GM Crumpet
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Posts posted by GM Crumpet
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1 hour ago, Techwright said:
Same. While the original wasn't bad, and had some really shining moments (mostly involving a crab), the character of Ariel never stood well with me. Must have something to do with being the firstborn in a classic psych sense: following the rules, straighten up and fly right, yadda yadda.
So is the current movie's struggle in any way due to the remnant effects of the COVID pandemic?
The original was crafted very carefully to give proper motivation to move forward, the new version removed a lot of that motivation. From Triton destroying Erics statue to Ursulas manipulation and gaslighting, even to changing the ending, it was all done to remove any trace of the possibility that Ariel was doing it to be with the man she loved. They also added several dreadful new songs that don't fit. Or sound good. The Skuttle rap is an abomination.
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I was watching a video by Nerdrotic last night that made a good point. This was about the new Indiana Jones film. They have opened up review viewings to every tiny blog and newsletter they could find for Wednesday, and one of his commentators mentioned that you'll see the "all critics" score go up massively in the run up to the films release. It's currently at around a 50% critic rating so the top critics will be mid range rotten, but the all critics will be really high as the nerds with 10 followers will want to keep getting access in the future.
The viewers score is tweaked to remove the lowest ratings, so the zero and half aren't counted, and a lot of the 1 star seem to disappear too. Media reports think we are stupid and compare box office takings today with box office 30+ years ago. I actually saw one crowing that the Little Mermaid remake had already passed the box office for the original film. Really? It has taken more than the originals 87 million dollars run? It made the equivalent of 250 million dollars at the US box office where ticket prices were a fraction of what they are today and didn't open in many countries round the world. so far the remake has struggled to make 211 million in the US and will be lucky to reach the same inflation adjusted figures of the original. -
4 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:
RT changed to a new system in May 2019, following some organised review bombing.
Captain Marvel being a main target of The Neckbeard Menace, but there'd been a few others up to that point.
Maybe using the tern neckbeard menace might not be the best thing. You might offend the neckbeards...... 😛
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Sadly all the old accounts and characters are gone. We have not and have never had access to the player data, only the raw game files like everyone else. I've heard conflicting stories about what happened when the files were originally leaked but have no way of knowing which version is true. In one only the game files were released, in another the player files were released as well and the person they were sent to deleted them immediately in terror due to the personal nature of the details. There are other versions of the story but the end result is the same. There is no file anywhere containing player account data from live except possibly in the vaults of NCSoft. And that's debatable.
As for names, we are 4 years in. The chances of a given name from live being snapped up is quite high. I came in around 3 months after HC went live and my two mains were already taken by someone else. I'd had those names since I started just after the release of issue 4. I had to move on unfortunately and start again from scratch.
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3 hours ago, Rigged said:
You believe wrong, you petty little creature.
Name calling is classed as a personal attack and is not allowed
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4 hours ago, Techwright said:
😉
As I think back over the years, it occurs to me that the best PUGs I've been on have probably been those where two of the team members are introduced as parent and child, with the parent usually asking for the help and indulgence of other team members. Everyone straightens up, show courtesy (whether they feel like it or not) because of the child present, and provides encouragement and guidance. It usually spills over into a bit of fun in the conversation. I could wish for PUGs to be like that regardless of whether a kid was announced or not. It might just add people to my go-to friends roster.
I remember that on live, but due to certain changes in US legislation we have to have a hard 13 minimum age limit unless we really want to get into trouble.
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I think people are trying their best to contribute so are watching the action and spamming buttons. If it's a support character they may be looking for the best time to spam a buff, or a hold or something. Unless I'm on voice chat I worry sometimes when someone is spending more time chatting than attacking. A lot of teams I'm on tend to be on the fast side and outside of a thank you for a gratz or TP or a call for a rez or a wakie most people tend to be too busy for lots of chat. The occasional comment happens like "I hate this map" or suggestions for tactics, or pointing out we all died because the team split, but outside of that most people are just busy 🙂
As for drama, I've seen it happen. I was on a farm where the leader had very specific ideas on how to progress, and it was way outside the normal sitters and hitters dynamic and insisted everyone, including the level 1 alts took part in the fights. Then proceeded to call everyone in the team all kinds of awful names because we either attacked too soon, didn't have our crystal balls on auto so couldn't read his mind, and team wiped. It wasn't even that good a farm. I blocked him and quit. Several team members followed suit and messaged me with uncomplimentary things about the farmer and also blocked him. Sometimes bad behaviour has consequences.
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10 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:
Since CoX is all but immune to griefing and ganking, and you can turn off the General chat, and drop out of any team with drama queens etc. — not really a problem.
I do miss the era of decent PUGs where five or six strangers spent as much time yacking, BSing and mildly hassling each other while (gasp!) actually playing for fun, and broke up for the night with a bit of shared regret. I think I've had that experience once on HC. Hey, none of you are real, but some of you are fun to share a barstool with.
Screw the complainers.
I have that a lot. I was in a MK a couple of days ago and we were having fun and being silly and chatting. It's hard sometimes as you are trying to keep up with the rest of the team and contribute so chatting tends to be limited
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19 minutes ago, DougGraves said:
I assume there are people who don't transfer influence to new characters. Which is fine. But if you do, then complaining about how they got the influence they gave to a new character makes no sense unless they did something illegal.
I have a lot of inf saved in my global email and drag it out as needed whether it's a level 1 or a level 50 🙂 I also randomly drop inf on new players in atlas
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Just a reminder that everyone has an opinion and a right to play the game how they want, even if it's not the way you play, or even if it's not the way you think others should play. Jumping on a returning player because they are doing something you disagree with is not good.
We have a responsibility to new or returning players to show our good side. Give them advice, point them to resources they may find useful. give them guides to yes, create a really good farming toon if that's what they want. Sometimes having the build for a horribly frankenslotted toon is welcome. I think farming has a place (I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise as I have farming alts) but I also think it can become the focus instead of a tool and someone ends up farming as the main or only aspect of the game that they play. Even then, that's up to them. If they enjoy it and get satisfaction from it then I'm not going to criticise. There really isn't that much content at level 50. It can get as repetitive as the low level content for someone with altistis who never gets past level 20. A player who only farms and does high end content is always going to complain there is nothing to do, they are bored etc. The trick is to mix it up.
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5 hours ago, crimson72 said:
I played the original game I believe up until around Issue 7 or 8, so there's a lot of new stuff in this version that I never got to experience. Back then, I had a group of friends and family who also played this, and I had a far easier time playing whatever I wanted, because I could always generally get a team and didn't have to rely on the generosity of strangers.
In this version, I started as a thugs/poison mastermind, and felt like this class was extremely weak. Struggled for about 20ish levels with little to no resources for gear. Getting on a decent team was rare, and solo leveling a pleb mastermind was very slow.
HOWEVER
Then I made a spines/fire brute, and started fire farming to power level myself and get drops and money and found this game to be far more enjoyable than the struggles of a fresh starting account with low-mid level mastermind with little to no resources. Now I at least got enough to keep my enhancements up to date and then some. And I'm able to make steady and consistent progress without requiring myself to be carried by the community's generosity.
This is my personal opinion, but based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend a returning player on a fresh account try to play anything other than an AE farming build with their first character, because that's a really steep road, and you'd be relying on getting on solid teams in order to level up, which isn't guaranteed, but you'd probably have better luck than I did if you actually have IRL friends or family who play this.
I agree your original character pick may not have been the best. There are better combinations out there. I tried a few when I started on live before I picked my mains which were AR/Devices blaster and Invul/SS tank. It was such a different experience to my first couple, almost like a new game.
As for starting with a farming toon and power levelling new alts as a starting player, I'd recommend against that. The point of the low level contacts is to act as an extended tutorial. Twinshot and Dr Graves are mirrors of each other, but get the basics down in a fun way without feeling like you are "learning". I'm sure we've all seen a level 50 player joining a team and asking "What's an enhancement?" and facepalming. Not their fault, but the modern idea of the game only starting at level 50 and the journey to the good stuff is a grind doesn't apply here.
Inf is ridiculously easy to get. Just read a basic tutorial on playing the auction house (of which there are several excellent ones on the forum or pinned in Discord) and you are sorted. Just from merit conversions and good drops you'll get enough inf to slot a pretty decent character. Farming is actually a slow method of gaining inf. It used to be the fastest, but after the bug exploits and loopholes were closed it stopped being phenomenal and went to just OK. It is a good method of power levelling though. I'll often farm to level 22 so I can slot IO's. I've done the lower content to death and really can't face doing it too often now 😛
I agree though, play the game how you want as long as it doesn't impact on other players. I just think it's a shame when players think farming is compulsory and miss out on some actually great stories because they have levelled past it.
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I'm impressed OP. It's always nice to see hard figures to combat the regular "Homecoming is dying" posts that crop up now and again. We are reasonably stable, and we get a steady trickle of new players on discord who either played on live and only now found we exist, or were too young to play on live and are now old enough to try the game their parents used to go on about all the time. We also get a few from other games like DCO or CO who want their fix of superhero action but have lost interest in those games.
As for the low pop shards, it's a shame. Reunion gets a bad rep, and it's undeserved. I play on Reunion a lot, and there are player led events like Hami and MSR, plus iTrials and weekly TF/SF's. Everyone says "Don't play on Reunion it's dead" which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. It does get quite busy at times, but mostly when the Americas are quiet so someone over there logs in at 7pm there time and goes "It's dead" when actually all the EU players are asleep. We are active when you lot aren't. And as someone else pointed out, even at their quietest, our two low pop shards are still more active than *cough* other servers where more solitary players who enjoy being solo play.
TL:DR Come to Reunion, it's lovely 😛
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On 4/28/2023 at 10:31 PM, Number Six said:
It might be doable but it would be a lot of work to disambiguate it for concurrent users.
What I do have handy is my log analysis of the launcher files. Since almost everybody generally has to run the launcher to make sure they're up to date, I'm able to gather stats on unique IPs. This is more analogous of active players rather than concurrent, since not everybody plays at the same time and not everybody plays every day of the week.
Between April 15 and April 27, there were 28,613 unique IP addresses that were used to launch the game.
Report Range: 2023-04-15 through 2023-04-27 Total unique users : 28613 Manifest-based : 6522 HC Launcher : 22091 New HC Launcher installs : 1317 Launcher OS breakdown: windows-11-x86-32 : 510 windows-11-x86-64 : 6867 windows-10-server-x86-64 : 1 windows-10-x86-32 : 1453 windows-10-x86-64 : 11562 windows-7-x86-32 : 46 windows-7-x86-64 : 416 windows-8-x86-64 : 2 windows-8_1-x86-32 : 13 windows-8_1-x86-64 : 88 windows-xp-x86-32 : 2 wine : 1131 Manifest-based launcher breakdown: Island Rum : 210 Other : 310 PenguinRocks : 2 Tequila : 6000Interesting trivia: between the same time period exactly 1 year ago (April 15 - April 27, 2022), there were only 24,390 unique IPs.
Since people sometimes change IPs or play from multiple places that measure probably overcounts somewhat. But it's not too far off from our weekly account stats which sees about 16k unique accounts active in a week, or 22k unique accounts active in a month.
Some people are still using windows XP??
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As a story I find it quite compelling. As a SF I nope right out of there. It's not one I enjoy or wish to play again, and you know what? That's perfectly fine. We don't all enjoy the same things.
Players were complaining the content was too easy, that there wasn't anything complicated they had to work hard on to discover strategies and builds to take it on. The devs listened, and created both a very complicated SF and a new difficulty system that made players have to work for the rewards. Now all I hear is "It's too hard, My Defender is useless. I can't play a controller on this" etc. etc. There is going to be stuff you love, and stuff you don't. You can't please everyone. There are players who like this SF and have worked hard to the point they can speed run it and snatch the goodies. Which is fine for them. What's not fine is if those same speed runners berate players new to the SF for being noobs and not knowing exactly what's going on, and not being in the right place immediately.
For players like me who don't really know what's going on and just follow along behind and hit things it's not ideal. I did it on Beta before release and wanted to linger and look at all the fun stuff in there, of which there is a vast amount. There are so many fun easter eggs scattered around, plus fun NPCs (Becky) and I wish there was a low diff version you could run solo and just meander through enjoying the very hard work that went into making it. I wouldn't even care if there were no badges on the "easy" version. Or any PaPs. Just a standard XP/inf/merits reward for completing a standard story arc. But as it is it wasn't created for players like me. It was created for those players who wanted a challenge and something past "Oh God, not Penny Yin again".
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On 5/14/2023 at 9:43 PM, carroto said:
Yesterday I was on a Keyes badge league, usually just going for one badge per run. We kept failing them (the badges usually, but sometimes the trial) over and over, usually immediately. Not even getting close to success, it was like a bunch of people were not even trying, or reading chat or whatever. Just facerolling their way through the trial. I wondered if it was due to new players. Then again sometimes you just get a bad mix of players. Maybe new people, maybe people for whom English is a second language, maybe people who just want incarnate salvage and can't be arsed, maybe kids who just like mashing buttons...
I had that the weekend. The league leader wanted the badge and we were all noobs and killed Anti Matter as soon as he appeared. Sometimes the best instructions in the world go out of the window in the attack frenzy. We were also trying to get the badge on Magisterium where you defeat all three AV's within 10 seconds of each other. We failed that badge too mostly because (I think) the lore pets kept attacking after we stopped at 2% health. It happens unfortunately.
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On 5/16/2023 at 7:34 PM, Snarky said:
I led a Manticore this morning. One of the players was new. They were on a Blaster and thankfully a Tank stayed with them. I was on a Blaster. A couple times I had to divert from doing anything effective to run back to those two who are wandering haplessly into giant Crey spawns. The new Blaster was…not killing fast. My Blaster? Heh. Fughedaboutit. Evil ranged thing Seismic Temp Flame.
We did the Manti in just over 30 min and at the end the new player was like “is that it?” I feel the same way when I play WoW. Because I never play it. I have two low level dungeons memorized there and everything else is a mystery to me. Hopefully they needed the badge for TF commander. And they got merits. I really feel I did not help them very much. At the same time I am not grabbing a PIG and trying a kill most Manti. Way too long, way too many unhappy people
I did a Lady Grey for the first time ever yesterday and it was a speed run. I was so confused. I just followed along behind and hit things until the teleport to the end boss each mission. I got the rewards, but I prefer a more leisurely approach. I'm in it for the XP, recipes and salvage, and threads. I understand doing something over and over gets boring, but personally I like to feel I've accomplished something . I didn't feel like I'd actually done the TF, just the potted highlights. I mostly avoid speed runs of anything for that reason, but if I join a team and then they announce a speed run I think "Well I'm committed now" and go along with whatever the team leader says.
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We can find accounts if you know the global, or an alt name. Then we can find the forum and from there we can help with emails.
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This is a hot topic with some strong opinions, which is fine. Please remember to keep it polite and not attack someone for having a different opinion to yourself.
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I sometimes feel sorry for league leaders, 99% of the time everything goes smoothly then 1% of the time it's like herding cats. I've had 2 Hami raids in 4 years that have been absolute shit shows with people utterly refusing to pay attention to the league leader. The LL was awesome, the instructions were clear and easy to follow but there were a handful of players who Leeroy'd their way in and we just failed utterly. It's not like Hami is even hard these days. There are 2 different strategies that work, and as long as you do what you are told to do it's quick and easy. Same with MSR. As long as people pay attention it works well, I've had a few where someone uses incan to teleport the league all over the ship instead of just... not using it... Then wondering why everyone dies and we all quit.
As for trials, every trial I've done has been awesome, and even though we've failed on rare occasions it's always been because people don't listen or ask questions if it's new to them. DD is actually my favourite, and the instructions are always clear as to what to target, when to target, and who targets who. The only time I have issues is when the league leader uses a different channel to give instructions because it's a stand out colour and some people don't have that channel in their chat list.
One point I would raise is events. When you have a full league and need to start another, move leagues 2/3/4 etc to different parts of the map a long way from each other. The recent mapserver was so much fun, then it wasn't. Leagues formed, then more leagues formed, then it became a slide show and all the XP and inf slowed to almost nothing. The lag was dreadful and nobody was able to do anything. Despite me asking over and over for leagues to please find somewhere else it was Thursday before anyone paid attention and it was almost over by then. Excelsior was great early morning, then by lunchtime to evening was painful. I got so much more on Reunion with a 4 or 5 team league.
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But to be fair to you, I have removed both the warning and the point.
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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".
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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
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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.
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4 hours ago, Aalya said:
I just want to say that most of the bases that are entered into this contest were NOT built specifically for the contest. I know for a fact that Vault Lux, Lake, Rampage City, and even my own have been around for a significant amount of time. For some of us, it has been years. We don't build for contests. We build for ourselves and for others. Did we go back and polish after we found out that the contest was going up before entering? Yes. Of course. Because we wanted to present our best work. This is an artform, as specialized as it is. And as artists, we work hard to improve our skills. If people are going to have a problem with their bases being judged, don't enter a contest. It's that simple. If you have an issue with the contest existing, go find something else to do instead of attacking it. We are enjoying ourselves over here. You can enjoy yourself over there. There's no reason to take fun away from someone else just because you don't like the method of fun we're having. Complaining because your base didn't do as well does nothing to improve your skills. We all worked very, VERY hard on our bases, and seeing all this commentary about how we don't deserve to be considered for the community choice because "elitism" or whatever is extremely hurtful to all of us, not just the individuals the comments are being directed towards. And bullying the judges does nothing to help you improve your skills either. Be excellent to each other, and work to improve yourself before you invest so much time and energy into knocking others down. It's childish, and we should all be acting like the adults we're supposed to be. Honestly, after seeing how the CRs have been treated, I wouldn't be surprised if they never do another contest again. I sure as hell wouldn't. They have been working themselves to death and have gotten little more than harassment as thank you. And they have been doing this for us.
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.
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How did you find that CoH was back?
in General Discussion
Posted
May 2019 for me. A friend who knew I loved City of Heroes when it was live mentioned Homecoming to me. I got terribly excited and didn't believe it would be as good as I remembered, but I went on the forum and made a game account, then downloaded Tequila and away I went. The excitement as I made my first new character in years was so much that when I appeared in Atlas Park for the first time and heard the fanfare I actually cried 🙂
And yes, it was not only as good as I remembered it was better as I now had a HD monitor, high speed internet and a great graphics card so was able to play on Ultra 😛