Excraft
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On 7/14/2022 at 11:25 AM, Stoked said:
Imagine if Google or Twitter started instituting a similar policy if you didn't send enough emails or tweets? Who cares if there is more than one toon with the same name in game anyway? Are there people triggered if they see another "Captain Spout" or "Fire Hawk" or "Raven" in game? I mean seriously ... this is such an inane thing to be concerned about. If the devs are using it as a primary key or other unique identifier in the database, that's an architectural/design problem that can be fixed quite easily with an additional ID column. If it's not used as an identifier, drop all this insanity about names and do something productive.
Yeah unfortunately the game does use the character name as a unique identifier. The code is super old and wasn't really optimized well. Not something that can be fixed outside of an entire engine revamp as I understood it. Cryptic fixed this in the newer version of their game engine. You see the same ship names and even some character names over in STO and no one makes a stink about other players being named James T. Kirk piloting the U.S.S. Enterprize. It's just not that big of a deal.
To your point, here is something truly hilarious - there are people in this thread who are saying that they MUST have names released because they can't just come up with a different variation on a name who are also posting in threads totally berating others for "not being creative enough" with other people's costumes and such. Oh the irony! 🤣
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On 7/15/2022 at 9:07 AM, Bionic_Flea said:
Or perhaps a limit on how many "old names" a single account can claim?
It would seem odd to me that one account should suddenly claim several names from another specific account. For that matter, it would seem odd to me that one account should suddenly claim multiple names from multiple accounts. That, to me, implies a new name camper.
Name camping is only bad if someone else does it. 🤣
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3 hours ago, Jacktar said:
Hi, apologies if this has been addressed already in thread, given that the new system directly affects the character select pages system, could we not now put in place a basic “sort by ……” system on the screen so we could sort by level and then anything else that might be deemed useful…
Maybe in place of the search option we have now.
Yes to this please. No objection to there being a name release policy for inactive accounts, just the implementation needs a lot of work.
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19 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:
Not trying to be deceptive or confusing; There's three branches under the Homecoming banner in nutshell:
The Development Team, we have cyan forum names and we work on new updates to the game, fixing bugs, adding features.
The GM Team, they have orange (Lead GMs) or blue forum names and moderate player/community affairs, promotions, and running contests.
The Homecoming Team, they have yellow forum names and oversee Homecoming as a whole; Things like running the game servers, handling finances, and managing the coordination of the two other teams.
I hope that clears things up!Oh I wasn't thinking you were being deceptive or confusing. I understood you just fine. I get that you all have control over different things. My point was that regardless of what team you're on, people will still view you as representing Homecoming. Sorry if that wasn't clear on my part. No harm done.
I still think it would be nice to try and tie into some of the very cool open bases out there somehow. Something for you all to chew on.
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4 minutes ago, Andreah said:
I get that we all love easy access to Incarnate powers, but it bothers me in a Game Integrity sense that we've made it so trivially easy to get shards, threads, components, astrals, and even emps. These were supposed to the key rewards from the most dififcult content anywhere in the game, that could not be gained without the greatest effort, perseverance, or group coordination. And now we award them like anything else.
That made sense when the game was a commercial venture. It isn't anymore.
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1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:
Play how you want to play!
I want to play getting vet levels and EMP merits in AE. Can I do that?
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8 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:
Just to clarify, the development team doesn't manage Homecoming's promotions or events, we just work on updates to the game. It's the GM team that manages community affairs, moderation, promotions, contests, and events. Despite their being called "Developer's Choice" the judging and awarding of those AE arcs is handled independently by the GM team, not the development team.
So you're all the "Homecoming Team" without being the "Homecoming Team".... k. Understood I guess.
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42 minutes ago, MadCow99 said:
If we reach the usage where every hazard zone is being swept clean by farmers, adjusting the respawn rates in those zones is trivial (I think, City of Heroes spaghetti code may or may not being trivial for various reasons).
That's just going to create more lag.
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21 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:
It's not really the development team's place to promote player-made content, especially when that content differs between each server and the owner's of said content could cut off all access to it for everyone if they felt like it, making it a tough candidate for any kind of 'patched-in and permanent' type of promotion.
You are promoting it. You've held base building competitions and select Dev Choice story arcs in the AE. I get that content is different on each server. Just thought something to point people in the direction of forum threads or other info that would help people find them. Some players sunk quite a lot of work into them to make these bases available for the specifically for the public at large. A few even have very cool bases used for specific themed events like the Halloween base. Just seems a real shame to provide a disincentive to explore these.
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On 7/12/2022 at 3:50 PM, Vanden said:
Completely new players won't get so easily roped into farms, and will therefore experience more of the actual game.
I just don't see this as a problem as there aren't really all that many new players coming in from what I can see. That's just my opinion. Reducing lag in the starting zones makes much more sense than this excuse.
On 7/14/2022 at 2:07 PM, Cobalt Arachne said:You mean the supergroup bases that new players won't know exist and cannot access at all until/unless somebody tells them about it + provides an access code?
Why not add something to help promote all these very cool community built bases in game to all these new players instead?
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On 7/12/2022 at 7:30 PM, Number Six said:
Account data lives on a separate system from the individual shards. It would take a much more substantial rewrite of the character list code to for it to be able to query that efficiently.
Difficult or not, this is the correct way to do this. Just have any login to the account update all characters on all shards.
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Just adding my agreement to those who have said this needs to be account based, not character based. Going to get super annoying real quick to log into alts that are in various stages of being worked on all the time just to preserve a name. "It's hard to code" isn't an acceptable excuse for not doing this by account.
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9 hours ago, MadCow99 said:
I think this is a brilliant solution.
1) The way those zones work, you have to be in range to get XP, so doorsitters will at least have to stay close to the farmer.
2) Hazard and trial zones are grossly under utilized.
So when you enter a hazard/trial zone, let it exemp you down to an appropriate level and give 200 or even 300% of normal xp. Sort of a reverse of how debt works. Suddenly sweeping Perez Park and Boomtown becomes not just "worth it" but also one of the better PL strategies.
Sure this works great so long as the zone isn't crowded and you can actually get some kills in.
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On 7/14/2022 at 10:57 AM, blue4333 said:
This change feels like it only serves to alienate people who just enjoy AE farming and force them to leave - in my opinion, there is no benefit in this to people who play TFs/Story Arcs. It just feels punitive to people who enjoy AE Farming in a game that people play for general enjoyment and nostalgia.
I just don't think they care about alienating anyone who doesn't "play the right way" as they define it. They just don't give a shit and the only people they seem to listen to are the 3 or 4 people constantly crying and whining about farming on the forums. They keep chasing these mythical new players who don't exist in mass numbers, never will exist in mass numbers for an 18 year old game with out of date technology running on a pirate server. They keep making the same mistakes Paragon Studios made over and over again hoping for a different outcome.
Of course they can do whatever they want and there's nothing that's going to change their decisions on this point. Best thing anyone can do is just accept their changes and adapt or leave and go play something else. I have a suspicion this is just the first of many more nerfs coming to the AE content and it's pretty clear at least to me what effect those will have. All anyone needs to do is look at all the other "traditional" servers out there being barren ghost towns.
On 7/14/2022 at 11:03 AM, Shadeknight said:Otherwise: Unai, Harvey, and Maria all have farmable maps so long as you don't complete them.
What's the difference between farming those missions and farming in AE? People are outside the AE building?
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54 minutes ago, battlewraith said:
You are completely lost in all of this. The double standard has to do with the extent to which changes can be made to an IP while still remaining faithful to the spirit of the source material. As outraged as you are by the whole situation, the answer to that question is subjective. And it has jack shit to do with the twitter beef between the Amazon team and the portion of Tolkein fandom that is outraged by this production for whatever reason. Jackson made the LOTR prior to twitter existing, so he didn't have to deal the same level of social media hysteria. But imagine there had been a big backlash against his trilogy and he went online and called all the haters bigots, or whatever. Would that have somehow have changed the quality of the films. No.
I'm not lost in anything. You clearly are and you're still not getting it. The writers for the new series have made very clear their intentions with what they're doing and their labeling the fans of the series as bigots, racists, fascists, nazis and whatever other isms they can throw at them.
If you've got an example of Peter Jackson saying those kinds of things about Tolkien fans, by all means please share it. Peter Jackson's trilogy might have been made before social media, but he's given quite a lot of interviews about it over the years, so again if you can find somewhere where hes' called fans homophobic nazis and racist fascists, link it here. I'd love to see it.
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1 hour ago, battlewraith said:
If you want a rational, civil discussion--try being rational and civil.
LMAO! Pot, meet kettle.
1 hour ago, battlewraith said:When I pressed you on your double standard, you said this: They both may say it, however it is more than abundantly clear to anyone with more than two brain cells only one means it. I read this and think to myself, "ok well this guy is throwing some shade so I guess I can be blunt". Nope. Not true. Turns out you have a double standard about adaptations and a double standard about talking about adaptations. You're actually going to complain about civility.
If you're point is to express sympathy with irate Tolkein fans, or even to say this miniseries will suck because the production team being mean, you could've done all of that without making any reference to something I said.
Bullshit. There's no double standard. @ShardWarrior is exactly right. The people behind the new series and those shilling for them have called Tolkien fans everything from homophobes and misogynists to fascists to racists to nazis because they dared to disagree with their totally absurd talent less mangling of the world Tolkien created. They have made it very clear they are absolutely injecting their political beliefs into what they are doing because they can. That much is totally clear. Google is your friend here. Use it and educate yourself. Now, if you can find any interview with Peter Jackson or Philippa Boyens or Fran Walsh where they completely berated the Tolkien fans as nazis or homophobic, by all means please share it and then we can agree they're behaving the same as the Amazon folk.
If all Amazon wanted to do was expand the lore and start telling new stories taking place in Middle Earth while respecting the lore, no one really would've batted an eye. Instead, they want to whole cloth distort characters to fit modern political views and inject them where the original author never intended them.
25 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:Disclaimer - I've put battlewriath on ignore so that I won't be tempted to wrangle with his whole "If you accept the changes Jackson made to LotR, you should be ok with any adaptation" argument.
Smart decision.
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12 hours ago, Coffeh said:
2. Or consolidate the amount of bins to less yet more storage capacity (>100) for each.
Yes please. Add to this storage items that aren't massive in size.
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17 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:
Those people need to take a page from Brie Larson's playbook and understand that Tolkien was "not made for them" and move along.
Yup, but sadly, the Tolkien stuff has been purchased by a corporation who has no intention of sticking with or honoring the source material. The people behind the new series have no real talent, no real knowledge of Tolkien or Middle Earth lore, so they have to bastardize an existing property in the hopes name recognition will attract bring a built in audience. Going to be a spectacular fail IMO and I look forward to this garbage crashing and burning. Same thing is happening with Star Wars and Star Trek. They've been taken over by talent-less hacks.
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4 minutes ago, Luminara said:
Dude pre-empted a scheduled raid,
So what? Was anyone precluded from attending either raid? Was there never another Hami raid run ever again? Get over yourselves. You're proving the point the guy was trying to make about others being pricks and harassing others.
5 minutes ago, Luminara said:The same person you previously stated to be the cause of his own problem, who behaved in exactly the manner you're accusing others of in this thread.
Seriously, your reading comprehension skills are just awful. Let me refresh your memory again...
"Sounds like most of his issues are his own doing. There are quite a few bad seeds here though and I can see how they'd be pricks harassing someone over stupid stuff. The rest is his own fault really. "
First sentence, pay attention to the word "most". Most does not mean "all".
Second sentence should be self-explanatory. Or are you suggesting the guy harassed himself?
Last sentence should be self-explanatory.
Never once did I say the guy is a saint. As I said, clearly some of his problems are his own doing, but not all of them. Given the behaviour of people in this very thread, I can totally see how people like him are harassed to the point of leaving the game. That's the point.
Do you understand it now? Happy to clarify more if you need it.
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45 minutes ago, Luminara said:
You're six months late posting that. It was also debunked. He dug his own hole and wallowed in it for sympathy.
I'm not six months late for anything. I remembered the video which is why I posted it here since it's relevant. Nice try though. 😉 Maybe you think it's all been debunked and good for you. I still see there's a few grains of truth in there. The self-professed gatekeepers and developer white knights here love to try and dictate to others what to do and how to do it. I can totally see how that kind of behaviour is driving away players.
46 minutes ago, Luminara said:Actually, you posted in that thread.
Yes, I remember. Did you actually read what I wrote? Let me refresh your memory -
"Sounds like most of his issues are his own doing. There are quite a few bad seeds here though and I can see how they'd be pricks harassing someone over stupid stuff. The rest is his own fault really. "
So yeah, there are people here being douches to their fellow players and driving people off the game. Is that too difficult for you to understand? Like I said, nice try though. 🙂
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To the folks out there who want to dictate to others what is or isn't "the game" and how new players should or shouldn't play, I'll just leave this here.
Some people have shared stories in this thread on how others wanted to dictate to them how to play and what that experience was like for them. Give that video a watch and listen to what his experience was and what it led him to do. Where there's smoke, there's fire and I'm sure this guy isn't the only one.
If you're one of those who just can't help themselves and want to dictate to everyone what they should do with their time here in game, I encourage you to take a long hard look at yourselves and how your poor attitudes are definitely playing a part in a declining population. Your attitude is a detriment to the game you're trying to promote.
Let people have options to play how they want. New players can find something in this wonderful game that suits what they are into. Let them do it and don't dictate to them.
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16 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:
Might be fun to hold a mass Giant Monster event where there are dozens of Kronos Titans and Babbages invading Atlas Park or Mercy Island. The story can be that the villains are banding together into a new Axis of Evil Doers and the current heroes are not enough to fight them. Some kind of event that can be advertised on social media and MMORPG sites to entice some new players.
This can be combined with player run events. We used to hold regular Supergroup Faires on Triumph back in the day. SGs would run costume contests, sewer runs, badge tours etc.
This is actually an excellent suggestion. Finally someone offers a good idea. I'd toss in a couple of GMs from the Hive and a bunch of Nemesis Monstrosities. Would be cool to get those giant Mechs from the ITF. I like the idea of incorporating player run events into it.
Mass Babbage and mass Kronos Titan spawns are super fun. Too bad no one does them anymore. Would love to see this idea for a recruitment event implemented.
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2 hours ago, Apparition said:
I've said all of this (although I don't think together in one post), over the past couple of years, but it still remains true (although people will vehemently disagree):
1. AE XP should have been cut to 25%.
2. XP from radio and newspaper missions should have been cut to 50%.
3. The only thing veteran levels should have given you is badges.
4. The double XP booster should have cost 5 - 10 million INF per, and the 50% XP booster should have cost 2.5 - 5 million INF per.
Ok so tell us, what are the nerfs to story content or whatever other activities you enjoy to balance this out. Can story arc XP be made non-repeatable ever and have it's XP cut by 50%?
Making XP boosters have a high price tag is an open door invitation for gold farmers to start creeping in and that's something the team here have said they don't want to see happen.
People have different preferences. Options are a good thing. Some people ask for farms because that's the activity they're interested in. Others want to take the slow road. Both can exist here and have all the fun they want. There's something here for everyone.
If everyone left Homecoming because of farming, where did they go? There's no P2W vendors on Rebirth for quick farming up alts and that server doesn't have a big population either, so there goes the "everyone likes the slow road" nonsense.
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5 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:
The followup to this was that someone agreed and suggested that the AE in starting zones be shut down (I assume to lessen the focus and accessibility of it for new players) and you, in response, decided to lay your chips at the "farming needs to stay in the game and removing it is bad" side of the table. Which, I'll remind you, no one was claiming that all farming needs to be erased to protect new players; only the AE buildings in starting zones were suggested to probably be not such a good idea.
And some people over-reacted because no one heaped glorious praise on a bad idea. Removing AE from starting zones will not do much if anything at all. New players still have very easy access to it in other zones through a short jaunt on the tram or through readily accessible base teleporters. You'd also have to get rid of DFB and DiB to "protect" those new players from skipping through the first 15 or 20 levels without ever leaving Atlas Park, in addition to preventing them from seeing or using LFG so they don't see or have the opportunity to join AE mission teams being advertised. You'd also have to remove P2W vendors from the tutorials and starter zones.
New players don't need to be protected from anything. If powering to 50 right out of the gate is what they want to do, what makes them happy and keeps them around, let them do it. If that isn't your play style, more power to you. Do what you enjoy. People powering to 50 don't seem to be your crowd anyway, so it shouldn't make any difference to you what they do with their time here. Trying to arbitrarily force them into doing activities only you enjoy is just going to drive them away.
Like others have said, options are the best thing.
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Focused Feedback: Architect Entertainment
in [Open Beta] Focused Feedback
Posted
You're asking the wrong question with this. Why are people so interested in playing AE farms over the "correct/good" content in the game? What does that say about the quality of the content outside of AE? Why aren't more people playing it? Not trying to argue here, just that I think these are the questions that should be asked.