn't have a pun or amusing name, but she does have an odd origin... I'd read an article about a girl who had built a robotic arm as a science fair project, and suddenly "first she built an arm, then she built an army" popped into my head. Five minutes later I was logging into Live and Mistress Mechanism was born.

Apples and the thing least like apples you can imagine. This wasn't a change - it was a bug fix. It was correcting a mistake made months ago. There was no need to consult the community or have a lenghty discussion. Give it a rest.

*nods* The stories were some of the best parts of the old forums.

The basic roles and nature of the AT's have not changed to any great degree. There's a reason why you're getting those answers... But you're not happy with an answer that doesn't fit your impossible criteria, so we keep going in circles.

0.o 99% of what you're asking can be answered by simply visiting the Paragon Wiki. The rest is just you going in pointless circles trying to quantify the difference between apples and oranges.

It has already been demonstrated to be possible to successfully raid Hami with the new (old) population cap - both on Live, and last night here on Homecoming. So I stopped reading right there.

Even if it's not a "commercial" game, Homecoming still needs to keep the money flowing. A large part of that is the same ol' bugaboo that every online game faces - keeping the game as interesting as possible to as many people as possible. Commercial or non/not-for-profit, ya gotta have the bodies coming in to keep the lights on. (Honestly, I wonder if I should make that my sig... Because over the week I've been back, I see a lot of people that don't grasp that principle.) Certainly true. But does it change it unequivocally for the worse because the folks that want to gather as many Merits as humanly possible now have a harder time of it? Not at all. Reading the reports in this thread, people are already changing and adapting and having fun doing so. I expect that trend to continue (it almost always does), and those that won't adapt to be left in the dust.

Dramatic changes are a way of life in any living, breathing, MMORPG. You learn to deal with them or you live a life where you're always frustrated and pissed off.

Keep in mind that what we're talking about are trademarked characters, and there is no Fair Use for trademarks. What folks seem to be talking about here is copyright law, which is irrelevant.

It could last for years. Or you could wake up tomorrow to find it gone. There's no guarantee and no reasonable way to predict the outcome. Dive in, enjoy, and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

I didn't have Num Lock turned on though... That was the first thing I checked. 🙂 The only one who uses Num Lock on this computer is my wife, an accountant, as she all but physically cannot enter numbers except on a 10-key.

OK, the numpad "DEL" key, which I've been using, does nothing... But the "Delete" key (which never occurred to me to try as I almost never us that section of the keyboard) works... Thanks!

Certainly mental gymnastics are part of RPing. Nobody ever said any different. But there are limits. There's a point where it's no longer mental gymnastics and you're simply excusing bad writing. For example: I'm considering having my blueside MM go vigilante. So, when she's running the Clockwork arcs, she's thinking "sure, I'll help out $CONTACT in eliminating the Clockwork. And make notes and pocket a few choice bits while I'm at it". My character, my reasons. My story. But when you're forced to introduce elements like "I'm being mind controlled" (to take an example introduced above) in order to play through an arc... That's not mental gymnastics. You're mentally covering up for bad writing taking away your control of your story. It's OK to choose, it's bad to be forced. "Forced" above is italicized, bolded, and underlined for a reason - it's the key concept in this discussion. One that folks don't seem to grasp. Nobody is asking for the world to suit my character. We're asking for choice. (Choices can be fettered or limited, no problems there - so long as the choices exist.) We're asking to retain agency and control of our own story. That's what makes an RPG different from a VN or choose-your-own-adventure.

OK, I don't seem to be able to delete objects. I'm in the base editor, with the toon with base editing privileges (the only toon in the SG for that matter)... and none of the obvious keys have any effect.

You've posted some variant of the quote above at least twice now... So it seems to me that your whole argument boils down to "I don't have a problem, I don't see a problem, therefore by fiat nobody else should have a problem either". Mental gymnastics is certainly a viable playstyle. But where you're off-base is your repeated suggestion that the rest of us should just live with it or just click through it (or past it).

No.

No offense, but that's not happening. NC Soft holds all the cards and has all the legal rights - and Homecoming has nothing. Zip. Nada. Zero. Homecoming exists and always will exist at NC Soft's sufferance. The only way that will ever change is for NC Soft to voluntarily wholly and irrevocably sign over it's rights to the IP. And I can't see that happening.

I'll tell you exactly what will happen if that system was put into place - it'll make the race to 50 (while ignoring current content) even more intense than it already is... And then, once again (as we are now) there'll be a ton of people who've only ever played a quarter of the game crying "is that all there is? I. WANT. MOAR." CoX's biggest problem isn't lack of high level content. It's lack of low and mid level content, and that so much of what there is being stale, dated, and lacking replay value.

And even at that they're massive fail. By the time they teach you that stuff, your introductory contact has already sent you to other zones. You've almost certainly died and been to the hospital. Etc... etc... The only people who need Twinshot's lame-as-(censored) "tutorials" are those who've powerleveled to 5-9... And how many people are going to powerlevel only as far as "just barely not a complete n00b" and stop? If the Twinshot arcs are to be of any use, then they should be the standard "first contact" and then the player is referred to an introductory origin contact. Even then a lot of the lame-as-(censored) dialog needs to replaced... all that krep about "cool kids" is meant to warm and inviting, but it's demeaning and insulting.

Are controller's pets buffed by the leadership pool?

Some meta level stuff that occurred to me after my previous post... - Availability on a major digital distribution server. (GoG is acceptable, Steam is vastly preferable.) - Social media presence by the game/company if not by the Devs themselves. (By that I don't mean the Reddit ghetto or the Discord slums. I mean Facebook and Twitter.) The reasoning behind both is simple: To survive, let alone grow, Neo-CoX (Homecoming) needs what CoX-Classic never quite managed to maintain... A steady stream of active new players to keep the numbers up and the servers alive. Losses are inevitable for any number of reasons, and must be balanced or more-than-balanced to keep the game living and breathing. Being publicly visible is a major component of that. In the same vein: Enough servers to spread the load, not so many that the population gets over diluted. Login queues are Very, Very Bad. Ghost towns are Way, Way Worse.

- More content, particularly in the low (5-10) and mid (10-20) level ranges. - New radio missions, including a few uniques (missions or maps that can only be accessed via the radio missions). - Anything, really, that rewards those who don't rush to the endgame. - Removal of the P2W vendor. - a veteran rewards programs.

Thanks!

If I delete a character, but screwed up... Can I delete him and will the name be immediately available for me?