BlackSpectre

Some players make the playerslot.txt file READ ONLY so that the game will not rewrite the file and mess up the order. Of course, if you do this any new characters would t be listed. So then you’d need to make the file able to be written over again. Then lock it down again. Kind of a hassle. However, for the most part my order has been retained after I edited the file. The game doesn’t seem to be putting my characters in random order like it used to. Could just be me though.

I e got 2 characters with bad pun names… Agent Snipe Hymn and Ice Scream Crone

Wait! I want to be smacked!!! What now?

And for any Devs who are reading this thread… https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/96091066151/understanding-the-angry-gamer/amp

@Snarky, please make sure you’re not taking this too far. Don’t let anyone run you out of the forums or a game you love… or anything you enjoy. It seems more like you’re punishing yourself more than anyone else. Of course, we will be punished as well because we won’t have your snarky face around to laugh with. Do you mean to punish us too? Further, your “consequence” should match the crime. An eye for an eye, not a beheading for an eye. Really, unless you don’t enjoy the rest of us anymore, it would be a good idea for you to continue doing what you enjoy with the people who are your friends. I understand you’re upset, and don’t dismiss that. Just keep balance in mind my friend.

OK! I've finished writing up the quick "Understanding Folder Paths" tutorial. Please look it over and let me know if it's easy enough for someone who knows very little about computers to understand. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/User:BlackSpectre/Testthis

Well, I only added the most common folders players would create in the data folders. There are many more potential things players could add. They’re completely optional and the data folder is completely blank unless players mess around with it. I guess I could add links to the folders… the first could link to /customwindow, the second to /popmenu, and the third is a bit trickier as it is typically used to replace the maps but with the advent of the COH modding app, it’s been replaced by the \assets\mods folder. I thought about leaving the data folder blank, and I still can, but part of me thought it would be useful for people to know a couple things that would go in it. Maybe it’s more trouble than it’s worth though and it would be better to remove the sub folders? Most of the folder names tell you what is stored in that folder… screenshots in \screenshots, costumes in \costumes, \builds in \builds, etc. I didn’t think any additional description is necessary. However, I did note 4 settings files and their locations in the \live folder because what’s in the “live” folder is not self explanatory, and the playerslot.txt file is also not described by \account. The devs and current devs did and do a pretty good job naming files by what they hold or their purpose, so even describing the files that would go in \architect, for example, is a bit redundant. A guide might be better for something like that. More and more I’m trying to keep things simple and brief. Clear and concise. People’s eyes glaze over so easily when they see a lot of text… as your eyes are most likely already glazing over by the text I wrote here. LOL 🤪

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Veteran_Levels

What do you mean it looks weird? Is it the colors that are weird? The best way to show a folder structure is with a kind of flow chart, but this would be an image and not text. I tried to create the folder structure with only text... but maybe I should create a graphic? If I did that, technically I should put the root folder at the bottom, and then build the folder paths up... like a tree to stay with the analogy. However, the file browser apps show the tree sideways... the root folder is typically on the far left, and the sub-folders spread out to the right. My sense is to keep it sideways so that things are kept consistent, but what do you think? That would mean the tree is growing sideways... that OK? I tried to explain file paths once before in this article https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Default_Folder, but although accurate, after watching the youtube tutorials maybe the way I explained it is still a little too sophisticated and specific to the game. Thanks for the references and YouTube tutorials. I did grab some language and examples from the first one. The second one was fairly high level. And I think you're right. I should add a file path tutorial to the page. 🙂 P.S. I added line separators to the Folder/Directory Structure. Does that help?

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Homecoming_Installation_Folder_Locations I tried to write it so that anyone could understand it even if they don't have a lot of "computery" knowledge. I'm not sure I succeeded, but I hope it will help.

I've created a new page for the wiki to help players understand where their game files are located, and which folders they need to save or backup. This is intended for players whose knowledge of computers is fairly limited, so if you think of a way I can improve it for people, please let me know. I'm talking to you @Snarky! (as well as anyone else including GMs). Also, if I've made any mistakes or omissions, please speak up. 🙂 https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/User:BlackSpectre/Testthis This is my test page or draft, so it's not really up at the wiki yet. P.S. Can you think of a better title, or is "Homecoming Installation Folder Locations" OK?

It’s very easy to do a fresh install. The only issue is saving the files that you want to save… screenshots, window, option, and keybind settings, builds, possibly logs. Homecoming has actually made that a lot easier than in previous installs by separating and laying out the data folders that players would like to keep. Hmmmm. Maybe that would be a good page to write up at the wiki… hasn’t thought of that before. 🙂

I know this comment is far too late, but just to add it here for reference's sake... RE: moving enhancements. I often use a trick to move a lot of enhancements from one tab to another and organize them at the same time. It uses the Auction House window, and you transfer enhancements back and forth between the Auction House window and your enhancement slots/window. Whenever enhancements are added to your enhancement window, they are always placed in the first available enhancement slot starting with slot 1 on tab 1. So you won't have complete control of where the enhancements are placed, but in many ways it's faster and easier than dragging the enhancement icons around. Here are the steps: 1. Open the Auction House window by typing /AH. 2. In your enhancement window/slots, double click on each of the enhancements you want to move/organize. When you double click, the enhancement will be transferred to the bottom of the Storage tab in the auction house window. You can organize your enhancements' order by double clicking on the ones you want grouped together. Or you can wait to do that in the next step. 3. Once you have all the enhancements moved into the auction house window, then claim each enhancement to put them back in your enhancement trays. You can click on the claim button(s) quickly. Remember, you can also choose which enhancements to put back into your trays so you can group them together if you didn't already do that in step #2. And that's it. It's not perfect, but if you want to move or organize a lot of enhancements, this method is very helpful.

I think it's just flowery language.

OK. To help overcome this open and close problem, I've created a rotating text bind. Essentially the bind will issue the command 3 times... once on key press, and then twice on key release. That will keep any window open and also offer the relief from tapping the key twice when trying to use interact with anything. Here's the files and command strings: interact1.txt X "+$$interact$$bindloadfilesilent /binds/interact2.txt" interact2.txt X "+$$interact$$interact$$bindloadfilesilent /binds/interact1.txt" You'll want to change the path to your bind files if you don't have a folder called "binds" in C:\Games\Homecoming\Settings\Live. To import it into your character, you can either copy and past the command string from the first file and then in game bind it to the X key, or whatever key you want. Or you could just use /bindloadfile /binds/interact1.txt to import it.

Aw man! This trick has some problems I didn't foresee. Turns out if you want to open a merit vendor, this "toggle bind" will open and close the window really fast and won't keep the window open. This will happen with any toggle window that will open and then close again when the same command is issued. Kind of a bummer. The toggle bind solution is not completely useless. It still functions better when clicking on doors, stores, and teleport portals; and we click on those much more frequently than other things. I'm going to keep my toggle bind for now, and see if I can get used to just using the mouse to click on things that the toggle bind won't work with. It still might be better than reverting back to using /interact just by itself...

I would like to give a huge shout out to @Dazl, @Hunter Smith, and @Nicodemous Bain for hosting NIGHTLY (and sometimes twice a night) Hami runs on Excelsior! Did I mention this has been every night at 9:45 EST for YEARS??? Their Hami raids have been consistent, professionally run, and darn fun!

For me, the best use of reward merits is to buy enhancement converters. Not to sell, but to use to convert various cheap enhancements into much more expensive enhancements and sell the converted enhancements on the market. Buy low, sell high. Other than that, new characters typically use a few merits here and there for enhancement unslotters when I'm in the middle of reworking a build, but really that's about it. For me, it appears that on average I earn about 30 merits per hour... but this number can vary widely depending on what kind of content is run. For example, Hami Raids have by far the best merits/time ratio of anything else in the game... about 160 reward merits per hour. If you don't count Hamis, the 30 merits/hr is a fairly good standard to determine the value of merits by how you use them, IMHO. The Merit Vendor offers to convert inf to merits at 1 merit per 1 mil inf. This is way, WAY too expensive. If you look at @Snarky's list above, the most you'd pay is 200,000 inf per merit. 5x better than 1 mil per merit, and in most cases you'd pay less. So how valuable a reward merit is really depends on how you use them, and how you earn them. If we use the 200K inf per merit as the baseline, then the value of 100 merits would be 20 mil inf. This means that you'd want to purchase a 20 mil inf item or greater with 100 merits. A Winter Origin or purple enhancement that sell for 25 mil inf would be a fair deal. You'd be essentially be getting a 25 mil inf item for 20 mil inf. Saving 5 mil inf over purchasing the winter packs from the auction house. It's only about a 20% savings, but hey it's something! At least you'd know that you'd be getting a fair value for your merits.

It took me years dealing with the finickiness of the /interact command to come up with a way to make it work more consistently and smoothly. The problem has been that it often doesn't affect whatever you want to interact with even though your character is the right distance away from what you want to interact with and facing the correct direction. So I've been double-clicking the X key (the key I bound the command to) all this time to get it to work... but I didn't have to. The solution is to make a "toggle bind". That's a bind that has the "+" appended to the beginning of the bind string like so: /bind X "+$$interact" The plus prefix forces the command to execute on key press AND again on key release. Now, instead of double-clicking, all I have to do is tap the key once and it works. Finally! I guess I was just willing to deal with the annoyance until tonight when I finally got fed up with it and asked myself "OK, what can I do about this /interact problem?" LOL

ROFL Sorry, your comment just tickled my funny bone... but yes, on a computer it is in the upper left corner of the main page. Click Browse --> Clubs. At least I knew that (but I admit it wasn't obvious originally). Which makes me wonder whether or not it would be a good idea to make a new group for Clubs at the bottom of the main forums pages (like it is on the mobile version)? I dunno, just throwing it out there...

So a power animation that doesn't affect the character's body, such as Shadow Fall that animates an aura underneath the character, will also cancel out the fly pose animation??? Or is THAT a bug?

OMG!!! Sometimes I can be so dense! I saw some links at the bottom and didn't realize they were club links instead of links to other websites. LOL Thanks, GP. 🙂

I’ve been poking around my phone and for the life of me I can’t find a way to access the Clubs section of the forums. Is there any way to do it other than a bookmark, or should this be a suggestion to add a link to Clubs? P.S. I’m on the latest iPhone.

They could also give every player a coupon for a certain number of WOs at discounted prices. That would stay in the holiday spirit and preserve balance.

Would it be possible to copy over the alternate special effects to the villain version of Dark Embrace? I forget what it's called, but the alternate darkness aura cast by the Dark Mastery version is way, WAY cooler than the original tendril version. If I remember correctly, I originally chose Soul Mastery specifically to get the alternate aura for the Dark Embrace power. It's that much more awesome! Then the alternate version was moved to the Dark Mastery's Dark Embrace... so I RESPECed and took Dark Mastery to get the aura. Now I'm back with Soul Mastery for a specific power, but sadly no alternate special effects. Since I created the character 20 years ago, I've wanted a costume aura like the alternate special effects of Dark Embrace. Since I basically have Dark Embrace on all the time, it's functionally equivalent. But a new costume aura could be an option. Thanks.