Chris24601

Can you describe HOW it crashes? Is it just a rapid crash to your desktop or a "lost connection to mapserver" that lasts a minute or so before dumping you to the login screen. These details matter a LOT in determining the cause. For example, the latter has been plaguing a number of players and there are a couple of solutions presented in threads related to those issues (probably on page 2 or 3 by now, but look for "Mapserver" in the thread title). The former is where employing Homecoming's new Crash Reporting system (full info dump) would be helpful to the Homecoming team in sorting out what's happening.

SG Mode is extremely useful. I always promote my current main to guild leader so I can adjust the colors on all my costumes at will. Some days I wear a black shirt, some days a red shirt others a blue shirt. I have tan, blue and black pants... ALL from one costume slot. It's almost like the character has a real person's wardrobe or something crazy like that. 😀

This can’t be repeated often enough. I’m just gonna put the link here to where someone who’d worked in the industry explained how prestige content tied to grind was literally designed to prey upon players and get them to part with their money. And if you look at a lot of the last content released by Paragon Studios, you could see the pressure by the higher ups to increase profits by any means necessary because those last arcs were practically commercials for the new power sets and costume options you could purchase using Paragon Points (i.e. by spending real money; either the stipend granted with a subscription or direct purchase). Homecoming doesn’t have that pressure because of its non-profit focus. This allows it to not just be a place to play the game we love again, but to embrace practices that are psychologically healthier for the players who engage with it; where your worth is found in what you create and in how you help your fellow players, not in grinding for virtual items to show off how much better at grinding you are.

Taken from the Suggestions board that I’d just learned to live with, but really does annoy me when I think about it; Nerf Sound Effects and Music volumes. I play with them set to 3% and 2% respectively and they still overwhelm all but the loudest parts of music or audio I’m streaming at max volume in the background. The settings that don’t blow out my eardrums are so low there’s no ability to fine tune them at all... going up or down a percent on the FX is a 33% change and it’s worse for the in game music. So, I’d like to see a global Sound Effects and Music nerf of 50%. Alternately, I want implementation of the old long-promised FREEM visual sound effects system. This is a comic book world; we should be reading, not hearing, the sound effects. 😁

I run with my in-game sounds at 3% and music at 2% and both will still overwhelm all but loudest parts of music playing at full volume on iTunes or YouTube. There’s very little gradation you can do when you’re down at that level. Going to 2% or 4% is a 33% reduction or increase. I’d be for a global 50% nerf in sound volume (then I could tune it all the way up to 6%).

So what you’re REALLY saying is we need to cut the number of Blue-side zones and make the remaining ones more dramatic... 😉 This part is why I three-quarters seriously lobby for Skyway to get the Galaxy City treatment and for Steel Canyon to be revamped using the barely seen skyscraper assets from Praetoria’s Imperial City and Neutropolis zones to make it look like the hypermodern cityscape it’s meant to be. Maybe add a mission arc that uses the destroyed Skyway City instanced map (from the mission with Praetorian Fusion and Jane Temblor) to explain why the whole zone is now locked down and inaccessible. Relocate the Troll rave event and Synapse TF to Steel so it’s got a little more going on (actually, given the focus and level range of his TF, Position and all his TF missions in Steel might make even more sense if they were moved to Faultline). I’d also be a fan of a Hollows update where they actually permanently fill the crater with lava as it was in the “Who Will Die?” arc (including the perma-twilight lit from below look) just to make that place more visually dynamic (just move any mission tags to doors above the lava’s surface, but otherwise leave the zone missions alone).

Which is probably why they’re willing to entertain negotiations and haven’t come down on the rogue servers... CoH is so far outside their target market (and the playerbase across all of them small enough that any profits would be a rounding error) that it’s not actually worth expending even token resources on. Regardless, there are a myriad of reasons that things could be considered “impossible” 7+ years ago that no longer apply now. So, in addition to the Kheld non-shifting form forms, another I’d like to see is the perfectly smooth metallic they have for the males (metallic 2 I think it is) ported over to the females. I’ve got a concept for an ex-Widow (a psi-melee stalker) who’s dropped the overt spider-themed bits, but still employs the armored bodysuit in their costume and it’d look a lot better without the seams on the basic metallic texture.

To be fair to the original devs, some of the stuff was less “impossible” in a technical sense, but rather “impossible” in the sense of... “if we let every player run around with two auras and both a back and a butt cape simultaneously it’s going to crash out the graphics on the lower end machines some of our players use every time that person has to go to Atlas Park.” You have to remember they were making decisions based on computer processing capabilities from nearly a decade ago (to more than a decade ago in the case of low end machines of the time) when making these decisions. Nearly a decade of advancements in computer processing just make some of those problems irrelevant. For example... trying to run max graphics settings on the computer I ran CoH on during the retail years would have dropped my frame rate to 10/sec or less. The completely average machine I have today runs CoH at max settings as smooth as butter. I remember the devs having pre-release downloads before issues went live because the full update would take HOURS to download (whereas if you downloaded the pre-release just the last changes needed to be downloaded). Now the whole of CoH can be downloaded from scratch using Tequila in 15-20 minutes. The point is, just because modern computers make it easy now, doesn’t mean it wasn’t actually “impossible” back in 2004-2012.

My opinion is you should post about this topic here; https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14177-consolidated-coh-difficulty-thread-includes-poll/

Cross-promotion with my thread on Kheld-forms; I’d like the option to not change into a squid or lobster when you enter the form, just switch to those abilities and maybe pick up a default Kheld glowie aura. As someone in that thread mentioned, the form powers already have animations tied to them in the power customization window so there’s not even work needed for that. The reason for this is entirely that I want to see the costume I put all that work into designing without needing to create a relatively gimped human-only build.

I will add that one non-optional part of difficulty adjustment I would be for is a rebalance of the rewards. Carnies and Rularuu ARE more difficult than Council of the same level and the xp/inf/salvage awards should reflect that. Heck, maybe some of the harder enemy group missions could even have small merit rewards. Also worth mentioning in terms of increased difficulty is that a lot of it (particularly some of the harder TFs) can be quite time consuming and I suspect the current player base skews older than a lot of MMOs with correspondingly less free time to play. As such, breaking some of that harder content up into more digestible chunks akin to Posi 1/2 or adapting some of the trials that take 16-24 members into conventional task forces might also make it easier to run.

Perhaps. I'd settle for you just floating (squid) or standing (lobster) there with a glow around you and doing the blast/punch animations for the form as appropriate... Hell, I'd settle for being in Mu Mystic pose and shooting blasts from your head for an alternate squid power animation if that's what it took.

Standard Code Rant applies on how feasible this is, but The concept is simple. I’d like to see an option for the Kheldian Nova and Dwarf forms in power customization options where, instead of becoming a squid or lobster, you remain in “human” appearance and maybe have a glowing aura to indicate you’re in an “alternate form.” Your other powers would still shut down and you’d only be able to use your form attacks; you’d just look normal while doing so. I recall a glitch on live where this would actually happen from time to time and I remember some people deliberately trying to trigger it so they could still enjoy their costumes without gimping themselves by using a human only build. So that’s what I’d like to see if it’s at all feasible.

A damage buff based on steady incoming damage actually would be pretty good for a sustained damage concept though because it requires building and maintaining the stacks to keep your damage up... rather like an inverted brute. That’s a solid sustained damage mechanic vs. build-up (the quintessential burst mechanic).

I haven’t seen much of this so-called questioning of self-esteem or insecurity that @Illy speaks of. What I see is people perfectly happy with the present difficulty who don’t like it when other people say the things they enjoy should be taken away... especially when there is plenty of more difficult content available if you choose to engage with it. And that does lead people to question the motives/psychology involved when the demand isn’t “add this” but instead “take this from others.” It gets further questioned when people start saying it’s unhealthy to not want a game that pushes back. Also of note, is that the skill level of the people replying here is by no means a representative sample of the player base. I see, at most, a few dozen regular posters on the forum and a couple hundred votes while the player base has over 1200 members playing simultaneously in the middle of a weekday and several thousand at once on weekends. We’re talking self-selected fractional percentages for a sample here. I know players who’ve never gone past SO’s (IOs and the auction house being too much effort) or the default difficulty settings and find the game plenty challenging. Illy mentioned wanting a challenging chess game, but most computer chess games have a variety of setting levels and plenty of people have trouble with even the lowest difficulty levels on chess matches and I highly doubt anyone here is playing at Deep Blue levels of difficulty. I will gladly support any OPTIONAL increases in difficulty presented (new zones, new villain groups, new difficulty toggles), but demanding other people change the way they play to satisfy your preferences, particularly in a long-running game with well established standards, is not going to fly.

Frankly, half the fun IS the gaps. One of the most annoying things SWTOR ever did was level syncing you to their zones so the opponents there would always be a threat. No going back to the starter worlds and just mowing through gangsters like the powerhouse Jedi who faced the Sith Emperor in single combat... no it has to be a challenge (because they have developed so little new content they need you to still run eight year old repeatable content as filler). Imagine if every time you traveled to Atlas Park you’d be exemplared down to level 5 so that the Hellions and Skulls there would always pose a threat to your hero? No more satisfaction in one-shotting an entire purse-snatching spawn with a single power that throws the villains back a hundred feet because we need everything to be a “challenge.” I’ll say the same thing I said elsewhere. There’s an even bigger gap between level 1 and 50 than between an SO and full-set IO build; so let’s just get rid of levels 2-50 to make it more challenging for everyone. The problem isn’t IO’s. The problem is some people think it’s too easy to get them in terms of continuing to develop your character; that they aren’t running the “RIGHT KIND” of content (in their opinion) to get those rewards. You wanting harder content shouldn’t take away the fun that people are having with the difficulty exactly where it is. Some people aren’t here for the “challenge.” Some people just want to blow off steam by punching digital fascists in the face and being able to plow through whole spawns of them IS THE FUN. I am not opposed to harder content. I love making Praetorians because of that extra level of challenge. But some nights I also just want to punch hordes of Nazis and space aliens in the face. The fact that I can do both in the same game with the same character just by choosing different settings and content is AMAZING. You don’t have to take away other people’s fun to get yours if your real goal is just to have more challenging content.

So I’ve been baking my noodle on this some more and I think there are two relatively easy and non-controversial things that could be done in addressing difficulty. First, add new content that is more difficult. This could also involve revamping some older, but rarely played, content a la the Posi1/2 and Yin TFs (with the older version remaining available on Oroboros). I’ll further make no secret that the already more difficult Shadow Shard would be a good place to start. Second, adjust XP/inf/merit reward rates to reflect the actual difficulty instead of just their level (or average runtime in the case of merits). A level 54 Carnie Master Illusionist who phases, targets the psi hole, mezzes and spawns pets should be worth more XP/inf than a level 54 Council Archon with a rocket launcher and a kick attack. How much more would require some testing, but given that some of the tougher content literally takes WTF/SF level rewards to see it run at all, I’d say double is NOT unreasonable.

Another random thought I had involving increased difficulty of a sort for the Council would be to expand on their temporary alliance with Calvin Scott’s post-Praetoria faction and do some pallet swaps (which can be done in AE so would be theoretically possible for a regular mob) on the rest of the non-Seer IDF troops to represent the level 50+ Council foot soldiers getting upgraded gear based on Praetorian tech, just as was done for the war walkers. At level 50+ you could swap the Mek-Men for Clockwork (and the LT/Boss bots for the War Works BDU/ADUs + war walkers), the hover-bots for Orbs, the other troops for IDF soldiers, then throw in the Galaxies + actual Nictus (dwarves and novas) and Ascendant troops on top. The result would be a force with a solid array of debuffs (-regen from Praetorian plasma attacks, -resist from Ascendant troops and -recharge from Galaxy troops) for dealing with heroes. You could also phase out the War Wolves from the Council at that point to reflect that Requiem took his forces with him back to the 5th Column and, if I recall, Vandal was one of the ones who went with him and the Mek-Men and Valkeries were his designs so them leeping those designs would further serve to distinguish the two otherwise very similar factions from each other. I’m uncertain where Nosferatu shook out in the Council/5th Column divorce, but having his Vampyri belong to only one of the two factions in level 50+ to represent the split. Personally, I’d put him with the 5th Column because their robots, plus the war wolves and vampyri combined look like they escaped from some black and white film-era B-movie. Then maybe give the 5th Column LTs/Bosses the leadership buffs I mentioned previously so they’re threatening in a different way.

The main issue I see is the Standard Code Rant given it’s a rather extensive change. A slightly more scaled back option that avoids the pitfall you mentioned would be selecting your nemesis from a list of pre-generated ones (so they don’t have a particularly exploited weakness). Another option I could see that would actually make Origins matter more would be to link a pre-generated nemesis to you based on your origin and maybe AT. A third option would be to make your first radio mission assign you a random nemesis and then they periodically show up again and again. The reason I suggest this is because it’s not like Superman chose Lex Luthor to be his nemesis. It happened as part of his early adventures and circumstances clicking. Lex also points out that a nemesis doesn’t need to be physically similar or a dark mirror (I’ve seen several personal nemesis suggestions hinge on using mirrored powersets)... they just need to be your opposition.

Can I swipe this to add it to my list of “let’s update the Shadow Shard” concepts? Because I’m seeing a way to create a unified concept here. The short version was someone was asking to make the Shadow Shard co-op so red-side could get there. I suggested replacing the generic troops there with Vanguard (the people tasked with actually dealing with extradimensional theats; see Rikti and Praetoria) and moving the access point for the Shard from Portal Corps to the existing portals (currently used to reach the RWZ) in the Vanguard depots. Where your idea would be a nice addition is the idea that the Rulu’shin are stealing Incarnate power to break Rularuu free (via the extra mobs popping up in enemy groups); so Incarnates need to head into the Shard to steal it back by performing various repeatable missions scaled to Incarnate power levels to add some additional things to do inside the Shadow Shard (along with some revamping of the Shadow Shard TFs akin to Posi/Yin). Throw in a Circle of Thorns level adjustment (i.e. stop making the different mages and casters level locked to certain small bands... level 54 life mages and earth casters alongside the air/fire/ice casters and ruin/death mages would make their spawns far less predictable) since they’ve got a presence in the Shard and some high end Nemesis troops (I’d like to see some models with the steam pack players can get from the P2W vendor added for flying units in the Shard) and you could have another Incarnate Zone akin to Dark Astoria.

Looking at the tougher enemies in the game, they largely have ways of mitigating the typical player build advantages. Devouring Earth have their buff pets, Nemesis has their Vengeance-buffing LTs, Carnies target the Psi hole in a lot of defense sets and their mobs drain your END if defeated in melee, Malta has Sappers, Cimorarans have their -def on each attack, IDF has -regen with their plasma blasts, etc. Further, a lot of these are found tied to the LT level. The DE buff pets are spawned by their LTs, Nemesis LTs are infamous for their Vengeance, Carnie illusionists with their phasing mechanic are LTs (and the bosses are worse). So what I’d like to see is something like stackable leadership buffs added to the LT’s and Bosses (and EB/ABs naturally). These might be one or more of the classic leadership buffs; defense, damage, to-hit; or they could be more exotic depending on the opponent type (mez protection, resistance, recharge speed). One LT might mean a fairly trivial +2-5% buff while bosses might be +5-10%. That would mean it would barely be noticeable at default solondifficulty because you’d only find, at most, a single LT in a spawn and maybe 2-3 stack if you’re really unlucky with your aggro. But it starts to get more significant in larger spawns with more LTs and then bosses in them. Depending on the size of the buffs, a x8 spawn might completely obliterate the softcap defense advantages and pull down the accuracy enough that you can’t just shoot through Sky Raider force field drones like they’re not even there. If you give some variety to the leadership buffs based on the LT/Boss type then each spawn will be a bit different based on its composition to add some variety. Making the LTs and Bosses into actual leaders who make their minions fight better also makes sense thematically. More exotic buffs could be lampshaded with some mobs in open world spawns mentioning they finally got their bid at Wentworth’s filled (i.e. the villain groups also have IOs). It could also be something phased in; even with attunement, few of the IO sets with good bonuses can be slotted before level 27 and it’s not until the 30s when you start getting fewer powers and more slots that you can really fit many of the 5-6 slot bonuses (where a lot of the recharge and defense bonuses lay) into the build. So you could reasonably have this only apply starting with the level 30+ mobs and maybe not even all of them. Then at 40+ leadership buffs from LTs and Bosses become more ubiquitous and at level 50+ you start seeing more exotic buffs related to the enemy groups’ own Incarnate access. Which in terms of future high level content is something that needs to be addressed. In Homecoming are Incarnate abilities still “cosmic” powers limited only to the few (i.e. rare outside of the player heroes) or are they something that just naturally emerges at level 50+? If the latter, then it’d interesting to see some of the 53+ Boss mobs start to employ Incarnate abilities; a Council boss throwing out a Clarion or an Ionic Judgement would be a game changer (which is why I suggest 53+; if you play difficulty +0 or +1 then you’ll never see them; +2 would mean half might have Incarnate power, +3 or 4 guarantees they turn up.

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.