GM Crumpet

But to be fair to you, I have removed both the warning and the point.

I gave you one point and asked you politely not to discuss other servers or their features again. You are not in any danger of a ban or restriction for discussing what you were discussing, but in the code of conduct it asks you to comply with GM requests. We do not allow anything other than general acknowledgment of the existence of other servers. Good or bad it's not fair on them to discuss what they are doing (even if it's something you like) as they have no way of commenting or addressing points raised. We truly have nothing against them, they often do some interesting things that get people excited and it's good there are other flavours of the game for people who might be looking for something different. We prefer a more general catch-all rather than try to have a very long list of things we would prefer people not to talk about as we will always miss something then get "but it's not in the CoC".

At the request of the CR's I'm closing this thread. Thanks to everyone who commented, the passion demonstrated the love for the incredible talent and dedication of everyone who entered their bases for the competition. Lessons have been learned moving forward, and to those who entered, thank you. Sadly there are going to be winners and not-winners, but there are no losers here. The designs were all of exceptional quality and showcased the artistry of the players. I'm proud of each and every one of you and am glad to be part of the community that has people like you in it. GM Crumpet

OK Guys, enough. This has gone from a fun contest into a really unpleasant attack on people who are trying to do nice things for the community. At this point most of the CR's are ready to throw in the towel and declare this contest null and void and never hold another one. Is this what you want? If so then you are very close to getting it. If you have an issue then bring it up with the GM's. Do not attack people on the forum. The CR's have the full support of the GM team and do not deserve any of the recent unpleasantness. As for the problem of block voting, that happens everywhere. We can't do a lot to fix that. We will have a different system of voting in future contests (if there is one, the way the CR's have been treated recently I wouldn't be surprised if they walked away). Anyone with a registered forum account can vote. Ideally they should check every base and vote on their favourites, but if they don't it's out of the hands of the GM's and CR's. We all do what we do for the love of the community. We don't do it for what we can get out of this. You are better than this. The CoX community has a reputation for being one of the best on the internet. Sadly this has brought out the worst in some people and I'm ashamed. GM Crumpet.

The CR's have worked really hard. I've personally had DM's from members of the team at all hours of the day and night asking to clarify this, can we do that, what if we do the other. As for the accusation of eliteism I'm confused. Everyone starts with the same base, empty and waiting to be filled. Some people are extraordinary and have the ability to see how putting several unrelated items together can make something unexpected. Not everyone can, I certainly can't. I'd heard of several of the CR's as base builders long before they became CR's and I've had a couple of them pop into my personal base and tweak something that I wanted but didn't know how to achieve. And this was on my player account. I'm not a GM who wanders round on my player account going "look at me I'm a GM" unless it's absolutely necessary. If I'm on my player account I'm a player and the CR's still probably don't know who I am when I don't have my GM hat on. And you know what? Even thinking I'm just a player they were so helpful and generous. There was no "You're an idiot" when I asked if they could help me fix a mistake. There was just "Yeah, invite me to the SG and I'll take a look". Five minutes later it was fixed. And they did that with a lot of players. Someone would come on to the help channel saying "I've really messed up and don't know how to fix it" and one of the base-building-for-fun players has jumped on and sorted it out for them. I've never seen anyone laugh and point and abuse a player because they aren't as good as the CR's. Just a "How can I help?". A lot of the base builders (non CR's as well as CR's) are true artists. They are Michelangelo to my 5 year old with safety scissors and glitter making fridge pictures for mommy. I'm not a good base builder. I plonk things down, it functions and doesn't look too horrible. I'll never win a base building contest. And that's OK.

Judges personal bases were always considered not allowed to enter. The difficulty came from the fact that over the last 4 years a lot of the CR's had input on quite a few bases as well known base builders. Someone would ask their advice or input, or have an idea but not the experience to make their vision reality. Anything they built from scratch and handed over wasn't allowed, but a lot of the CR's became CR's because of their passion and experience in base building. If a judge had built (say) a forest and gazebo in a base but the owners had done the rest then that judge would recuse themselves from discussing and judging that base. The CR team actually turned down a number of bases purely based on the fact they had done too much of the work. There are always going to be winners and losers, and these things are going to be a judgement call. If the community as a whole decides that any input, no matter how small from a CR years before they became a CR is enough to disqualify a base from future contest we will of course abide by that wish. This is for the community as a whole to decide, but unless there is a clear consensus, the GM's make a decision based on what we consider fair.

Can I clarify a few things for people. There was much discussion with the GM team about rules and procedures, and all of us gave input from GM's and Leads to yellow names. The CR's were very clear to us as to their goals and the rules, and accepted every one of the GM teams recommendations. If anyone has an issue with how the bases were picked, or which ones were allowed or not allowed it's on the GM team and not the CR's. The CR team does an incredible job with all they do and they do nothing without running it past the GM's first. There was a lot of discussion about allowing bases that had had input from CR's before they joined the CR team and it was decided by us, not by the CR's that it would be unfair to the owners of the bases in question to be penalised because of things they did in the past. Perhaps that was a mistake. We were certainly wary of backlash, but the CR team then and now don't have any advantage over players. Nor do GM's in fact. There is no magic "build now" button that can bypass the hours of hard and painstaking work required to make something as imaginative and amazing as the bases on display. As of writing this CR's have no access level higher than normal players. They are not "GM-lite". They are regular players who care deeply for the community and give up their time to do something brilliant for no reward. They do have access to GM's to chat and discuss any questions they have, but GM rulings are final and they accept that. We try to be as fair as possible and err on the side of caution. Any mistakes or decisions players disagree with are on the GM's and not the CR's, They tell us what they want to do and we as a team decide if it's a yes or no. If anyone wishes to DM me or message me please feel free, I'm always willing to chat with players who have questions about our decisions. What I would ask people to do is avoid personal attacks. People like Dacy and Easter Bunny do this for the love of the community, not what they can get out of it. Any decisions they made are with the blessings of the GM team. Any bases the CR team worked on in the past were judged as dispassionately as ones they didn't work on. If one of the CR team found it was something they had an input on they informed the CR and GM team and recused themselves from any discussion or voting involved. The CR team behaved in an exemplary fashion and any mistakes players perceive are the fault of the GM team and not the CR's. We were the final arbiters of what was allowed or not.

I've been round a few bases (not all as I don't have the time) but the ones I've seen have been awesome. I don't envy the CR's, they have done an extraordinary amount of work.

It can be argued comic sales are almost on the floor and the current MCU is the only thing keeping them going. I'm certainly over them after the fiasco of the X-Men Krakoa stuff and the way they have done almost every legacy character dirty. Captain Marvel has become one of the most dreary heroes in existence and Carol Danvers was always a personal favourite. As for Phase 4 and 5 I think they were a bit stuck. The existing characters were done, the actors too expensive, and the story ended. They started strong with WandaVision. Loki and Moon Knight, but Ms. Marvel (while done well) as a comic character isn't that interesting and the show changed too much about her powers for the actual fans to embrace her. Eternals was fun, but should have been a limited series. Expecting to introduce a dozen characters, a threat and a resolution was too much for it. Even the original comic had Ikaris wake up, then slowly bring together the core Eternals together over a year. It suffered from JLA syndrome without the pull of a couple of characters you actually knew, so audiences walked outr none the wiser as to who these people were. She Hulk was a shambles. Even for someone who loved the John Byrne era it was still shocking. I did find it entertaining, but it was all over the place and was just hot garbage. I could go on, but basically it seems that dragging Feige off to try to save Star Wars was a massive mistake as his attention was split. I'd have gone the route of Loki forming a new Avengers team to combat the threat of Kang after the events of his show. Similar to the Nick Fury cameos in the early shows. Resulting in a quick Avengers movie handing the baton to the new team.

I like Dark melee, I have it on a tank. It's just something a little different.

Sometimes it's the anti-virus or firewall. We had to change certification companies (no idea why, just what Cipher said) and it's taking a while for the new certificate to cycle through the different providers. We had someone with an issue a few days ago and they had to mess about with the antivirus whitelist to get it to work then were good moving forward. I'm not saying that's the actual problem or the solution, just a possible one.

Getting a little off topic here guys, but not everyone is organised 🙂 I'll log on to an alt I haven't played in a long time and go "Hey, 200 million inf I'd forgotten about". And I only have around 40 alts. 20 of which are retired now they have hit incarnate level 4 on everything. Those I do strip of inf, merits and emp threads, but the others have all kinds of stuff I forgot about. I found 10 PaPs on one yesterday.

I was 41 when I started playing in 2005. At the end of this month I'll hit 59. The thing I liked most about the game when I started to play was that the average player age was adult. I was always wary of playing online games as I always seemed to be harassed by annoying 12 year olds with foul mouths and camping at the spawn site so you died as soon as you logged in. The fact it was co-op was a new experience, plus the fact the player base was a little older meant the conversations were intelligent and fun. Most modern games leave me cold because they are all online and/or PvP and are as shallow as a puddle. AAA games are all failing because they are games as service and it takes three years before they work properly and have enough content to be worthwhile. Hogwarts Legacy is succeeding beyond everyones wildest expectations because it's single player and has an incredible amount of stuff to do. You can lose yourself for days doing whatever you want, and the makers of the AAA games like Anthem and Avengers are shocked Pikachu face that their games failed. We might be a little clunky at times, but our game has so much to do and so much lore compared to most things that followed.

Originally the way SG mode was coded meant you only got half inf while in SG mode. We kind of fudged it so you can be in SG mode for SG purposes (costume, emblem etc) and no longer lose the inf, but you also don't gain prestige. From what I can tell turning off that part was easy, but anything more complicated would more than likely hit the spaghetti code and need a lot of work and maybe even need to start from scratch. It's not a bad idea, but it hits the criteria of "What's a good idea that devs willingly spend months of coding on that will enhance the playing experience for the maximum number of players, and what's niche and will be used by a very small percentage of players". We have a small team of superb devs, but the key word is small. We don't have the resources or staff to make quite large changes unless it's going to be widely used. What we need is a team of unpaid interns we can throw something at and say "Have fun, you have till Friday" 🙂

Reverberant is as bad. I go up stairs to deal with the enemies up there and when I come down it gets stuck. It's like it doesn't path to the stairs but tries to fly straight to me but gets stopped with the wall. I suspect it's all pathing for non corporeal pets. The ones that run around don't have that problem. I understand you are focussed on Voltaic Sentinel but myself and others have experienced similar on other pets.

The devs do monitor this section of the forum quite closely, as well as the suggestions one. They make lists and prioritise stuff so they can then decide what they need to work on urgently and what they can put into the "when we have time" pile. I have zero knowledge of what they are actually working on, but I do have a bit of an insight into how they organise stuff from conversations we have had in the past. You have done the right thing by making the post and being succinct about the problem. I've noticed pathing issues with other pets too so it's more a general problem (which hopefully is easier to fix) than a power specific one which I imagine is much harder to narrow down.

I never liked Nature. It's a bit "meh" for me. I favour things like Time, thermal and Dark. Kinetics is also a good one. As for open areas, that can get very messy very quickly. I try to hang back if I can anyway, and if it looks like it's going sideways fast I'll book it out of there leaving my pets to their fate. And that's on all Masterminds. Even on +1/0 you can get too many mobs on you at once with the way the pets chase runners and aggro everything in a one mile radius.

I've just done a few missions for Tina MacIntyre at +3/2 level 42 and had little problem. I'm beast/dark, so do have some stealth and healing, plus some holds. Before that I did Hro Dotz and had little trouble. I do have sets slotted where I can, I have the MM ATO's in my tier 2 and 3 pets and a recharge intensive pet set in the tier 1.

It's been like that a long time. Especially the pets thing.

As far as I'm aware they are still as potent as ever. We certainly haven't done anything to them in months.

Go here https://forums.homecomingservers.com/gameaccount/ It isn't asking you for your old password, it's asking you to put your new password in twice. Once for the new password and second time to confirm it's correct. Just to make sure you've spelt it right

The problem is sometimes an email provider issue. I've had emails sent to me (not from the game or forum) that get stopped at source and never even make it into my spam folder, never mind my inbox. It's rare, but it does happen and I've been waiting on an important email and it's been sent, but never arrived. We can apologise, but it doesn't make it better for people who think we are ignoring them. We do send a reply to every ticket we get, even if it's a simple "We'll look into it but won't be able to tell you the result because of player confidentiality" to "That's interesting but outside the scope of GM help, please go to the bug forum and see if it's been reported already, if not make a thread for the devs to look at" to more personal ones if we are actually able to do something. Our hands are often tied anyway, we can't grant badges or missing items or inf for instance, but if we can give advice or pop in and fix something we will. Sometimes we are just plain stumped and the hive mind often comes up with an answer we would never have thought of. If you haven't had a reply to a ticket (even a simple generic reply) then feel free to make another ticket or reply to an existing one via the forum. Tickets close automatically after so many hours of inaction, but they can always be reopened and pop up as new on our ticket system. Sometimes we are able to respond almost as fast as the ticket comes in, other times it can be hours due to real life commitments. Sadly the Nemesis Duplicate program was a failure so all GM's are humans and have to work, sleep, study and walk doggos. We are discussing if it's possible to make a mark on the support button to alert a player to a reply. We don't know if it's possible, but the admins will know and if it's possible then it's something we can try to make happen. This isn't a promise we will do something, just that we are looking into the possibility.

I'm locking this thread as it seems to have stopped being a healthy discussion and is getting quite unpleasant in places

I farm and play. I don't farm to get as many 50's as possible, I farm maybe once a month or longer if I have an alt that's struggling at lower levels and I want to get to a power tier that will help, or past content I'm bored with. Most alts have been played properly and once I get to tier 4 on all the incarnate stuff I move them to their own column and retire them. The only reason some of them have been logged in since they were retired 2+ years ago is to get the PaPs last Halloween. Otherwise they are not played. It doesn't mean I don't love them, and it doesn't mean I haven't sweated over keeping them alive and sworn like a sailor when I've done something stupid. So far I'm up to 21 retired level 50's and the number creeps up slowly. I have 2 more I'm working on that only need a few components to be complete, and maybe 6 that are 50 but are low vet level. The chances are their names are going to be in demand. I know this because I've seen others with the same name on other shards. The chances are also high that I probably will forget to log them in eventually and lose the names. I'd prefer that didn't happen. A lot of people retire their 50's and the farming to 50 discussion aside we tend to move on to other alts. I have probably a dozen or so at levels ranging from pre-10 to mid-40's. Those get played for a few days or weeks then I move on to a different one. The chances of losing those names is small. The retired 50's though, they are at risk simply because I've moved on. Personally (and taking off my GM hat for a minute) I think it's a reasonable compromise. You can argue people have reduced the cachet of having an incarnated level 50 with farming, but people play how they play and if they are having fun and it's not hurting anyone else then that's their choice. I play how I play, which is mostly solo but team for the occasional iTrial or raid, and I'm not hurting anyone either. Alts under level 50 that get played at least occasionally will be safe. Level 50's will always be safe. Those 300 level 1's you made because you didn't want anyone else to have that name and will never use aren't safe. If you want to keep them you'll have to log them in very regularly, and that's going to get old very quickly. Getting to 50 even without farming isn't that hard now. With double XP, recipes, salvage, enhancements etc being reasonably priced, and purples being really common you can totally buff your character way past the difficulty. On live it was hard as most people couldn't afford more than a set or two. Now everyone can have as many purple recipes as they wish and can frankenbuild to the last fraction of a percent. People can work towards a build instead of just dreaming of it. We aren't stuck with 10 alts and that's all we get.