Chris24601

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.

Yeah... low bandwidth is a plus in this case. Also, I have confirmed via CoH's netgraph function that I have no reduction in my ping from using the New Jersey VPN exit. I suspect whatever route it's taking now is overall cleaner than whatever the default route was so despite the apparent detour from Indiana to New Jersey to Canada, its not actually taking any longer than before to send/receive packets.

I have my sounds at 3% and music at 2%. It’s still able to drown out iTunes running at full volume.

True, but I presume a nickel/iron core for CoH Earth just like ours... anything more dense would be highly radioactive and probably prevented life (or liquid water) from spawning in the first place. Plus, with all the tunnels deep under the Earth everywhere I'd presume even LESS density from all the alternate Earth villains who've mined it out to add mass to their own world in order to prevent the Apocalypse there (either that or that's what the ancient Oranbegans did to other worlds to keep Primal Earth from being destroyed after they sped up its rotation. Again... all of the above is said in jest. It's a game mechanic so things that only come out at night or during the day can spawn in a reasonable time for players who might only have an hour to play a night.

When you say "crash" do you mean "lost connection to mapserver"... if so the problem isn't on your end or Homecoming's its a bad ISP along the route between. The only solution that's worked solidly is to use a VPN that changes the route your data takes through the internet around the bad patch. Using New Jersey as an exit point for the VPN has provided me with absolute stability (the closest route without a VPN probably took my data to Canada through Detroit... now its probably going through Buffalo).

Since I did find a solution to this and posted it in another thread, but it hasn't propagated here I'm going to repost the relevant bits; * * * The problem isn't on your end or Homecoming's... its the messy internet in the middle and is probably related to your physical location. Why where you're located is relevant is that the particular route taken by some data is the problem. For example, I'm in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the route my internet takes to the HC servers in Canada on its own is probably through Detroit. The solution is to use a VPN or proxy server to re-route your traffic around the problem. For a rough visual... You -- Your ISP -- Bad ISP -- HC's ISP -- HC Server ...................\___ VPN -- Good ISP __/ I used ExpressVPN and their closest server (New Jersey) for my connection and via the in game /netgraph I can confirm no loss of ping while doing so. This probably changed the course from "Ft. Wayne > Detroit (bad) > Canada" to "Ft. Wayne > New Jersey > Buffalo, NY > Canada" bypassing whatever badness was mucking up the connection. What WAS interesting in the /netgraph report once I was no longer getting mapservered was what happened with a lost packet. Prior to using a VPN there'd be zero lost packets then it'd just mapserve and eventually dump to the login screen. WITH the VPN running I got the occasional lost packet (denoted by a red or yellow line on the graph) but the game kept right on running past what I suspect would have been a mapserve for me otherwise. * * * TL;DR The problem is a bad ISP between you and the Homecoming servers. Use a VPN (better security) or proxy server to change the route your data takes to connect. New Jersey has worked great for me as the exit point from the VPN into the internet at large.

Unfortunately you WILL have to because the problem isn't actually on Homecoming's end (or on yours). Someone's internet along the fastest path between you and the servers isn't working right (Given that you're in Florida, I bet it heads up through the Midwest, where I am, and probably into Canada around the Detroit area... I'd bet the problem is in some Detroit server farm somewhere that your signal and mine just happens to pass through) and the only way around it is to re-route your connection using a VPN or proxy server (VPNs being far safer for your computer security). In my case, my connection bounces directly to New Jersey before going anywhere else so its probably then connecting to Canada (where the HC servers are) through Buffalo instead of Detroit and the connections through Buffalo aren't borked. As to using a VPN, they're stupid easy. If you can download Homecoming, you can get a VPN running. In the case of ExpressVPN (what I'm using after doing some research into different options as the best compromise on price, locations and ease of installation), you sign up, download and install the software. When you click on the icon it brings up a window with a big button and a list of places you can connect to. Select the location you want (I used the closest option in New Jersey), click on the button to turn it on and that's it. I then minimize it and just leave it run (you can also set it in the options to turn on at startup so you don't even have to turn it on again... you can literally just forget about it). It's using zero processing power and about 165 MB of my RAM as I type this through it.

I tried a Sentinel for a bit and the main changes I think it needs are A) buff/reduce the nerf on AoEs B) fix their AT mechanic so you can control its triggering without resorting to the t1-2 attacks (perhaps something closer to the Domination button that you can hold once charged up). Other than that I don’t think there’s that much of a problem with them. They don’t especially stand out on teams, but they’re another source of damage and another pool of relatively resistant hit points that makes the team stronger than they’d be if that slot weren’t filled. They’re kinda the Jack-of-All-Trades (i.e. second best at everything) which means they don’t shine individually in a group the way the best do (i.e. blasters nuking whole spawns, tanks soaking hits from entire spawns), but they’re adding a bit to everything (damage dealt, hits soaked) that adds up overall. Has anyone tested what the performance of an all Sentinel team looks like relative to say, one of all blasters, all tanks and a well mixed team? I’d be curious about, say, their clear times for some of the common TFs relative to each other.