Apparition

IIRC, Technofreak history badge does not show your progress, but you will (or at least should) get the badge after visiting and clicking on all three plaques. It's part of the High Pain Threshold red side accolade and I get it with every character. So, double check to make sure that you've clicked on all three plaques, and also make sure that you don't already have the badge.

Except both Paragon Studios and Homecoming developers have said that that is not possible without a huge amount of work. Not at all simple. IMO, some people need to stop acting like infants and take the two minutes to go visit Null the Gull in Pocket D. Boom. Done.

It took about 25 hours back around October IIRC. We'll get there. We're just not going to hit the monthly amount as quickly as we used to two or three years ago.

I mean, right now, on a Saturday afternoon (Eastern time), there's only about 1,320 players on Homecoming total. That's not enough to cross one shard's 1,500 threshold to trigger the dual boxing rule.

Agreed. That really hurt Indomitable, especially in the long run.

Unfortunately, the only shards doing well ATM are Excelsior and Everlasting, and they've both taken a substantial hit in player population as well over the past couple of years. All of Homecoming has. It's just much worse on the other three shards as the more people that leave Homecoming overall, the more Indomitable, Torchbearer, and Reunion players feel like they need to move to Excelsior or Everlasting, so the more the player base consolidates on Excelsior and Everlasting. Heck, the overall Homecoming player population decline has recently reached the point that Everlasting is now regularly showing as "light" in the American morning hours when it was always at least medium at all times two years ago. As to what players not coming to raids are doing... some are farming, but honestly, not everyone likes raids or Incarnate trials. A lot of people dislike Hamidon raids, and even more people dislike Rikti mothership raids. Incarnate trials were contentious back on live as a lot of people didn't care for them, and lot of people still don't. I regularly led Hamidon raids on live, and I've led mothership raids for years, and even I can only tolerate so many raids. It just is what it is. You're never going to find that everyone is interested in your activity. I hope things turn around soon.

1. By far 1. Compare the populations of WoW, Final Fantasy XIV, and Neverwinter to the population of CoH circa 2006. Night and day. CoH’s population on live was tiny in comparison. Another reason though is that INF in City of Heroes is just not as valuable as the currencies in WoW, Final Fantasy XIV, and Neverwinter.

Nah. Season doesn't have much to do with it. The Homecoming population as a whole has been steadily declining since late 2020, when the first wave of COVID-19 shutdowns began lifting. It started really getting low in late 2021. I know quite a few people hoped that Page Three and the Dr. Aeon SF would bring a lot of people back, but it didn't. There was a small spike, but that was gone in about two weeks. Since then, the Homecoming population has been steadily dropping (yes, even during the winter), to the point that it's now about half what it was a year and a half ago, and all of the shards other than Excelsior are really hurting as more and more people transfer to Excelsior. Even Everlasting is now in "light" status sometimes, and Excelsior's population is down substantially from a year ago. City of Heroes is an eighteen year-old video game with a 22 year-old game engine. There have been a lot of new video games and video game expansions recently, (Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Final Fantasy XIV, Elden Ring, among others). COVID-19 restrictions are now mostly lifted everywhere, people are going back out. At the end, Homecoming will always have its die hard userbase, but the userbase will continually get smaller and smaller until that's all that's left. It sucks, but it is what it is. I have some very good and close friends that stopped playing City of Heroes over the past two years as they've gotten really bored with it and feel that there's nothing new they can do with the game, and I've recently started playing in other games with them myself as I miss playing with them. I intend to split my play time between, so we'll see how that goes. IMO, the only thing that can help with the population is if Homecoming abandons issues and pages and starts making smaller and more frequent, possibly less tested, updates, but even then there wouldn't be a huge population spike.

Agreed. It was odd. *Shrug.*

According to Cobalt Arachne on Discord, there's a rare bug in the game where that should a combat ally become lost after straying too far, when recaptured it may decide to join the enemy instead. That's what happened here.

That's how it was done prior to sunset. Really Hard Way leagues with a ton of Beam Rifle Corruptors, with secondaries with a lot of -res. Beam Rifle/Cold, Beam Rifle/Dark, Beam Rifle/Rad, etc.

Elec/Elec Defender would be fine on iTrials, although IMO Electrical Affinity is best on Masterminds because it's very, very busy. Your henchmen do damage, allowing you to focus on Electrical Affinity. But, it'd still be very good on Defenders. Thermal provides healing and buffs as does Electrical Affinity, but while Electrical Affinity also provides AoE mez protection, Thermal provides good debuffs. So Thermal is a bit more of an offensive support set. Both are very useful, just depends on what you need and what you want.

I know exactly what a Brute is. I played many of them on live. My three favorite ATs back on live were Mastermind, Brute, and Corruptor. Pretty much in that order. But, objectively, looking at the ATs and power sets without taking people into the equation, Brutes just aren't that good on teams. Sorry, they're just not. Between the Brute damage cap nerf, the Scrapper ATOs, the Tanker buffs, and damage procs, Tankers and Scrappers will always be better depending if you need damage or a tank. When it comes to a league situation, you're always going to have plenty of damage between Blasters, Corruptors, Scrappers, and Stalkers. What Brute could possibly bring is a tank... and Tanker is better. They're more survivable on their own, and do almost as much damage, and possibly as much damage. End of story. This is why every Brute I've played on Homecoming, I've ended up stripping and deleting because they have no point at endgame. Yes, and as said by others, the Dr. Aeon Strike Force has plenty of mobs that do -resist debuffs. That's one of the reasons why both Sonic Resonance and Thermal are very good. The other reasons being Sonic's AoE mez protection and heaping helping of -res debuffs, and Thermal's healing and debuffs. Sonic Resonance is actually one of the top support sets in the game at endgame, IMO. The prisoners in the BAF trial confuse people. In Minds of Mayhem, there is plenty of mezzing throughout. Then there's the Underground Trial as you said. There's also a ton of mezzing in the Dr. Aeon Strike Force.

First of all, it was clear that @oedipus_tex was talking from a min/max perspective in the original post, which is how I replied. I would certainly never tell someone to play something else, or that he or she is not allowed on whatever I'm running because of his or her AT or power sets. The worst that will happen is that I will switch myself to a different, better suited character for the team, which I frequently do. I can see what's going on. You're playing non-self sufficient (i.e. characters not built for the defense soft cap) on PUG iTrials. That's... just don't do that. If you're going to largely PUG, you are always better off building for self-sufficiency, i.e. the defense soft cap. Relying on PUGs to cover your weaknesses just leads to pain, like you're experiencing. That's the real issue here. If you build for the defense soft cap, and everyone else does as well, you'll see that Force Field is largely useless as Time, Cold, and the Barrier Destiny will top off your defense, and they all bring more to an iTrial or hard mode content than Force Field. As to debuffs, -res is substantially more valuable than -regen, both because of the lower -regen cap and because at least in the Magi trial, Tyrant is completely immune to -regen. Your Cold/Sonic Defender, built correctly, would be a monster on iTrials and hard mode content. As for Electrical Affinity, it brings heals (which are invaluable for the things that damage players no matter what defense and/or resistance they have), and the best AoE mez protection in the game. Again, I would never personally turn anyone away and was speaking in generalities. But if I had a choice between a KM/Regen Scrapper or a KM/Regen Brute? Yeah, I'd take the Scrapper. Sorry. The three most important things in an iTrial or hard mode content are: damage, -resistance debuffs, and healing. AoE mez protection and -regen debuffs to a lesser degree. When it comes to damage, Scrappers > Brutes. When it comes to tanking, Tankers > Brutes. Brutes just have no real role when you could have a Scrapper or Tanker instead. Thermal is great because it's a jack of all trades. It gives +resistance buffs, which is much rarer than +defense buffs. It heals, which you need on iTrials and hard mode content. And it has great debuffs.

Debuffs are extremely critical on iTrials and hard mode content. You honestly can't do them without it. Blasters, Tankers, Defenders, Corruptors, Dominators, Scrappers, Stalkers, and Masterminds are the best ATs for iTrials and hard mode content. Brutes, Controllers, and Sentinels are not desired. I say this as someone who primarily played Force Field back on live and regularly plays a Force Field character today... Force Field is largely useless on iTrials and hard mode content. It provides no debuffs (as I said, debuffs are critical), and the +def and mez protection it provides is superfluous thanks to all of the Time, Cold, and Dark Miasma characters running around, not to mention all of the Barriers and Clarion Destinies people are packing. The power set doesn't bring anything of value. Support sets that do bring value = Cold Domination, Trick Arrow, Electrical Affinity, Kinetics, Poison, Sonic Resonance, and Thermal Manipulation. Cold, Trick Arrow, Poison, Sonic Resonance, and Thermal Manipulation for the outstanding debuffs. Electrical Affinity for the healing and mez protection. Kinetics for... well... Kinetics. Edit: Before someone starts in on my ranking Masterminds highly... Mastermind pets largely ignore ground patches like the pink in the Minds of Mayhem Trial. This allows the henchmen to continue damaging, while the Mastermind itself keeps moving. Granted, the henchmen don't do as much damage as they should thanks to the level disparity between henchmen and Mastermind, but something is better than nothing.

I'm not an expert, but from reading that it looks like there may be an issue with your Nvida graphics card driver. Specifically, the OpenGL driver is either missing or corrupted like it says. Have you tried installing a new graphics card driver version?

Or, in other words, the Banished Pantheon Lore pets are still brokenly OP and due for another nerf. 😛

That seems to be random. Sometimes she refers to my PC by the correct gender (male or female), sometimes not.

It was done for Lord Recluse Strike Force. The LRSF is the finishing chapter of the patron story arc and required completion of your patron story arc to unlock. SCoRE removed that entirely in the "secret server" years. SCoRE opened that Pandora's Box, only fair to see it through and remove the requirements blue side as well IMO.

No, it doesn't. That requirement was removed during the "secret server" years, years ago. I was told when Homecoming started that all you need now is the patron badge but honestly I'm not even sure if that much is required. I just always have a patron badge before level 45.

That's half the fun of using Speed of Sound instead of Super Speed. Speeding through a SF, everyone else using Super Speed, you using Speed of Sound... then when you get to the end, everyone wonders where all of this aggro came from.

Should be possible, depending on the character he selects for doom. I was on a Thugs/Time Mastermind and started doing a decent chunk of damage to him, but it was taking too long and it was late. People wanted to go to bed, so we moved on. I imagine that this is a very rare bug though, considering that it's only been reported twice in four months and how many ITFs are ran.

Now that sounds more likely. I've encountered that as well a year and a half ago or so. Couldn't enter the first mission of the Apex Task Force I formed and led. I even tried restarting the game. No go. The only thing that worked was to have everyone quit the TF and reform it.

You can lead Strike Forces as a Vigilante. Just like you can lead Task Forces as a Rogue.

This just happened to me. We had just started fighting Romulus in the last mission of the ITF, when Imperious suddenly conned purple and started attacking my Mastermind. He completely ignored everyone else. I and my henchmen and Lore pets could attack Imperious back. However, no one else on the team could attack him. It was really weird.