GM Crumpet

I have spoken to the people involved about reducing the player cap for MS zones in the future. I suggested 50 as that allows a full league, then a new zone spawns. Once you get to 100 players in a zone the lag is painful.

Small leagues get better results. A 2 or 4 team league will do better than a full 6 as the rewards aren't split as much, but it does kind of balance out from the increase of enemies. Double XP boost is actually a +100% so gives x11 XP and no inf not x20. I generally turn the XP boost off at around level 40 as the inf gain is decent at that point. As per usual open zone events rules notoriety doesn't affect spawns. Multiple leagues in zones will slow everything down. Lag is real. Balanced teams will do better than ones with lots of support. League leaders should ideally sprinkle the range characters evenly as melee and defence suffer from the fact they can't fight to their best advantage. I try to spread Masterminds out if I can. They are often hitting multiple targets so help all team mates. Also try to keep teams even sized. Can't think of anything else 🙂

I'm not a tech person but there is a lot of good information here. Because the game runs so well and we've been able to update a lot of stuff and add new content people forget the game is actually really old. It doesn't use anything that more modern games use like game engines and the like, and everything about it is bespoke. It's a miracle it works even a fraction as well as it does. Things like the Mapserver event show the limitations that hit a wall no matter what we try. Get 100 players in a zone with all the powers, pets, enemies and stuff going on and it slows to a crawl. 2 full leagues will really stretch the resources, and three leagues you might as well not bother. I've spoken to the people that matter about reducing the player cap in the affected zones during the event so it spawns more zone instances, but that won't happen this year. We've been accused a few times recently of using AI and our reply is always "huh?". There is nothing to hang AI on. We'd love to be able to do things like language translation and the like, but the way the game is built it's fundamentally not possible without a lot of work and I don't know if even then it would be possible without a rewrite of the entire game code. From my limited knowledge the game is just too old and too incompatible to take advantage of the more positive aspects of AI. While nothing is impossible, a lot of stuff we would like to do is so difficult it enters the realm of highly improbable.

Just to clarify for newer players. Some words are so iconic that there is almost no possible use apart from the IP. Wolverine, Silver Surfer, Aquaman, Storm, Green Lantern, Superman. As you read those names I'm sure anyone with a passing knowledge of comics and movies will have an image flash into their head. Other names are also iconic but can have many other uses, so Thor, Phoenix, Hercules, and many others while having an IP associated with them also have a long history before they became iconic comic characters. As long as they don't bear any resemblance to the IP then we will allow them, especially mythological beings. Play a Greek God, just don't use the Percy Jackson version for instance. If in doubt you can always DM myself or Googly Moogly and ask if it's OK. We allow homage/parody characters. If you want clarification on why your character was hit with a generic, ask one of us and we'll tell you. Don't agree with the generic? Pop a ticket in with your reasoning and sources. We'll pass it to the Lead GM's to adjudicate.

Don't drag me into it!! just because I did the generic I know nothing!! It wasn't me guvnor!!

I loved the Tick, I'm sad they cancelled it.

I can't help thinking this might not be true as you should be kicked every week 😛

Everything's going to be on hold. Good luck on the MSR hami and labyrinth 🙂

Well Dracula and Lestat can both walk around in daylight

I got on easy enough

everything you need is here https://forums.homecomingservers.com/gameaccount/

Welcome home 🙂

It's not quite as cut and dried. Some contacts have a story arc then endless repeatable missions, some have just repeatables until you out level them. Others just have story arcs. Across the entire game I may be overestimating as a quarter, but I'm including all the repeatables like Shadow Shards

A lot of contacts are purely for levelling and repeat missions and never run out. It's impossible to complete about a quarter of all contacts.

I've just finished the show and Eve explaining she has blocks in place so she can't call on her full potential unless it's severe to the point of her own death makes sense. She's potentially a Phoenix level of power without the blocks. The same way Mark is basically Superman. It's always funny when the Guardians of the Globe are on the ropes and Mark blows in and takes everyone out without breaking a sweat.

Interesting discussion and excellent points all round. The problem in the past has been that moderation of the forums was done by whoever was available, and sometimes was a little inconsistent. I know I've been guilty in the past of maybe not being as fair as I could be. I do try to take peoples as being passionate rather than trolling, so sometimes posts that should have been hidden have been left. I certainly try to talk to people rather than just wield the large ban hammer. So we lucked out and got GooglyMoogly. Who gravitated to the forums and seems to have a flair for it. Widower is lead in charge, but Googly does most of the leg work. I'm in awe at their ability to keep calm and try to herd cats keep things civil. I'll step in if needed, but a lot of the time I wait for Googly. We do tend to discuss issues amongst ourselves, and while Googly hits the button many times it's a group decision. I tend to do tickets, and my main area is generics. I mess up sometimes and am more than happy to pass a generic to the leads for adjudication, or if someone can give me good reasons why I was wrong I'll put my hands up and apologise and reverse the decision. Googly is the same. There is no ego, there is no "I made a decision and even if it's wrong I'm sticking to it". You are always welcome to appeal, or send in well thought out reasons. We do this job because we love the community, and while there are times we would like to bang our heads gently on the desk we continue out of genuine love for the game and community. Personally I adore Googly and think they are awesome. It doesn't mean I won't talk to them if I think they are wrong (and trust me, Googly will call me out if I mess up a generic) but I think they do a sometimes thankless job really well. Regards, Crumpet.

You always make an excuse on cupcake Tuesday not to buy cupcakes and buy a sheet cake instead. This is unacceptable!!

I'm nearly done on season 2. Got 2 episodes left. Looking forward to season 3. I may be wrong, but they do seem to have dialled down the ultraviolence somewhat. It's still there, and sometimes it's brutal like the fight with Alan, but a lot of it seems to cut away quickly rather than show it in it's full gory glory.

Unless GooglyMoogly decides otherwise, I'm locking this thread for now as it seems to have covered everything. (Googly is the final arbiter on all things forum!!)

You know the person who does most of the generics reads these forums?

As long as it's polite we welcome negative feedback as well as positive. We mess up, we put our hands up and try to make it right. somethings broken? We try to fix it. You think our CoC and rules are too restrictive? We'll happily have a debate. There are reasons for a lot of our rules. Some are obvious, some we can't discuss. The only thing we are very intolerant about is rudeness.

The April fools event should be up at some point, you can get one to 50 quickly and when you do hit me up for a mids build. It's not cheap, but it's quite good. Also look at the kheld section of the forum. Laucianna has done an excellent guide to levelling and playing a PB and WS. I don't use the macro stuff, I can't get my head round it and find I'm awesome enough without it. Edit: I'm assuming the April fools Mapserver event will be happening. I've heard nothing either way, but it's incredibly popular so in theory it's going ahead. Just because I'm a GM doesn't mean I always have the inside scoop 🙂

The only time I've had any complaints was on my warshade and using Shadow Slip (fold space for normies). The tank "had a word" and I moved forward so I wasn't stealing his nicely herded mobs. I was basically bulldozing everything at the time. "Who's using fold space? Stop it!!".......... "Oops, my bad" "Oh it's you, carry on!!" 🙂 A well slotted warshade is a wonder to behold!!

You know I am eating garlic bread don't you?

Excel can be weird at times. I've never experienced it, but my two favourite AT's are MM and kheldians and some people won't team with them. It's strange but a well played MM or kheld can be an asset to a team, a badly played tank can kill everyone. But we get the blame. Excel has a high population so is more likely to have Hamidon raids nightly, MSR several times a day, daily labyrinth runs and regular iTrials. TF's and SF's are more likely to have enough people to form and farming is popular. There are plenty of people who ask for sitters and hitters without charging, so it's easy to avoid the venal players who think they are owed something because they take a small hit on the inf and XP from having people on the map. I'll occasionally run a farm on a new toon and open it up to all. I just ask people to chat and keep me entertained 🙂