Chris24601

Standard Code Rant applies, but I second the idea of making the Shadow Shard co-op and getting it a general update. To that end, I have a few suggestions; Cosmetically the zone as a whole is fine; it’s a vast alien realm and feels that way. What could stand some updating in terms of appearance are the human NPCs throughout the zone. Back when the Shadow Shard was first implemented, Rikti still ran around naked and there was no Vanguard. But lore marches on and it’s now been established that Vanguard is THE organization tasked to deal with extradimensional threats. They are also more than willing to work with villains to keep those threats contained. So my first suggestion is this; as part of making the landing zone co-op, replace the fatigue-wearing troops with Vanguard troops and make the Firebase and other human outposts explicitly Vanguard installations. As this is an NPC model swap (and for ones that already exist) my hope is that would be easier to implement. The second related suggestion is; now that it’s an explicitly Vanguard operation, the zone access to it can be made through the existing Vanguard depots with no new art assets required; just the same sort of pop-up menu that comes up when multiple zones/instances are possible and with both the RWZ and Shadow Shard as destination (the current big portal in the Firebase being the destination for them). Beyond that, I’d like to see some actual story arcs developed for it; perhaps related to other groups trying to exploit the Shard (the Circle are there and Nemesis has a base there) and explore more of the lore of the Shard. While it would be a deviation from the original dev’s plans, but the Shadow Shard would also be an excellent way to do an alternate “Oncoming Storm” (made even more interesting given the Letter Writer’s identity) that doesn’t require as much in the way of new art assets to produce.

Nerf Skyway City into a crater and buff Steel Canyon (ex. replace the uniform grey towers with the sleek modern skyscrapers pulled from the Praetoria maps).

To be fair to our current devs, that’s a problem inherited from all the way back to Jack Emmert’s decision to use completely different ATs for the villain-side expansion despite the fact that requests for being able to faction swap (which comic characters do all the time) were already a thing during CoV’s beta. But Jack being Jack wanted to enforce the different feel of the Isles using the villain ATs, and making them more independent rather than team role focused, but only the MM was a truly unique concept rather than a sort of priority swap of a hero-side AT. So when side-swapping inevitably became possible the end result was that, yes, there was a whole chunk of ATs who’s mechanics weren’t that different and whose major distinctions then were power set options. Options which player demands for power set proliferation and the dev team’s need for content available to as many players as possible (particularly once Freedom hit and they decided to add power sets to the cash shop) further eroded the distinctions. Basically, hindsight is 20/20 and we’re living with decisions made 15+ years ago by people at least two leadership teams removed (Stateman/Jack > Positron > War Witch > Homecoming) from those decisions. There’s no fix that will satisfy everyone, because 15 years of inertia won’t let it. The fact is that Brutes and Tankers were never that different; which wasn’t a problem when the Red/Blue barrier stood inviolable (co-op in the RWZ not withstanding). Short of a CoH2 where you’re rebuilding the system from scratch and everyone starts in this new game from scratch, I think the best solution is just to accept that there are going to be relatively redundant ATs with only the finest nuances between them that individual players have preferences for. There are tons of legacy mechanics in CoH that are redundant, but still maintained for those who like them. I get the sentiment to try and eliminate that... for me it’d involve nuking Skyway from orbit/giving Steel Canyon an Atlas Park-style revamp... but, particularly at the toon level, you risk destroying the very reason someone currently enjoys the AT (new power sets that do things differently are another matter entirely, that’s a new option not a change to an existing one). TL;DR... blame Jack Emmert for causing this mess, not our current crew for trying to fix it.

Speaking from experience; extroverts generally don’t get the introvert mindset. I’m a borderline introvert. I have a friend who is an EXTREME extravert to the point that spending even an hour by himself gives him fits and anxiety. He doesn’t care what you’re doing... he just wants to be around someone. He is literally incapable of processing that someone like me can spend an entire day interacting with no one but my own thoughts and feel recharged by it. The easiest way I’ve been able to explain it to him is in terms of energy; Extroverts expend energy on solo tasks and recharge by spending time around others. Introverts recharge by spending time on solo times and expend energy when interacting with others. Now I’m borderline. I generally prefer to solo, but I can group for tasks that require it. What I REALLY like with MMOs though is the chat channels. Reading and knowing I can chime in if it’s something I care about or have advice to give lets me participate with others at exactly the level I’m comfortable with.

I don’t gamble, but in this case I’d almost be willing to bet that most of the tank players won’t even notice that bruise is missing amidst the general damage tweaks.

Cool beans. In other words, even on live the big servers weren’t that much more populated than they are now (even Freedom only popped red the weekend of new content releases then dropped back to yellow). Also, for real numbers, as of 4:40 pm EST on a Thursday (1:40 pm Pacific... the very definition of “off-peak” hours) every shard except Test has 250 - 550 players (average of 381 per shard). That’s thirty full teams worth of players on the smallest populated server. That’s one full team in nearly every zone in the game during one of the deadest times you’d find in North America (i.e. work hours on a weekday). That sounds like the opposite of underpopulated to me.

If I were designing this I’d put the contact(s) for it in the Vanguard base in the RWZ since it’s technically a co-op and not hero exclusive content. The thing for me is, while many people did a lot of trials; they were kinda done to death in waves as, other than BAF and Lambda they released one at a time months apart. That really robbed them of a lot of momentum and it was hard past the first few days to get anyone who took charge of organizing them to NOT want it to be a speed run (basically as soon as the most efficient tactics were figured out, anything but the fastest optimal approach was discouraged). I only got one toon on live well enough slotted to get a slot on a Magisterium trial and then only once where it was all a blur because the person in charge had already worked all the mechanics out and you were so focused on your one part in the plan you missed what was actually happening as a whole (unlike a movie where you can cut to each hero as they do their part, you’re stuck just seeing what your little part of the team is doing). And these days you get much better Incarnate rewards from just about anything else so your characters are left kinda floating around the outskirts of the Praetorian War where you get the Prelude (Anti-Matter Collision/Instant Army/Hero’s Epic), Interlude (Dark Astoria) and Aftermath (New Praetorians/Last Bastion), but not the main event. The result is it feels like you watched every Marvel movie up to Captain Marvel and then had to figure out what happened in End Game with only Spider-Man Far From Home as your reference. That’s why I think an alternative path to experiencing those events would be helpful. The other reason is that; while I’ve no idea the coding difficulty to make up missions based on the trials would be; we at least know that the maps and mobs associated with them already exist in the code so there wouldn’t be any effort needed to create new art assets for them. The biggest trick, I imagine, would be adapting the mechanics to something soloable. Constantly respawning mobs would need to be made finite; Any sort “must do X, Y and Z simultaneously” to advance would probably need to become just “must do X, Y and Z” to advance (or have the window enlarged enough that it’s possible for a single character to do both in the window with a little effort); etc. Likewise, a decision would need to be made as to whether these missions would be entirely solo or if the mechanics would work better by incorporating allied NPCs to play the role of other teammates in the real trials and/or the offscreen NPC ally’s goals that came up in the hero doppelgänger arc and in some of the First/Night Ward arcs where less fun multiplayer mission mechanics in the trials get handled by offscreen NPCs in other parts of the trial so long as you reached a trigger point for them. A mix would probably be best. Lambda would probably work as a long solo mission shutting down the guns/portals, raiding for supplies then fighting Maraurder, but the raw power of the Hamidon Avatar or Well-Empowered Tyrant might best be shown using a team of allied NPCs for the fight while having to do simultaneous elements in the BAF might be better served by offscreen NPC assistance (ex. Once you stop a wave of the escaping prisoners you get a comm saying heroes are moving into position to intercept the rest of the escapees so you can focus on Siege and Nightstar and a later one about them intercepting the adds to the final fight). Another prospect too is splitting some of the trials up into separate missions. The Underground Trial could be split into several missions using separate floors of the map with each mission pushing deeper into the Hamidon’s realm. Lambda could be broken up into the exteral raid that ends when the turrets and portals are downed, then the raid the base interior would be the next mission and finally fighting Marauder and his reinforcements would be a third mission. From a storytelling perspective, I think there’s also a lot better sense of how the situation is escalating if the trial stories are experienced in order. For example, waking up the citizenry in the TPN trial is more important when it’s coming on the heels of finding out that Cole made a bargain with Hamidon for time to prove humanity worthy of being spared and the Hamidon has now decided that time was up and that humanity failed its test. Likewise, the cascade of failures as the initial invasion efforts in Apex/Tin Mage are turned back, then the BAF, Lambda Sector and Keyes Reactor all fall. The deal with Hamidon falls apart, the people are turned against Cole when the TPN campus is seized and then the Seer Network is lost and the incarnates storm the Magisterium for the final showdown. Having these in a story form you could play through in the same time span as a long story arc really hits home that Praetoria’s fall wasn’t some years long stalemate as trials came out months apart, but an implosion that happened in a matter of days or even hours and ended with Cole nuking his own Magisterium and Anti-Matter wiping the rest clean when he blew his reactor up.

Glad that worked for you. I’m not on Spectrum and still had the problem; which only developed months after I began playing and years after the router was installed. The company that provided my router (Frontier) also doesn’t include any advanced settings (and it’s password was not set to “admin” but the address and password are printed on the router label so the user can access it); you can set the network name and wifi password for the router. That’s all Frontier will let the end user control via router access. I am also in the same time zone as the VPN exit point (both are EST) I’m using so it’s not some time zone miss-match causing my problem either. So I’m glad you found a solution for your Spectrum issues, but to pretend it’s the one true universal fix when it’s not doesn’t help others who don’t have Spectrum internet (Spectrum isn’t even available in my area) but still have the problem.

One reason I went with SWTOR when CoH shut down was that its tab-targeting and trays full of powers on recharge timers was the closest I could find to CoH. If you've not played it, its worth doing the free-to-play version just for the vanilla level 1-50 fully voiced stories there if you're looking for a change of pace. Beyond that though development slowed to a comparative crawl as what were once eight separate storylines consolidated down to two and then one (recently back to two again) due to EA/Bioware channeling all the profits off the game to whatever their latest attempt at a WoW-killer happens to be. Its also the last outpost of the old Expanded Universe in that its lore aligns with what is now considered non-canon by Disney; but after Rise of Skywalker is probably the canon of preference for die-hard Star Wars fans as a whole.

Honestly, I have a family and a full time job. I’ve been back since October and I have ONE level 50 who’s done CoV content as a rogue through about 35 when I picked up my patron pool (and the contacts/missions started getting much darker than I’d prefer for a lovable Rogue). I’ve got a 35 Praetorian (who only did Warden missions) who won’t be going through the portal until they finish Night Ward and a 43 hero I’ve been running the issue 0 (and now issue 1) arcs on. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the old content I haven’t played in seven years, much less the newer content. I don’t see myself getting tired of the content here for a LONG time.

So, one of the things I've always lamented about the Incarnate Trials is that, when you can even find one being run here (the new rewards system makes them unnecessary) those running them want to speed through them without any regard to the story. So my suggestion is this; take the assets (maps, opponents, dialogue, etc.) and create a story arc that's essentially a stripped down solo-able version of the Praetorian War. It'd really help tie a lot of the late game story content together if there was a way you run those stories and the other late-game bits (the level 50 Night Ward arc and the post-Praetorian "New Praetorians (and villain equivalent)" and "Last Bastion" arcs more or less in sequence instead of having to cobble it together. Obviously mechanics would have to be scaled back/down to account for it being solo-able, but we don't need the rewards to be as great either because we've already got veteran levels to provide the incarnate xp and materials we need. I, for one, would like to understand WHY I'm being teleported from node to node every 30 seconds in the TPN trial for example and being able to actually stop to read the attached story would help a lot. Standard Code Rant applies, but it feels like an area where existing mission writing technology could be applied in some fashion.

Actually, given the more grounded real-world setting of the show Arrow, using arrows makes a lot of sense. Kevlar is great at stopping low mass high velocity projectiles (i.e. bullets). Its crap at stopping high mass low velocity attacks (i.e. knives and arrows). Also, I'm speaking in terms of the proposed balance patch; an area where under-performing lethal damage could be made to shine is basically being the Armor Piercing damage type that is good against things with armored shells and more vulnerable innards (fleshy or circuitry) while not so good against targets that have no vulnerable innards to damage (zombies, ghosts, Primal clockwork, devouring earth constructs).

The funny thing to me is that Lethal should generally be LESS resisted by hard targets. Actual modern and historical armor is REALLY good at soaking up kinetic impacts that are spread out. You may get knocked down more often from a large blunt force, but falling over is not the same thing as being wounded. There’s a reason just about every armor piercing weapon in history; spears/pikes, arrows, bullets, tank shells... has been a piercer (lethal in this game’s parlence). Bullets and similar penetrators are the best design possible by the laws of physics for pushing through material and leaving holes in it. Heck, modern armor piercing rounds are specifically designed to not just push aside the armor plating (or super-dense skin as the case might be) and then go richocheting high velocity fragments off the inner walls of the armor to rip up the soft interior. In other words, lethal should probably be less resisted by “crunchy on the outside chewy in the middle” targets (people in armor, robots with internal components) and more resisted by uniformly crunchy (ex. devouring earth, clockwork) or no diversified anatomy targets (blobs, energy monsters, ghosts).

I’d honestly be okay with expanding each of the Praetorian zone bands from where they are now to say Nova 1-15, Imperial 10-20, Neutropolis 21-30, First Ward 30-40, Night Ward 40-50 (so the top end there would lead directly to the level 50 Night Ward missions) and then make the New Praetorians arc specifically a level 50 instead of 35-50 to be part of the Praetorian capstone (along with the Night Ward arc and Number Six/Last Bastion arcs). The other thing I’d love to see is a Non-trial version of the Incarnate trials; something where you could slow down enough to actually see the story (I still don’t know exactly what’s going on in the TPN trial and why I’m being teleported from building to building by the teams practically every minute). I think there’s actually a reasonable story tucked into the Incarnate trials if you could ever run them in order at a slower pace and being able to do it more easily on your own terms would help with a lot of things in the end game feeling rather disjointed. Being able to do in order; - Tina McIntyre’s arcs (Anti-Matter Collision/Instant Army) - Maria Jenkin’s (A Hero’s Epic) - Apex and Tin Mage TFs - Level 50 Night Ward arc - A story arc based on the Incarnate trials (BAF, Lambda, Keyes Reactor, Underground, TPN, Minds of Mayhem, Magisterium... with a contact link after “Minds of Mayhem” to the first Dark Astoria contact ) - New Praetorians (and Villain mirror) and the Last Bastion arcs ; that’s a rather tight and cohesive story going on there. Even more so if you could take the Praetoria content all the way to 40-44 and get put in touch with Tina on exiting to Primal Earth. I haven’t played enough Red-side to know if there’s a reasonable mirror for Tina/Maria there; but if there isn’t, maybe there should be. Take a cue from the MMO I played while CoH was gone and mirror the missions with a couple of new contacts with a much more selfish agenda. Say instead of defeating Praetors Barry and Keyes to stop their plans you’re just out to steal the Clockwork tech (thus why late level Arachnos now has warworks ACUs... you stole the tech for them in exchange for a big payoff). Then instead of facing the Praetorians to save Paragon city you’re invading them and looking to weaken the Praetorian forces enough to conquer the Praetorian dimension yourself... with the twist being your efforts are what actually triggers the Praetorian War/Cole’s Invasion of Primal Earth (so your involvement with all the heroes is just you covering your tracks/cleaning up the mess you made).

So, a little update on this; I rolled the blaster, but also gave a corruptor a shot just to see how the differences felt. My biggest note is that one reason I didn’t see above that I think really sets Tac Arrow apart from Trick Arrow on an archery build is the way it helps cover up one of archery’s big weaknesses; it’s rather resisted damage type. Trick Arrow has the same early level of control/debuff as Tac Arrow, but doesn’t open up the damage any... you’re still stuck with Archery’s lethal with a bit of smashing in the explosive arrow and a smattering of fire damage in the fire arrow and later by igniting the oil slick. The difference that the significant energy damage in the spammable electro-net, plus some cold damage and some toxic damage cannot be understated. The first particularly helps against foes like undead and robots who traditionally resist lethal pretty hard, but are generally weak to energy. I know in one situation where I faced the Dirge of Chaos the corruptor had no problem locking it down with ice arrow, but it took forever to wear through it’s health and those times where you saw the health tick up just slightly were frustrating. I took the Blaster up against ot and not only did the increased damage in general help, but the stacks of electro-nets made its health drop steadly and much more rapidly (still not as rapidly as something that isn’t so lethal resistant, but enough to not feel completely gimped). So to conclude; it’s not just the “more damage” that helps Tac Arrow shine; It’s the fact that all it’s added damage is of types that aren’t found in Archery and so help against targets Archery is traditionally weakest against.

The short solution is; find a VPN service whose price and features fit your needs. Install and run it with your location set to a place that would change the route your internet to reach Toronto in Canada. What that route is will vary with your physical location (see below for where my testing and research suggests the problem points are). How you use the VPN will vary with the service you choose (and this really isn’t the place to be pitching paid third-party software), but the big names are usually designed to be extremely easy to use. Mine is literally just a drop down menu of locations (with a recommended closest location first) and a big button you click on to turn it on/off. The mechanics of the fix is that you’re diverting the route the internet’s general routing system thinks is best (shortest number of bounces typically) to a different route that avoids the trouble spots. This works because the internet first calculates the shortest route to the VPN location and THEN calculates the route from there to the Homecoming servers. The precise route that will work for you depends on where you’re located relative to the Homecoming servers. As best I can determine, the problem is somewhere in the Midwest, possibly where the Internet hops from the US to Canada (having now looked at some maps of national/international internet traffic a route through Chicago is likely; rather than Detroit as I was initially thinking... which explains why my bounce to New Jersey doesn’t noticeably affect my ping; both are about equally out of the way in terms of reaching the Homecoming servers). Because of these two things though, there’s not a “one-size-fits-all” fix to the problem. I use New Jersey as my VPN location and it works for Ft. Wayne, IN. But if the problem is Chicago and you’re in Wisconsin, the route to New Jersey probably goes through Chicago anyway and may not help, but VPN location of Seattle or Vancouver might cross back to Toronto using all Canadian lines. On the other hand. If the issue is on the Canada side of Chicago to Toronto route then New Jersey would work fine from Wisconsin, but Vancouver might hit the problem and not be a fix at all. The big problem is that the problem isn’t on your computer or Homecoming’s end; it’s someone else’s network in the middle. That means we can only really learn where the precise problem is by analyzing who is having the problems and their locations. Other than that the route is all guesswork.

Honestly, there are so many possible sets available here that I never got to on live that I honestly would prefer they devote their effort first and foremost to the back end stuff that will make the game easier to add content to down the line. By way of comparison, my substitute MMO before CoH returned was SWTOR. You know how many new classes and options for those classes they had in the seven year gap? ZERO. Same eight advanced classes with three talent trees faction mirrored (i.e. only the animations are different between a jedi and a sith). Sure, they’ve added about 20 levels since then, but 15 of those only added railroad story content that amounted to maybe 3-4 hours of fresh play per character. The rest was all grinding the same seven year old content. In terms of fresh play experience, those twenty levels added about 2 powers and 3 talents to each build... and homogenized everything so that a jedi tank plays almost exactly like a bounty hunter tank. They had two straight years without an expansion during which they added a grand total of four missions designed to be ground again and again. So the amount of progress both in getting i24/25 stuff, power set proliferation, new sets and even some new missions out, plus the backend work... as VOLUNTEERS... is amazing and praiseworthy; easily IMHO eclipsing the content produced by the professionals employed by EA/Bioware on their big MMO property.

I've said it before, but I will say it again. The development of a 64-bit client and Homecoming's other back-end changes are what is going to make Homecoming the only game in town for City of Heroes sooner rather than later. Spending your time developing crazy new power sets and such is useless if you can't actually play it. Apple's newer OS's no longer run 32-bit clients and I've no doubt that whenever Windows 11 drops it will also no longer run the dinosaur that is 32-bit clients. That limits all the alternatives spending their time on flashy bits to an older and ever dwindling number of machines that can actually play them while Homecoming's "boring" work on a 64-bit client ensures it will be viable for years to come. Throw in the work of actually going legit (the danger of shutdown is certainly limiting development work) and I feel safe in saying Homecoming is far more likely to be around in 3-5 years than many of the other rogue servers.

I think you could even argue the seeds for such unconventional additions would be some of the new blaster secondaries like Tac Arrow (i.e. all ranged control/debuffs and personal buffs to the point it almost feels like a hybrid controller/defense set). Sets like that really diversify the way you can play a blaster (away from the blapper melee secondary attack) while still leaving the primary role (ranged damage) intact. Which does mean it probably makes more sense to apply this approach to the original hero ATs since they were less hybrids like some of the villain ones. As an example; how necessary would the dominator AT be if damage sets had been created for Controllers in addition to their buff/debuff sets? We have a strong semi-control/debuff set for Blasters. Could you create a balanced ranged damage set for a tanker? How about a melee set for a defender? A pure damage secondary for Masterminds? Perhaps the solution isn’t to add more ATs, but to expand the concepts available for the AT secondary sets. You’d have to be careful how you approached it (there’s a reason I suggest such options only be secondary sets... no ranged/defense scrappers) particularly where it would step on other ATs. For example, adding a damage secondary to controllers steps all over dominators so is a non-starter for legacy reasons (if we were back in 2005 discussing how CoV should be built it’d be another matter). Similarly, adding a ranged damage secondary to tankers could step on sentinels... as would adding armor as a blaster secondary. But others like adding melee as a defender secondary (replacing one damage category with another) or a scapper’s defense secondary with a debuff set (i.e. defense through debuffing attackers’ acc/damage/recharge) are niches that aren’t already filled and seem like areas worth exploring.

Except if the Earth is making a full rotation every half hour and the Moon is rising every night in an orbit perpendicular to the planet’s rotation, then its actually making a full orbit every thirty minutes as well and at best should look like the Moon in Thundarr the Barbarian or, more likely, hurled itself into deep space. This would of course end all tidal activity on the planet if the orbital rotation of the Earth hadn’t already cast all our water and atmosphere into deep space.

My KM/WP scrapper is my number two favorite toon after my current archery/tac arrow blaster. I themed them as a close combat spellcaster (and not-so close once the ranged attacks opened up) so their movements are them gathering mana and casting their spells. For your epic either go fire or mu mastery as both have some fairly quick recharging ranged attacks; enough to almost have a decent ranged attack chain if you include KM's two ranged attacks... this makes you a solid damage dealer who can pop trash mob runners and still have solid melee damage. Leveraging the large amounts of knockback/down is also handy for damage mitigation and a little regarded element of their build-up power is that it also includes a damage debuff with each of your hits... using their AoEs with the build-up when swarmed not only knocks a lot down (reducing the attacks taken), but also reduces the damage dealt (meanwhile WP scales up its regen when surrounded so the two in concert can make you quite survivable; particularly in late-game with its large amounts of elemental damage that you have defense against and slot IO-sets to further improve). As damage types go its not all that horrible. Smashing is broadly, but not heavily, resisted; meaning lots of enemies will reduce that component by 20% or so, but few will have the 50% reduction that say, lethal, gets in some situations). Conversely, many enemies that are resistant to smashing are vulnerable to the energy component of KM's damage (ghosts and undead for example reduce the kinetic damage, but take more from the energy part so it ends up either a wash or even slightly favoring kinetic melee). It's big downside is long animation times. I ended up not keeping the tier-9 simply because the three second animation time caused my build-up cycle to do less damage over time than just pounding on the target with your t1-3 attacks to build and maintain stacks of extra damage. Which I think is the important point to take when it comes to Kinetic Melee. It's forte is not burst damage like a lot of melee sets, but damage over time. It's build up is more akin to a blaster's defiance mechanic that ramps up after activation, sustains for a short time then ramps down after the effect ends (a stack added a fraction of a second before the effect ends lasts its full duration so often you're halfway to your next click of build up before they've all worn off). Its actually better at bigger spawns or tougher targets where you can get the full effect of the build-up, sustain and ramp down of a full cycle on targets instead of small weak spawns that are dead before the effect has even ended.

I think its worth pointing out that "non-profit" doesn't mean people can't be paid for their work. My brother-in-law works at a non-profit religious school and is paid just like any employee at a for profit company would be. Non-profit just means that its profits can't exceed its expenses; any overage needs to be re-invested in infrastructure (ex. new computers for the classrooms) or donated (ex. giving the older computers to another religious school that needs them). Once a deal is signed (before which you might be hiring people just to lay them off if something goes sideways), a non-profit could still hire a small staff to perform basic operations. Having paid positions to provide 24/7 trouble ticket support would be a perfectly justified expense for a non-profit offering a service. Having a few paid employees to program new mission content/power sets would similarly not be out of line with a non-profit related to a computer service. A lot depends on the provisions of any deal made. One thing I feel fairly confident of is that it won't involve a rollback of what Homecoming has already added. There's just no point to forcing a rollback to i23 when the work's already been done. While it might freeze any additional new content beyond that, I also think that outcome is unlikely (other than possible provisions like not being able to use the existing signature characters in new content).

Well, as long as there’s no issues from you to New Jersey, there seems to be a clear internet route from there. I suspect any VPN location on the East Coast from say Virginia to Maine would also avoid the problem. Also, this has been a known problem covered on two other separate threads with essentially identical behavior in all cases and a lot of testing done to isolate the cause. It does not appear widespread enough to have affected more than a handful of players, indicating whatever the problem being encountered is fairly localized and therefore relatively easy to route around.

If you don’t mind my asking... whereabouts are you located? I ask because in two of the people with the mapserver issue who’s location I know of are likely passing through Detroit as part of the shortest connection to where Homecoming’s servers are (if I recall correctly they’re physically in Toronto). I also know my issues started right at the time they did the winter event patch (which is why I thought it was a coding problem with the update for the longest time). However, when I detoured from Indiana to New Jersey before heading to Canada by using a VPN the mapservers issue ended entirely. I can also confirm via CoH’s /netgraph command that using the New Jersey location with the VPN service I got didn’t change my ping rate at all. What DID change was how the connection dealt with lost data packets. Without the VPN the crash happened the first time in a session that it lost a packet and it would not even try to resend a lost packet. With the VPN I would get a lost packet every few minutes (indicated by a yellow or red line on the netgraph) but the lost packet would be resent and the connection would continue without issue. This suggests to me that whatever section of the net along the direct Indiana to Toronto connection is dropping connections at the slightest hiccup instead of retrying the connection. Unfortunately the only viable alternative is to bounce your signal around the problem part of the internet using a proxy server or VPN. For the sake of your own internet security I definitely recommend a paid VPN service. Free proxy servers and VPNs are likely to log everything going through it and sell that in order to pay for itself (malicious ones might even hack your computer using the connection you established). Remember, if it’s free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Fortunately for us too, City of Heroes doesn’t actually need all that much bandwidth to play. It’s original minimum connection requirements were a 56k MODEM (as in dial-up... still used by 60% of the US in 2003 and by 36% in 2006).

No... it should be Anti-Halloween... a month of solid high noon daylight. It's dark here at 5pm and the sun isn't fully up until 10am. Another month of eternal night in game would be atrocious. I was already seeking out arcs with outdoor missions just so the day-night cycle in them would give me a little daylight.