Zhym

The advantage existing players would have is one of many flaws with the idea, yes. I'm not entirely sure it's unfair—players with lots of funds have lots of advantages—and at least this way, people who lose names get something in return and that something has a chance of having some relationship to the value of the name. But I may be thinking too much like an economist.

I don't mind looking for new names when I think of one and it's been taken. Usually, that just means I wasn't as clever and original as I thought I was. And if I'm really tied to a name, there are always ways to get sort of the same name. For example, I really wanted to make Canned Heat (a fire blaster robo cop, of course) because I had that name on a Live server, but it was taken (darn you, whoever has Canned Heat!), but I had my choice between CannedHeat, Canned.Heat, and Canned-Heat (and probably .Canned Heat. and other similar variations). At one point my character Tomcat was on Excelsior at the same time as Tom Cat and Tom-cat (we really should have teamed). I have also created some concept characters with cool names (I think, anyway) that went nowhere, mostly because the build didn't work—but I didn't delete the characters because I might want to make a new character with that name someday, or maybe I'll end up playing them after all (never fear, Statsman the Kin/Regen Brute, your day may come—but maybe not in your current form, because that powerset combo sucks). But I also get not wanting to be blocked from a cool name by someone who is just name-squatting and hasn't logged in since 2019. Here's an idea that's probably been proposed and may have lots of flaws anyway: how about instead of the devs simply freeing names, they set up a way to have "name auctions?" Here's how it would work: if you want a name that's already taken and <insert criteria here: time since player logged in, time since character has been played, character level, etc.>, you can have it put up for auction. Make the minimum bid something that is a reasonable consolation prize for losing a name: 100 million inf seems like a decent starting point, but I could see an argument that it should be higher. Everyone gets to bid on the name, and the owner of the name gets an e-mail notifying them of the auction. All they have to do to stop the auction is log in or write back and say "I'd like to keep the name please." If they don't, then after some period of time (a week?), the winning bidder gets to use the name for a character and the original owner of the name gets however much inf the high bid was worth. Like I said, I'm sure there are tons of issues with that plan (not the least of which is that it would probably be way too much trouble to implement), but I thought it might be interesting to think about, at least.

There are three badges that are relevant here. One is "Moral High Ground," which you get for choosing any morality five times. The others are "Loyalist," for choosing the Loyalist morality, and "Resistance Member," for choosing the resistance outcome. Since you'll be doing all the arcs anyway (which I think means 12 morality choices), all you need to do is choose Loyalist at least once and Resistance at least once and you should be good for all three badges by the time you're done. The initial alignment you choose is actually irrelevant when you're not a native-born Praetorian. For characters that start in Praetoria, the alignment they choose at the end of the tutorial is their "true" alignment and lets them talk to the contacts for that alignment forever. Primal Earthers running Praetorian missions in Ouro don't have "true" Praetorian alignments; the flashback system just gives access to whatever is needed for that particular arc. In short, you can pick alignments at the end of each arc in whichever order you like (I tend to switch alignments when the one I'm with is getting a little extreme, which means switching right after a Power or Crusader arc). I can't remember if "Moral High Ground" requires choosing Loyalist five times or Resistance five times, or if it's just about making a choice one way or the other five times (the language on the HC Wiki is ambiguous), but if you do all the arcs it won't matter since you'll have to pick one or the other five times anyway.

Yup—Ouro gives you access to whatever faction-specific things you need to do the arc: Loyalist Lounge for the Loyalist arcs, Resistance codes for Resistance arcs. What you can't do that way is the "double agent" thing where you're running a Resistance arc but your true loyalty is with Cole, or checking in with Calvin Scott when you're running a Loyalist arc. There's no way to talk to them in the opposite-faction Ouro missions unless your character started as a Praetorian of the appropriate alignment (and even then, it sounds like Calvin's not always available).

Yup. As @huang3721 alluded to, four of the Praetorian badges are for doing all the arcs in the Responsibility, Warden, Crusader, and Power storylines. There are also three badges for completing all the story arcs in each of Nova, Imperial, and Neutropolis. So getting all the Praetorian badges means doing all the arcs. The other badges that may not be obvious are for the zone events: Protestor - complete "The Protest" in Nova Praetoria Takedown Artist - complete "Syndicate Takedown" in Imperial City Laureate - complete "The Great Escape" in Neutropolis All three scale to a character's level and can be done with any character who can access the zone. They were all pretty easy once I got around to doing them with my setted-out incarnate, even with the scaling. Sorry if that last part is obvious; I don't know if you were including those in the location/plaques/river rat badges you already have. The final badge that's sort of in that category that might not be obvious is Denial of Service, for getting bounced by the force field around Praetoria.

Huh. I had no idea that original Praetorians could still access their contacts in person after going red or blue. That will make running some missions in Ouro much more interesting for my Loyalist former Praetorian. Thanks!

That's the best reason to do it through Ouro. You can do a few Praetorian arcs at a time, then go on to other things. You don't have to spend quite so much time stuck at low levels that way. OTOH, Praetoria is all about the (excellent) story, and the best way to experience that story is by immersion, IMO. Spending levels 1-20 going through all the Praetorian story, limited in powers though your character may be, gives you a feel for being a Praetorian that running the arcs through Ouro doesn't quite duplicate.

I think you can just run through all the arcs in Ouro. If you do it starting at level 1 without Ouro, you run the risk of some contacts getting killed off before you can run their missions, but I'm pretty sure Ouro makes them all available when you need them. The alignment choices at the end of the arcs count, too—so as long as you choose Loyalist at least once and Resistance at least once, you'll have gotten Loyalist, Resistance Member, and Moral High Ground by the time you've done all the arcs (which you'll need to do to get all the badges anyway). The only thing you can't do in Ouro is check in with your "real" faction at times. IMO, that's the biggest reason to do Praetoria as a Praetorian instead of going back through Ouro. But I don't think any badges are tied to that.

This is part of why, when I returned to the game, I was convinced that the economy on Homecoming is completely broken. The idea that inf earned from fighting crime (or committing crime, for those redside) is completely irrelevant and should be turned off as soon as possible, and that the way to make money was instead to earn some reward merits, use them to get Enhancement Converters, which other people use to convert uncommon enhancements into rare enhancements, which they then sell for even more money, all using a market system that's tangential to the game itself was—well, it didn't seem like an indicator of a healthy economy. The best way to gain influence as a crime-fighter is not to fight crime, but to play the market? Oh, and purchasing enhancement sets with reward merits is a really bad idea because they're much less expensive on the market? So is using an Enhancement Catalyst to attune an enhancement—thanks, again, to the market. Man, the market messes everything up! Now that I've been playing for a year and a half (have I really been back home that long?), I think the economy is only kind of broken. I still think that fighting crime should be the best way of generating infamy—it ought to be at least as good at generating influence as converting Reward Merits to cash (and there should be a more straightforward way to do that than playing the enhancement conversion game or selling converters or playing the super-pack lottery). The prices for recipes at the Merit Vendor could use a re-balancing across the board to reflect actual market prices. And I'm still trying to figure out why some things sell at the prices they do—for example, why does common salvage ever sell for less than 250 inf on the market given that it can easily be sold to stores for that much? But as broken as I still think the economy is, it's a good sort of broken that works well for gameplay. Why do I think it's a good sort of broken? Well, prices have been fairly stable over time, for one thing. Sure, enhancement converters used to reliably sell for 90k and now they're worth about 70k. Prices of other things have changed as well. But there hasn't been rampant inflation or deflation of prices, nor have there been huge fluctuations in prices over short periods. When rare salvage selling for 600k or so instead of 500k is worth conversation (and when the occasional time that rare salvage sells for $1M is worth a whole lot of conversation), that says the market for rare salvage is remarkably stable. For at least a year and a half, the prices of most items on the market have been more or less around the same general range. So something there is working. And if the market breaks the economy, it breaks it in favor of making things cheaper. "Standard" pricing for ATOs, PVP IOs, purples, etc. is much more expensive than what they actually sell for. They'd have to be, since they set an effective cap for market prices. But what amazes me is that prices never get close to those caps. It's much, much, much cheaper to kit out a character in full IO sets than it was on Live. That may have escalated character power beyond what classic Live content was designed for, but it also makes it feasible to build butt-kicking powerful characters that are a lot of fun to play, IMO. So, yeah. I still think it would be great if the path to riches weren't a commonly-known "secret" that has to be explained to new players (who might otherwise think that the way to make money in the game is to, y'know, play the game). But the Homecoming economy, for all its weirdness...kind of works.

That guide, plus the HC Wiki, is what I used when I ran through every redside contact. There are few enough contacts per zone, and the zones (with a couple of exceptions) progress by level pretty cleanly, so all you really need to do is load the wiki page for each zone when you're at the appropriate levels to see the list of contacts. The Mean Missions Guide is good at highlighting where you'll want to pause your XP at various stages.

In case you're curious, this is where I nearly spit out my tea. ...and that's where I did.

I guess I'd draw a distinction between "social" and "socializing." Running a BAF is still "social" in that you're doing it with other people, even if there's usually not time for "socializing." I suspect @Snarky may have some thoughts on the merits of leagues and PUGs. :) But I do think HC sometimes falls into the trap of Trial and TF leaders thinking that everyone's done the content 100 times and so there's no need for instruction (heck, most of the time, they're right). It's "Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls" for high levels. And a lot of the TFs are very forgiving of that looseness when run with teams full of set-bonused T4'd incarnates. But the occasional pear-shaped team makes me appreciate the well-run ones that much more. On Excelsior, if I see a trial run by @Oklahoman or @STiTcH (or others whose names I'm forgetting at the moment)—well, that's still no guarantee that the TF or Trial will go well, but if it fails, it won't be for poor leadership.

This. BAF is a lot more entertaining, IMO, and more social, but if your goal is to grind out incarnate components as quickly as possible, there's nothing like running Heather Townshend's arc over and over. And as you mention, it's also great if you don't have a lot of time to play. I've logged in, run Burden of the Past, and logged back out in less time than it takes to have a regulation coffee break. Can't do that with BAF. :)

You're unstoppable! Until you're very much not. Unstop 'til you drop. At least Unstoppable is completely unnecessary to a good /Invuln build. It makes room for other powers. I wonder which T9 power has the worst combination of being both an awful power and necessary for a complete build.

I can't say I'm a fan of the endgame idea. Seems like a way to make OP characters even more OP. If I wanted to do that, I'd beg for "MOAR SLOTS, PLZ!" This, however, I fully support. Great idea.

It's probably accurate to say that gambling in the U.S. is at the very least highly regulated—to the point where the easiest policy for a game like Homecoming (which is still of shaky legitimacy in terms of IP rights, remember) is just to say "no gambling." Saves a lot of lawyers' fees that way. And personally, I'm not really a fan of making gambling a thing in-game. First, I'm not crazy about the image of "heroes" whiling away their time at the craps table while crime is going on outside. And I also remember what happened in Puzzle Pirates years ago when they added poker tables—suddenly a large number of players just sat around playing poker instead of playing the rest of the game. It did a lot of damage to the ability to team up in a game where soloing was rarely an option. Then again, unless the payoff is better than AE farming, that may be a baseless fear.

I love Ki Push (especially followed by any sort of gunshot power—I keep meaning to make a macro that activates Ki Push while my character shouts, "Pull!"), but I've lost count of the number of times I've Ki Pushed enemies into walls where I can no longer target them. It seems to happen in tunnel maps a lot.

I wish I knew what the logic is behind whether Guides use their swords or crossbows. I had a good run going before the last server restart with a pair of Guards who were quite accommodating and never switched from the swords. Starting the mission again post-reboot, it seems like one or the other is always switching to their crossbow, even though they're standing right next to me.

Oh right. I keep forgetting about AE.

Darn it. "Rufus T. Firefly" is already taken as a character name. And I've been curious about this—what do characters who never leave Praetoria do after about level 35? I assume you can still do the First Ward and Night Ward arcs without leaving gold side, but what then? Ouroboros is closed to Praetorians, right? Can they join iTrials? Or do you just stop playing that character after the Night Ward arc?

Huh. Just shows how much difference a secondary can make (or how opinions can differ). My DP/MC blaster has been an absolute blast kick joy to play. Just all kinds of fun.

An SJ/WP scrapper was my first character on Homecoming. I had a grand time playing him, but I don't return to it that often. Part of it is that I didn't really have a grasp on enhancement set slotting yet. Every now and then I think I should respec and re-slot him, but then I remember what a pain the respec interface is, and that I've got a bunch of other characters I enjoy playing as-is.

Oh my. That has to be the winner. If you ever wanted to play CoH by mail, this combo might just be slow enough to do it.

Also, at a very basic level: any IO set is going to be better than SOs or IOs. For example, slotting a six-slotted attack power with common IOs can get you about +97% damage and +42% each to accuracy, endurance, and recharge at level 50. An uncommon IO set will give you roughly 97% damage and 69% to accuracy, recharge, and endurance, plus a whole bunch of bonuses to your combat stats. Those bonuses may seem minor, but they can really add up when most of your powers are slotted up with IO sets. As @Snarky and @Doomguide2005 said, it's almost impossible to screw up slotting. Which sets you have matters much less than having sets at all. The wiki page is great for figuring out what the bonuses from each set are. Some people get into "frankenslotting," where they mix and max sets to maximize certain bonuses. Others are fans of making "proc monsters," which maximize damage through "proc" enhancements that add bonus damage. But that's advanced-level slotting. Even basic slotting will improve your character tremendously.

Here are a few guides that might help: