Luminara

I never said that. I've never even implied it. I remove all global channels from every character as soon as I exit the character creator. And /local. And /emote. I ignore everyone, without prejudice or bias.

Even Jedi have absolutes, they're just too self-righteous to admit it.

Presumably, all of our players are decent folk who willingly abide by the requests of the developers and keep to the honor system, zero. Also presumably, the moon has a gooey chocolate center.

No. I use /ignore specifically for that reason, so I don't see what they type or feel a need to respond to them ever again. Ever. Evvvvvvvvvvvvverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Lifetime of the universe anyone coming off of the /ignore list <--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> . That's what the /ignore list is for. The only problem with /ignore, as far as I'm concerned, is that the number of entries it can contain is abysmally low. It needs a decimal shift three places to the right. Maybe four, just in case.

'k.

Automates the acquisition of rewards by using bots and macros. Which, if condoned by the developers, legitimizes bot farming, and therefore RMTs. Even if they want to permit AFK farming without allowing bot farming and RMTs, the two go hand in hand because there's no way they can prevent one without preventing the other. Tell players that they can AFK farm, but "only use X accounts", and the bot farmers will set up XXXX accounts with different IPs and e-mail addresses, use large-scale operations like zombies, and sidestep the politely phrased restriction. That would lead to heavily trafficked servers, but no real change in active players. Servers would crash more frequently, lag would be persistent even for people with high bandwidth connections and fast computers, and long queues would be common. The economy would go haywire and end up right back where it was on the original servers. And, eventually, the day would come when the servers were always full, but not a single active player was on any of them, they'd all be filled with bots (a phenomenon i have personally witnessed in another game). Homecoming would be dead, for all intents and purposes. Your gut reaction is that this game is old and relatively unknown outside of fans, so "that couldn't happen here". Wrong. Some will do it because they can. Some will do it because they'll make just a tiny bit of money. Some will do it as a learning experience so they can go on to larger and better populated games and set up bot farms there. Some will do it to be malicious. But make no mistake, the instant bot farming is condoned and one person starts, word will spread and they'll descend on these servers like a pack of starving wolves on a fawn. Because why wouldn't they, if they can get a few cents a day for zero work, or a few chuckles, or learn more about managing bots and integrating them into a game environment, or see how many they can run simultaneously from each computer they've hijacked? The developers don't give a damn what you do with your three accounts. They do care about the potential for thousands of botted accounts. As well they should.

Sky Raider base in the sky, something like a Helicarrier with multiple nearby supply platforms offering optional objectives . Inside an electronic device, reduced in size so we're running around on circuit boards, trying to reach a specific capacitor or microchip to destroy it. The Gamester's gift factory. Assuming he/she has a factory. Good opportunity for missions with the same wacky fun feel as the Mapserver event. A maze with no visible walls. Enemies can be seen, but figuring out how to reach them, or avoid them... I would say my brain, but there are enough sewer missions already.

Carnies: Dark Ring Mistresses (Petrify, mag 3 Hold), Illusionists (Blind, ranged mag 3 Hold, and Flash, PBAoE mag 3 Hold) and the Dark Servant (Petrify, mag 3 Hold) summoned by Master Illusionists (same powers as Illusionists). Malta: Gunslingers (lieutenant and boss both have Liquid Nitrogen Round, mag 3 Hold), Hercules and Zeus Titans (Gas Swarm Missiles summon the pseudo-pet Malta Gas, which applies a mag 3 Hold), and Sappers (Sapp Stick, mag 3 Hold), and that's in addition to the Tazers (mag 3 Stun) carried by minions, and the Stun Grenades (mag 3 Stun) carried by lieutenants who aren't Gunslingers. My comment had nothing to do with Endurance Drain or Recovery debuffs.

While I enjoy the doppelganger stuff more, I'd be absolutely elated if they added another dozen or so missions like this. It really does breathe new life into repeatable content.

Functional AI. We have pets deciding not to tag along because they're rather lick a spot on a wall, NPC allies who run around in circles, escorts refusing to go up a 1 degree incline or a single step, and enemies running from petless masterminds.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Special_Agent_Jenni_Adair#Stop_Protean.27s_Invasion

I'd like you to meet my friends, the Malta group and the Carnival of Shadows. Well, I say "friends"...

You have 3 minutes to defeat the two named Fortunatas to free the Bane. At the end of 3 minutes, the ambushes start. Makes no difference to the Bane if you rush or take your time, nothing happens to it.

IBTL.

Browsing through some of my characters, specifically characters with offensive toggles which are currently shut off by mez... Petless Demons/Time mastermind, one offensive toggle, total cycle time (recharge time + animation time) of 3.584s Petless Dark/Martial dominator with one offensive toggle, highest cycle time of 6.268s (build uses Cross Punch, time calculated for single foe hit, both prelim attacks in build) Street/Shield scrapper with one offensive toggle, total cycle time 6.41s Staff/Willpower brute with one offensive toggle, total cycle time 6.278s Kinetic/Willpower scrapper with one offensive toggle, total cycle time 5.998s Ice/Stone brute with one offensive toggle, total cycle time 3.434s Yeah... I won't be playing anything without piles of status protection after this update. I'm fortunate, in that I don't play with anyone else, so I won't have to explain or apologize when aggro goes haywire after a taunt aura drops. And that I can afford Defense Amplifiers for leveling squishies. And that I have a handful of level 50 characters who don't have many veteran levels, so I can quickly acquire Empyreans to immediately craft Clarion Core Epiphany for those squishies. The rub is that all of these toggles would be available almost the same time the mez expired, if not immediately, requiring only the animation time (0.924-3.168s). And now I'm going to be locked out of access to these toggles for some arbitrarily assigned duration, because Cryptic, who ignored animation times and how they impacted the game and eventually had to admit that they fucked up, ignored how everything was balanced around toggle mutual exclusivity, axed it and eventually had to implement GDN to compensate for that fuck-up, also ignored the way buffs and debuffs interact with caps. And we're treating that oversight, that mistake, as gospel, despite their own adjustments when they realized they'd failed to account for variables. Anything longer than the animation time of the toggle affected is too long, as far as I'm concerned. But, as I said two paragraphs ago, I'll just work around it by never playing anything without a truckload of status protection, so whatever.

ARTHUR HAS RETUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNED! Yes, my hiking buddy finally decided that he wasn't going to be separated from me by a few mean girls. He's still wary, and Naomi glares at him when she sees him, but he maintains a safe distance and waits for me to come outside. As soon as I step onto the porch, he sprints in my direction, so I have to dash over and meet him halfway. Pretty certain he thinks I'm overjoyed to see him and running to give him scritches... which is true. Bonnie is over the moon, too. She starts cavorting as soon as he comes out of the forest. She's usually very laid back, doesn't even blink when the other cats hiss at her, but she just goes bananas when her uncle Arthur is close. Emily moved three of the kittens under the cabin last week. I came home and saw two in the bed box, instead of five, and went all "DINGOS ATE MY BABIES!" for a few seconds, then thought to look under the cabin and saw them. She came out for another one a few minutes later, and I brought her the last one, which Naomi grabbed by the scruff and took to Emily. I'm constantly worrying that black snakes might get the kittens, but Naomi's proven to be an aggressive defender, facing down possums and raccoons, so I'm trusting her to keep them alive. Violette is better than fine, she's fantastic. She's starting to nibble on dry food and drink water. I haven't had to bottle feed her for a week. She finds a way to get up onto the porch when she hears me, runs over as fast as her little legs will move and looks up at me with those adorable kitten-blue eyes, purring at full throttle. After she's had her fill of pets and kisses, she goes looking for something or someone to play with, either Naomi or, happily, Bonnie. Sara's showing signs of going feral. She doesn't spend much time at, under or around the cabin. She'll come find me when I'm outside, but she seems to prefer not to be around the other cats. The only one she doesn't hiss at is her mother, Naomi. She's still crazy about me, but I'm concerned that she's going to wander off and never return one of these days. On the other hand, she's not much of a hunter. She caught a mouse a few nights ago, but just batted it around. I killed it and offered it to her, but she showed no interest in eating it. So as long as she's still content with cat food, she's likely to stick around. The Bunny/May/Jessica situation has settled somewhat. I have to intervene frequently, push Bunny away from one of the other girls, but they seem to have settled into a sort of equilibrium. Jessica has actually played with Bunny a little, the chase game, but she becomes frighteningly aggressive if it goes on for more than a couple of minutes. May will deign to let Bunny sit near her, as long as she doesn't move... or look at her... or breathe loudly... such a drama queen. May will even groom her, if she stays very, very still. She's just shy of six months old, so "still" isn't in her vocabulary yet. Bunny is oblivious to the other cats' tempers, though. She's the most happy-go-lucky cat I've ever known. She's perfectly comfortable making up her own games and entertaining herself, or playing with my hand. Keeps trying to eat my toes and ankles when I pet her, and becomes twice as determined if I move my feet. Never meows, either. She squeaks. I think she's just so used to using body language that she doesn't feel much need to vocalize. Her fur is developing a faint white ticking here and there, like she lightly brushed up against wet paint. She'll have a gorgeous frosted look when her adult coat is finished growing, with grey and orange dappling underneath, like a tortie that was printed with an almost empty toner cartridge. The only real problem I have with her is... Well, she farts. I mean nose burning farts. Something crawled up her ass and died farts. As far as I can tell, she's in perfect health, she just... farts when she's happy. I never hear her fart, but oh my god, do I smell it. She'll be in my lap or at my feet, purring as I pet her, and out of nowhere, it wafts up. No warning, no change in posture, not a heartbeat's hesitation in her purr, just BAM, I'm in Stink City. And she's just purring away, nuzzling and leaning into scritches while I'm gasping. Go ahead. It's okay to laugh. I do. It's so surreal, I can't help but to laugh. Something this small pumping out room-clearing poots like a German Shepherd? Hilarious.

Last arc in Faultline, A Faultline In the Sands of Time, given by Agent G. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Agent_G Got get 'em.

If balance is the goal, this won't achieve it. Debuff toggles are subject to the AoE target limitation of 16. That's a hard number. There's no gaming it, there's no wiggle room, it can't be increased in any way by the player, it's defined and measurable. If anything, the AoE target cap of 16 is functionally lower for debuff toggle users, because the AoE target cap doesn't exclude crap like Rikti Monkeys or Sky Raider FFGs or -XX critters appearing in higher level spawns, things which pose very little or no threat. Yet they're still counted against the number of targets the user is affecting, leaving real threats undebuffed. Additionally, debuff toggles are subject to purple patch reductions on top of enemies having improved stats as level differential increases, an additional layer of loss of efficiency that buff toggle users never have to deal with. Buff toggles, on the other hand, affect an unlimited number of targets inversely, by adjusting the character's stats, thus bypassing all target caps. There is no hard number here, no limitation. Put a character with Maneuvers in a room with 1000 enemies, and all 1000 enemies will have a reduced chance to hit. Put a character with Darkest Night in the same room and 984 of those 1000 enemies are utterly unaffected. For a character with buff toggles, it doesn't matter if there's a FFG or -XX enemy, or ten, or a hundred, because they don't impact the efficiency of the character's mitigation, they aren't tabulated and counted toward a target cap, they don't matter at all in that context. And buff toggles always provide their mitigation at the listed values, since those numbers aren't adjusted by purple patch mechanics. And with all of that, they're also benefitting from the existing suppression system (again, effect cancelation per tick and only for the duration of mez)... and the vast majority of buff toggles are only available to archetypes which also have status protection, so they're rarely suppressed anyway. Now, one could attempt to argue that debuff toggles provide mitigation for everyone, which is why they "need" more restrictions, but... so do toggles like Maneuvers, Shadow Fall, Dispersion Bubble, and they don't stop working when enemies number 17 through 1000 attack, they don't use a suppression with several seconds of wait time attached after mez expires, they aren't subject to purple patch reductions... Jesus, a tanker or brute or Kheldian, or any character capable of holding the aggro cap worth of enemies and surviving, isn't dealing with those restrictions, and they're providing mitigation for everyone. There's never been balance between buff toggles and debuff toggles, and buff toggles are one of the worst balance problems in the overall game because they don't obey the same rules. And now we have an aggro adjustment on the test server in addition to this "fuck you, debuff toggle user" suppression, which is going to further emphasize the problems debuff toggles were already dealing with, while benefiting buff toggle users. "Oh, look, now I have 34 critters pissed off at me, and my toggle is a debuff with a cap of 16, so I'm fucking toast. Guess I should've made a buff toggle character so my damage mitigation would IGNORE THE TARGET AND AGGRO CAPS ENTIRELY." Debuff toggles don't need any further restrictions. Especially not with the aggro adjustments in this update. What they need is equivalency with buff toggles, and this cockamamie idea of locking players out of access to their debuff toggles for a few seconds every time they're mezzed is just going to make the lack of equivalency worse. Just set them to use the same cancel effect as buff toggles, @Captain Powerhouse, @Faultline, @Booper, or whoever's responsible for this, and call it done; or start hammering buff toggles into the same rule set that debuff toggles are forced to comply with and put this on hold until you can apply it to every toggle.

They've invested three years into improving the leveling experience, addressed sub-50 content issues and added sub-50 content. They rebuilt the economy and implemented numerous safeguards against inflation which are reliant on players leveling in order to provide some of the necessary inf* sinks. They revised the movement code and caps, and overhauled the pre-existing travel powers, to make leveling in the standard game easier and more enjoyable. They're not going to obviate 8 years of previous work, and their own 3 years of work, destroy the entire economic base, create an inflationary spiral which dwarfs what we saw on the original servers and throw all of the sub-50 content into the shitter just to placate some impatient people. They're being implemented in PvP because PvP is, and always has been, a separate aspect of the game, one which has proven to be largely incompatible with the PvE aspect, as well as the least popular and populous. Those insta-50 PvP-only characters also heavily restricted in what they can do, probably expected to be as grossly under-utilized as everything else related to PvP and highly unlikely to have any impact on the PvE game. That's why PvPers are getting insta-50 PvP-only characters. But you know that, because you've been participating in the relevant thread, and despite the façade, you're not an idiot. This is just you being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. PvP players had to play two games, essentially, the PvE game and the PvP game, when they only wanted to play one. They also suffered from a low population and general lack of interest in their aspect of the game because of the "level to 50, completely rebuild the entire character from the ground up with all different enhancement sets and counter-intuitive power selections and slotting choices" barrier imposed by the different rule set in PvP. Insta-50 PvP-only characters resolves all of that, with no predicted impact on the PvE game. PvE characters don't require complete redesigns after having been leveled. PvE characters don't require entirely different enhancement loadouts to function at all in their preferred aspect of the game when they reach 50. PvE characters don't require unusual build decisions and slotting choices to compensate for a completely different rule set and power effects. PvE characters don't require instant max level to be viable against their foes. PvE players don't have to jump through all of those flaming shit hoops. PvE players don't need insta-50 characters to access their preferred aspect of the game because they're already there. They may want insta-50 characters, but they don't need them.

No, it doesn't.

A level 50 character exemplared to level 30 isn't just losing a few powers or IO set bonuses, it's also subject to enhancement devaluation. And while the level 15 character sidekicked up to 25 doesn't gain powers or slots, it does gain increased enhancement values. That's an important aspect of the zones' auto-leveling effect. That's the only thing that makes it possible for the level 15 character to participate. Removing that exemplaring effect in addition to letting the level 50 character keep all powers and set bonuses doesn't widen a gap, it creates an insurmountable obstacle. Even sidekicked to 50, the level 15 character is nothing more than a defeat waiting to happen at that point. It's no more a threat to the 50 than the Skulls in Perez Park.