GastlyGibus

I ran Windows Memory Diagnostic when it gave me the BSOD a few days ago, which told me everything was totally fine and there were no issues. I'm not sure how to do a hard drive check. I'm not very tech literate, so you'll have to forgive my lack of understanding. What is the diag client? Is that something with Homecoming's launcher? I did save a crash report from the BSOD, for whatever that's worth. Also, I feel I should add that no other game I own does this. Even the more GPU/Memory intensive games like Helldivers 2 and Elden Ring don't give me these kinds of issues. Only Homecoming has been crashing consistently like this, and only within the last few days.

Was the first thing I did. Hasn't fixed anything. As far as I'm aware, everything on my PC is up to date. Drivers, Windows, all of it.

I have no idea what changed in the last two weeks, but something has made playing this game so unstable to the point that I basically can't play it anymore. I haven't changed anything on my end. No new programs or setup, my computer has remained the same for months now, but within the last two weeks, the game has become nearly unplayable with how often it crashes. Sometimes just the game itself crashes, and one time it crashed my whole computer with the blue screen of death. I have no idea what to do or what's causing it, and if anybody has any information or needs any kind of crash report or anything to help, it would be most appreciated. I'm at my wit's end here, as I really want to play my favorite game, but I just can't anymore because of how unstable it is. Help!

Good morning, heroes and villains! Been a while. I've been so busy with real life I haven't been able to play my favorite dress u- I mean... super hero game as much as I'd like. But now that I'm settled down and able to play, I find myself with a concept I really enjoy as well as two costumes I also really enjoy, but not much beyond that. I'm simply looking for a little inspiration and asking for your help to come up with something cool! Rolled a new toon, a Tech origin Arsenal/Martial Dominator named Sky Strider. Her whole concept is that she was part of the PPD as an advanced recon and stealth unit, cybernetically augmented and dealing primarily in non-lethal subdual of super-powered threats. However, after witnessing the corruption of the justice system for years and seeing the criminals she worked so hard to capture walk free mere days later, she decided she'd had enough, going AWOL and taking all of her gadgets and enhancements with her to become a villain instead. These are the two looks I've got going for her so far, and while I do love them to death, I'm finding myself a bit unsure of what other looks I could go for. Whatever looks you guys can come up with based on the concept provided would be fantastic. Thank you in advance!

So Arsenal Control just dropped, a powerset I and many others have been pining for for ages, and so I just had to do something fun with it. Viral Strain, (how in the world is that name not taken?!?!) the technology origin Arsenal/Poison controller. Heavily inspired by Jonathan Crane aka Scarecrow from Batman, he's a brilliant biologist specializing in virology, who developed an unhealthy obsession with creating the perfect disease, went a bit mad, and fled to the Rogue Isles to pursue his research without moral constraints. Roleplaying a bit with Arsenal, pretending all the grenades/tranquilizers are special infectious agents he's created. Made a bunch of different costumes for him, and I'm quite happy with how they turned out, so I thought I'd share.

Applications are right here. You're more than welcome to apply and show off your amazing skills at creating content. We'll all be here waiting with bated breath.

PvP in this game is dead. I'm sorry, I know a lot of people will say "nu-uh! There's PvP communities!" but they're probably the least active out of all of them. There is a very small fraction of players who do get involved in PvP, but there's no ladders, no real tiers, because it just isn't popular in this game. Endgame is whatever was left at shutdown, which is Incarnate trials, plus some of the "advanced" difficulty task forces. Currently there's only the Imperious TF and Dr. Aeon SF that utilize this advanced difficulty, potentially with plans to add more, but considering the "volunteer" aspect of the game masters, it's not something to expect with any degree of quickness. I'm not trying to sound pessimistic or negative, but endgame and PvP are by far the two weakest aspects of this game, and honestly, that's kind of what drew a lot of players to this game in the first place, the fact that it wasn't this endless grind like other MMOs. The original devs were planning on expanding the endgame to ever-further heights, but then shutdown happened, and what we're left with is only a tiny bite of what was planned.

Yeah, it's a volume thing. It's like scam calls. If you call 1,000 people, even if 999 people recognize the scam and hang up, as long as that one gullible/naive person says yes, that's a payday, and they have programs and bots to automate this process sending out hundreds of thousands of calls/emails/message a day for pennies on the dollar. People always say "how can anybody fall for this?" Sometimes they're old and they just don't know any better, maybe they're really young and don't know any better (a friend of mine in college almost fell for the "you owe the IRS taxes" scam call), or maybe they just really are that stupid. Whatever the reason, all it takes is one click and they get a good chunk of change. Scamming is a multi-billion dollar industry. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't profitable.

Been doing a lot of old contact missions on my new Scrapper, fighting a lot of Nemesis, and it reminded me of something I had wondered about for the longest time. What is up with some enemy groups having multiple versions of the same exact enemy with different names? There's a lot of at-launch enemy groups that do this. With Nemesis, for instance, you have the Chasseur, Armiger, and Lancer minions, who are all identical. Same powers, same descriptions, same behavior, oftentimes the only difference being a palette swap and the name. The lieutenant enemies are all identical as well. The Lance Corporal, Subaltern, Lance Sergeant, Sgt. Major, Lieutenant, Captain, and Colonel are all identical save for different colors. There's a good number of enemy groups like this, mainly the groups from launch. Look at the Clockwork, as another example. The Prototype Oscillator, Line Oscillator, Advanced Oscillator, and Perfected Oscillator are all perfectly identical. Not even a difference in models or colors. They all behave exactly the same, with the exact same powers. Sprockets and Cogs are also identical. The Devouring Earth are particularly egregious with this. The Bladegrass, Razorvine, Blackrose, and Deathblossom minions are all perfectly identical. Fungoids, Deathspores, Deathcaps, all identical. Bedrock and Boulder are the same. Geode, Quartz, and Sardonyx are identical. The Drone, Improved Drone, and Advanced drones from the Rikti are the same. I think you get the idea by now. What's the reason? Are their powers tweaked in some way I can't see? City of Data doesn't have any noted differences, and neither does the Homecoming wiki. Just curious why some enemy groups will have 3-5 of the same exact enemy, sometimes with the same model and colors too, but give them different names.

I've got three more I can share. First we've got a Spines/Nin Stalker, Red Seeker Alpha. A hyper-advanced robot assassin who hunts down its targets to the ends of the earth. Midnight Lightning, a SJ/Elec Stalker. Technically he's a Vigilante, but his story is he's a high-powered mercenary for hire who frequently sells his services to both heroes and villains, and excels at taking down super-powered individuals. And finally, Dragonrock, a BA/SD Brute. He's a gladiator from another dimension, come to primal Earth seeking fame, fortune, and glory in battle. Also my first foray at really taking advantage of asymmetrical costume pieces.

I've played around with this concept before, because it's fun to make characters that sort of defy the conventional appearance. So far, I've only done two, one AR/MM Blaster, and one Elec/Elec Defender, both using the huge model. The Blaster's concept is that he's a sort of robo-cop character, scientifically enhanced for psychic powers and super-human marksmanship who wears very bulky power armor so he can survive against super villains. The Defender also uses the huge model, with the concept being that he was intended as a massive mobile power generator, but quickly gained sentience and learned to use his near-limitless energy potential for defense, and now works as a super-hero to help wherever he's needed. I've thought about making a tiny tanker/melee character, but haven't thought of a concept I'd like yet. It's still a fun idea to play around with, though.

I will come and breathe life into this thread by making yet another request. So I came up with a concept I wanted to do for a while, which is a Broadsword/Fire Scrapper who is a literal knight in shining armor. The backstory I've got for him is that there was a little girl who was gifted with magic in her blood. It was so potent that, even at a young age, she was able to reach out to other planes of existence and commune with otherworldly creatures. When the Praetorian invasion began, with all the destruction and chaos around her, and her family on the verge of being killed, this little girl cried out for help, and thanks to her magic blood, summoned her own guardian angel, a near-indestructible being of magic and might. After saving his "princess" and her family, the knight remained her guardian, and so this little girl tasked him with defending any others in the city who needed his help. The basic theme is that he's sort of an angelic knight, called from some mystical realm as the eternal guardian and protector of his "princess," and so far I've only got two costumes for him, one angelic, and one more demonic (a black knight of vengeance for those particularly nasty criminals who need a good thrashing). You can see the two costumes I've got for him below, and I'd love to see what others more creative than I am can do with the theme. While his costume is very much a literal knight in shining armor, it doesn't have to strictly stay with the medieval theme, and any kind of angelic or celestial warrior theme would also work. Just no togas... because I despise togas. Wings are optional, but very much preferred, unless someone has a much cooler idea.

Figure I should chime in, because it's something I've noticed as well, and it really is starting to aggravate me. I don't like to run my own TF's anymore because of this, since it's an attitude I run into quite frequently, and I'm here to play a game, not babysit a bunch of hyperactive players who can't read or follow simple instructions. The rare times I do run a TF, I very clearly advertise what it's about. I always advertise it as a kill-most, state the difficulty we're running at, and even put at the end of my little recruitment ad, in all caps, "THIS IS NOT A SPEEDRUN." When I have my whole team gathered and we're about to start, I reiterate for the whole team "THIS IS A KILL-MOST RUN. WE ARE FIGHTING THROUGH MOBS TO THE OBJECTIVE. THIS IS NOT A SPEEDRUN." Yet, even after that, there's always at least one player, sometimes more, who decides "fuck that" and runs off to the end and then impatiently says "where are you guys?" or tries to take on the boss by themselves and faceplants. I'm very much of the same mind as Solarverse here. If you want to speedrun on your own teams? Go for it, my dude. It's your team, do whatever you like. I'm not going to sit here and demand that every player in the game must play according to my preferred playstyle. However, when it's my team, I have clearly and succinctly laid out the rules, and you still insist on doing it your way instead? That's a /kick for you. If you didn't want to fight through the mobs, then don't join the team. The issue isn't that people are speedrunning; the issue is that people are deliberately ignoring a team leader's request for a normal run and demanding that their way be done instead. I'd be more than happy to join a TF with you whenever you're on, Solar.

I was going to make a lengthy post, but I see most of the bases have already been covered. I'm usually the guy who tells people to play what they want, and that every set can be "viable" with the right builds and playstyle, but regen is decidedly lacking in that department. It's not that it's completely unplayable, but it needs a lot of work to bring it up to the level of what other sets can do at only a fraction of the effort. If all you're doing is standard +1/x1 solo content, or joining teams, then yeah, it's... okay. You're not going to be absolutely useless. I have a SM/Regen Stalker, mostly kitted out with IO sets, and I enjoy him well enough, but it would also be insane for me to suggest he performs anywhere near the level of my other melee characters. Hell, I have some "weaker" AT's like defenders and blasters who aren't kitted out and can still out-perform my Stalker on survivability and utility. The major problem with regen is just that literally every other set in the game out-performs it by a mile. It finishes dead last in the race, all the time, every time. Willpower replaced regen as the set for getting your health back, because it essentially did everything regen could do but better and with good resistance and defenses to boot. Long story short, if all you're doing is joining casual teams and standard soloing just for fun, then sure. Go nuts. Regen is playable in that sense. However, if you're wanting to tackle the big challenges, like a "Master of X" run or a 4-Star Aeon run, then you're probably going to have a bad time. EDITED TO ADD: The other reason it's such a contentious topic is, as others have noted, regeneration used to be the absolute best set in the game, bar none. Regen would make you into an unkillable god, and this was before things like IO sets and incarnates. Because of this, it got nerfed... and nerfed... and nerfed again... then enhancement diversification happened, IO sets came onto the scene, WIllpower was born, incarnates got added, lots of powerset proliferation, and poor regen just got left behind in the dust.

I don't miss side-kicking or exemplaring at all. It significantly narrowed the scope of players you could invite to your team. You needed at least three other players at or near your own level on your team to side-kick or exemplar anybody else who wanted to join. The current system is a vast improvement, one that I wish more games would utilize. On leveling pacts, I don't remember exactly what was broken about them, only that people reported they were very broken. They were temporarily taken out of the game, and then when the teaming system was updated to auto-adjust players' levels to your own, it removed any need to have leveling pacts in the first place, so the entire thing was scrapped.