GastlyGibus

This is pretty much my opinion as well. The question for me is "if you take away the tech, can this person still do hero stuff?" Batman uses a ton of gadgets, but even without the gadgets, he's an exceptional melee combatant, is insanely smart (the world's greatest detective, even), and can generally kick your ass and outwit anybody even without any of his tools. It's like the opening of Batman: Arkham City. Bruce Wayne is captured, handcuffed, and thrown in jail, and even then he still beats up like 6 guys at once with the handcuffs still on and finds a way to get out and get his suit. Compared to Iron Man, if you took away Tony Stark's suit, what's left? Yeah, he's academically smart, he's scientific, that let him build the suit in the first place, but without the suit he's just a really smart guy. He has no martial arts training and would probably get the snot kicked out of him by most villains if he didn't have the suit.

Not one of the funnier names, but I always found it hilarious. I love how in the Citadel TF there's one Council boss simply named "Max." Not "Archon Max," or "Commander Max," or "Captain Max." Just... Max. Makes me think some random guy just wandered in and they gave him a uniform.

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.

You could theoretically make this work. It would still be a gargantuan undertaking, and absolutely would not see the light of day on Homecoming, but it could theoretically work. First off, it would have to be its own archetype. This could be the "primalist" archetype the original devs envisioned many years ago and never made. The inherent power of the primalist would be "Mimic," a single-target power that copies the effects of whatever player or enemy you target. The primalist could be like other epic archetypes, only having one primary and one secondary powerset, and similar to epic archetypes, these powersets would have a wide variety of ranged and melee attacks, armor powers, buffs, debuffs, etc... but the catch is, the damage, damage types, secondary effects, and power FX/animations would all change based on the character you mimicked. For example, I roll a primalist, and I start off at level one with, say, a tier 1 ranged attack and an armor toggle. I use my mimic ability on a fire/regen scrapper. Mimic would then make my tier 1 ranged ability do fire damage and light enemies on fire, and my armor toggle would provide standard smash/lethal resistance, as well as a boost to my regeneration. Throughout the primalist's primary and secondary sets, they could gain access to several powers that functioned this way, changing their attributes, animations, and FX to match whatever character I mimicked last (or potentially on some kind of timer, for balance issues). You could even extend this mimicry to enemy NPCs; electrical effects from Freakshow, enhanced strength from Council, dark powers from ghosts, etc... Obviously, this is never going to happen. The coding and tinkering needed to make this kind of set a reality would be monstrous, something that I'm sure even a fully employed staff of developers wouldn't be able to do without massive effort and time, at least with the limitations of the game's ancient engine, but theoretically, this is how I imagine you could get it to work. Theoretically. 😛

A Controller's inherent power Containment deals extra damage to held, immobilized, slept, or disoriented enemies. Also, Entangling Arrow from the Trick Arrow powerset has -res in it, recently added by homecoming. Everything else? Check the power info. In most cases, unless it's explicitly stated, mez doesn't add extra damage unless you're a Controller, and even then, only the effects listed above count. Effects like fear and confuse, for instance, do not count for Containment's extra damage.

So, I hate to resurrect an old thread, but I was going to come here to report this myself until I decided to search and see if it's come up before. Went to take my tanker for a spin in Crey's Folly, playing around with new powers, and these guys were appearing infrequently throughout the zone. Just wanted to show that it doesn't appear to be some special mission coding like the OP suggested, but rather a bug with the Rikti in general. Screenshots below:

As Wavicle stated, there's a couple things that make the AI go into a "panic" and try to run. I don't know if there's an exhaustive list out there, so unfortunately I can't give a definitive answer, but I will say I've experienced the same on my merc/poison MM when soloing. I think it's a combination of several factors, such as being outnumbered, taking lots of damage, being debuffed, etc.... It could also have to do with the specific boss. Anybody who has done the ITF is surely familiar with how Romulus on the third mission runs around like a lunatic quite frequently. Since trick arrow has so many debuffs and you're playing a mastermind, it could be the combination of debuffs and being outnumbered makes them run. Wish I could say for certain, but the AI works in mysterious ways.

Babbage jumped on a street-light and decided to stay there the entire fight. The Clockwork now defy the laws of physics!

There are three main reasons a character in my roster gets ignored: The concept or costume isn't working for me. The powersets don't mesh well with each other. The character just isn't fun to play. Right now, the most idle character I have is an elec/elec Tanker, sitting at 224 days since last played. The reason is the first one I listed; her costume and concept just aren't really meshing for me. Every character of mine has a backstory, and sometimes, when I put those ideas down into a character, I find the character comes up short. Usually, I keep these characters around because I like the name, and I want to keep the name held for myself for a later time. Yeah, you can call me selfish for that, but a lot of times when a character doesn't work, I'll keep the name but rework the powers and concept. I keep characters around because, while I intend to visit them in the future, work keeps me from playing all of them. Sometimes, you come home from work, and you just want to play a character that you know and enjoy, and all the other alts sit on the backburner for a while. Eventually though, I come around to logging back on with them, play with them for a little bit more, and see if I can't make it work again. Sometimes, I can, and the character enjoys more regular playtime as I'm able to fix whatever was wrong with them, but other times, after playing them again, I realize it just isn't working out and I scrap the character entirely. As of right now, these are the top five most ignored characters on my roster. Street Shock, 224 days, level 31 elec/elec Tanker. See above. Femme Flare, 220 days, level 24 fire/fire Blaster. I love the concept and the costume, but playing her is just kind of boring. Sure, she does lots of damage, but that's pretty much all she does. Lots of pew-pew and fire punching. I may rework the concept in the future, same name and costume, but different AT and powers. Warp Shot, 218 days, level 32 Kin/SR Scrapper. I've rolled two super reflexes characters, and I think I've learned by now that super reflexes is one of the most boring power sets in the game. It's a very "fire and forget" kind of set, which I don't find fun. I'll probably just end up deleting him outright, since I'm not terribly attached to the name or the costume. Sapphire Sting, 217 days, level 26 Fortunata. I am fully prepared to be spat upon for this unspeakable heresy, since I know Fortunatas are highly appreciated by many, but I am going to say it. Fortunatas are boring. Playing her so far, she just feels like a really underwhelming Dominator. I'm keeping her around in the hopes that one day I'll take a harder look and discover the secret to enjoying the AT, as I've heard nothing but good things about Fortunatas, but right now, she sits idle. Gleaming Cut, 204 days, level 50 SR/Kat Tanker. The costume and concept is really cool, but as stated before, super reflexes is boring to me. Not sure how he made it to 50, nor am I entirely sure on what to do with him. I rolled a Bio/Claws Tanker afterwards and found that character infinitely more enjoyable as my main Tanker, so Gleaming Cut currently stands in limbo, waiting for me to make a decision on what to do with him. (Sounds very ominous, OoOoOo.)

It is, actually, but thankfully not from any AV's/Heroes that I know of. Painted Ones from the Ghouls (and by extension the Failed Experiments) in Going Rogue have "Marked for Death" which makes all of their friends attack you. Since teams are sadly rare in Praetoria, I imagine not too many folks are familiar with this ability. As for the question of the thread, I was actually playing around in AE to try and make a custom group that would be difficult to deal with. I came up with the idea of a group that all use Beam Rifle powers, and the Lieutenants and Bosses have the Disintegrate power, the idea being that the "leaders" of the group can mark you with disintegration and make all of their minions deal extra damage. It doesn't appear in the official game as far as I can tell.

There is some story to Croatoa, though it is fairly barebones. The Fir Bolg and Tuatha de Dannon are supposed to be the long-dead spirits of ancient Irish tribes, locked in some eternal conflict. The Red Caps and the Cabal, however, need some more explanation. The Cabal are just "the Red Caps killed our husbands so we became witches to fight them" and the Red Caps are... some kind of mischievous fairy things, I guess? One upgrade I would love to see in Croatoa would be with the Fir Bolg and Red Caps, so that they aren't all using the same exact models. Seriously, it's so lazy. Literally all of the Fir Bolg and Red Caps use the same models, just scaled up for different ranks. Even Eochai, who is supposed to be the leader of the Fir Bolg and their king, is just a really big Fir Bolg. Come on. The Tuatha and Cabal have some variance in their character models, why not the other two groups as well?