mechahamham

Most of the people who end up on my ignore list are spammers, abusive in some way, or bigoted. I try to give each of them a note so I know not to take them off. However, I moderated a public channel on the live servers for many years. In that time, I began to view the ignore list for what it was: A luxury to make the game environment nicer for one's self. I felt like I couldn't ignore problematic individuals because I couldn't moderate effectively. Now, I don't deny myself that luxury. If someone's annoying me and I don't want to turn off chat entirely, I'll ignore them. Again, I try to leave myself notes, but don't always manage. I've asked before for a temporary or 1 day ignore feature, but I suspect that's a LOT more coding effort than this.

The CoT trial was originally designed so that you HAD to have a team of eight, and all eight of those players had to simulclick the obelisk. Then all eight players had to brave ALL the ambushes at once. Thank you HC devs for removing the plague that was simulclicks. Timing was difficult to say the least, and surviving the ambushes as you tried to regroup was kinda secondary to the timing issues. The most successful CoT I participated in on Live had coordination down to a science and then had Assemble the Team ready to aid the regroup effort. A lot of them just ignored the ambush entirely, focusing on burning down the AV and rescuing Sam Wincott. It's worth defeating all the ambush waves for the Volcanic defeat badge, IMO.

Possibly. It looks like your gamma is turned ALL the way up. It's not affecting all your UI elements, but most of them. Could also be a memory issue. I'd a) Reinstall your video card driver after deleting all your settings and the like. It's possible for those settings to get corrupted and b) Run Memtestx86+ to test your computer's RAM. https://memtest.org/

I was cleaning out my ignore list a few days ago. I try to do so every so often because... people have bad days and say things they don't mean. Or they've come from another game and are used to the nasty culture there and have yet to grow into CoH's more positive, welcoming culture. Or any of a legion of reasons they don't need to be permanently ignored. As usual, I find that it's a real pain in the hind end to type /playernote "Character Name" for every last one of them to see if I've left a note for myself on their behavior. It'd be REALLY helpful if there was a button next to their name I could click to bring up their playernote. (It'd be equally helpful to see star ratings next to their name, or even in chat). This would probably be even more useful in the context of friends as well to bring up notes like, 'Only plays before 10PM EST' and the like. I made a mockup to demonstrate what I mean: I doubt the talented HC devs will want to use my artwork if they decide to spend effort and time on this, but in the case they do: https://files.catbox.moe/womegw.xcf There's a GIMP file containing said artwork. Difficulty: Easy -> Medium. UI work is harder than it looks, but we have all the UI elements for this already, with the exception of the button itself. I imagine that the majority of the difficulty here would be adding code to activate the playernote UI. Also, 'Righteous' is kinda a cool font to use for chat and UI, etc... It's really growing on me after using Lexend for quite a while.

I got this same error just now whilst trying to enter my favorite transport hub base on Excel, STATION-18074. I assume that this was the usual, 'You were trying to enter a base as it was being unloaded, so got booted,' error that you sometimes see. Usually though, that has an error message like 'Mapserver disconnected' or something like. Sadly, I was not able to get a screenshot. I was in the process of hitting the space bar as soon as I saw the message, which dismissed it. Bad cookie for good villains and evil heroes!

I have to admit that I would have said that they did at some point. The fact that the unusual bartenders for the Spring event exist may play into this. 'These guys don't sell the temp powers for the special event,' morphs over time into, 'These guys only sell inspirations. Wait, what happened to the inspirations?' This is wonderfully welcome news! Thank you so much!

Defeat Lady Winter Mission. There are a couple dozen spawn spots for Winter Horde snowmen on the map. If you can fight them at +0/x3 or better, you can earn 20-30 candy canes per map clear, and then another 5 if you can solo Lady Winter. She's a toughy, though, especially for melee folks. My debuffer types usually have zero problems with her, but I've been trying to build a strategy that works reliably for my katana/psi scrapper that also doesn't depend on temp powers.

3DSMax. I dunno if there's a specific version needed or if new versions will work. The problems with this is are many, though: 3DSMax tends to be the kind of thing you get a quote for rather than Autodesk just selling it to you. It also tends to be the kind of thing that you can't really BUY, but can only effectively *rent*, paying for a year or a few years worth of use at a time. The version you get HAS to be able to work with the existing CoH backend tooling. (Possible version considerations) People who work in modern tools, even the newest version of 3DSMax, may not be proficient in the Pre-War versions of 3DSMax. If you or someone you know is well versed in 3DSMax and/or has a legal license to use it, PLEASE DO head over to the volunteer thread or contact the devs in some other way: If you or someone you know is able to write software that converts between the model and animation formats 3DSMax uses and the formats modern tools use, again, PLEASE DO head over to THAT volunteer thread:

I find that you only need four things to get all six ski badges at around level 10 or so. Sprint. Athletic Run. Increase Jump Speed (from an Empowerment Buff station), and Increase Run Speed (Likewise). That's it. Maybe it's because I spend too much time in Mario Kart, but these four are enough for gold on the advanced slope.

I've been getting these lagspikes about every 10 minutes or so all afternoon and evening. They're long enough that they occasionally give me the 'Disconnected from Mapserver' popup without actually booting me from the server. I'm perfectly willing to blame this on my own network connection, but when my connection is being spotty, it usually just drops a packet or two resulting in singular yellow lines like those on the right-hand side of the netgraph display. I hope that the timestamp is in any way helpful for HC's network troubleshooters. Thank you guys for the HARD work you do! It is appreciated.

When I turn off exp, it's because I do not want that exp to get in the way of experiencing content or because I want to stay at a certain comfortable level range. I largely do not want it, and I don't want it to come back after I've tossed it into the wastebasket. Snarky made a good observation: I would be horrified if I accidentally clicked a button that made my character skip past content I wanted to do.

Chat channel colors, including that fade effect, are largely uncustomizable. You can change the colors for global chat channels, but none of the colors for the default channels or captions. My understanding is that this causes our colorblind players more than a little difficulty. What you can do is change the color and opacity of your windows, which makes them more readable to a certain degree. These are all in your 'Window' settings, iirc. Another thing you can do to increase font readability is to mod in your own fonts. This requires a bit of plumbing in the CoH directory. If you're not comfortable moving files around on your computer or manually installing mods, this might not be an option for you. If you are, though, here's a thread with some instructions and suggestions:

There exists a class of player who sees successful players do things a certain way and imitates that way. In and of itself, that's not a bad thing. Imitation is the best way to learn. However, if you're doing things a certain way because 'That's the way we do things here!' and then refusing to try to figure out WHY the person you're imitating does things that way, you're not learning. You're not helping yourself or anyone else. Case in point: We have a few of players who recruit for events and indicate in their recruitment messages that they don't invite from tells. If you ask them why they don't recruit from tells, they usually tell you the same thing, "There's so much chat flying back and forth and I'm dealing with communicating with so many people at once that I simply can't pay attention to tells. I don't have the time to do that and still run the event." This requirement is not about any kind of convention, but is instead about practicality. I ran into a player a bit earlier who had the time not only to announce that they were not inviting from tells, but then began berating people for sending tells in a public channel where others could see said beratement. That's not practicality. It's about doing things a certain way because that's how everyone else does it, and getting angry because people are not toeing a largely imaginary line. Don't do that. Don't be the person who imitates without attempting to understand.

... Snaptooth snapped his last tooth. He's waiting in line at the Redcap Dentist's office, but there are seventeen evil gnomes with eviller tooth decay ahead of him. ... Lady Winter found Lord Winter's hidden folder of 'Hot young snowmen'. The ice is melting between them, and not in a good way. ... Blue Steel hit the Winter Lord so hard that Azuria's been frozen into the Magi Vaults. Send food, hot chocolate, and her favorite Hellion boytoy to keep her warm!

My testing for Dual Pistols: I took my level 33 DP/Time Manip blaster to Brickstown and found a Crey Vigilant to shoot both on Excel and on Brainstorm. The copy of the character on Brainstorm is a fresh copy, so the two have absolutely the same build and any extraneous buffs. I didn't use any powers but the three listed. The Vigilant was an even-con level 33 in both cases. Excelsior: You activated the Executioner's Shot power. HIT Vigilant! Your Executioner's Shot power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 78.80. You hit Vigilant with your Executioner's Shot for 135.23 points of Lethal damage. You hit Vigilant with your Executioner's Shot for 57.95 points of Fire damage. You hit Vigilant with your Executioner's Shot for 15.39 points of Fire damage over time. You activated the Dual Wield power. You hit Vigilant with your Executioner's Shot for 15.39 points of Fire damage over time. HIT Vigilant! Your Dual Wield power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 65.24. You hit Vigilant with your Dual Wield for 71.29 points of Lethal damage. You hit Vigilant with your Dual Wield for 30.55 points of Fire damage. You hit Vigilant with your Dual Wield for 8.71 points of Fire damage over time. You gain 218 influence. (Vigilant was defeated) total 334.51 damage Brainstorm: You activated the Executioner's Shot power. HIT Vigilant! Your Executioner's Shot power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 94.73. You hit Vigilant with your Executioner's Shot for 193.19 points of Fire damage. You hit Vigilant with your Executioner's Shot for 15.39 points of Fire damage over time. You activated the Dual Wield power. HIT Vigilant! Your Dual Wield power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 50.71. You hit Vigilant with your Dual Wield for 101.84 points of Fire damage. You activated the Pistols power. HIT Vigilant! Your Pistols power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 7.88. You hit Vigilant with your Pistols for 70.4 points of Fire damage. You gain 218 influence. (Vigilant was defeated) total 380.92 damage So, yeah. He died before I could get Pistols to hit him on Excelsior and lasted until Pistols hit him on Brainstorm despite being the same enemy at the same level. It's gonna be kinda hard to get an apples to apples comparison that way. I did more total damage on Brainstorm because he didn't die as quickly. The damage amounts, so far as I can tell, are exactly the same. Under the new Brainstorm build, they're all the Ammo damage type rather than Ammo + Lethal, which is true to the patch notes. So against enemies that are vulnerable to that damage type, it's certainly going to be a buff, but in the majority of cases, it's only going to be a very minor change.

I've personally had MM pets contribute to NPCs getting stuck before. I had a nightmare experience with Amy Jonsson a while back in which my MM pets nudged her into the terrain on KHTF. It felt like it was 100% my fault for trying to maneuver her around like she was one of my pets and not treating her with the same kid gloves I do other NPC followers.

No. That's not the case. I'm not trying to imply anything. Your statement where you disavow any kind of negative feelings toward the dev team lines up with others I've seen who are trying to avoid the wrath of the 'Homecoming team is Flawless' types. I'm calling the latter out as a problem. I'm not calling anything you said as a problem. You shouldn't have to make that kind of qualifier to your statements. As for the costume discussion, I'm adding my own feelings, wants, and observations for the costume creator system into the discussion since they seem adjacent. I'm not trying to coopt your statements or classify them. It seems like you're assuming I'm attacking you or trying to take advantage of your statements. I'm not. You say I'm putting words in your mouth. What are you doing to my statements here? Please don't assume malice where none exists. I'm fully aware of the developers' limitations, lack of personnel, and lack of tooling. I read that same developer response you saw. If you'll go back to that thread, you'll see that I was a part of it and lamented the issues they were facing.

I've always thought the Animus Arcana from Night Ward would make for great lore pets.

A while back, I seriously tried to roll a defender that relied on the Fighting pool for his damage. He took the entire pool, and tried to use the synergy between them to replace blast powers. I expected the damage to be lacking. What I did not expect was for it to be almost completely ineffective. Sure, I did the occasional stun, knock, and end drain, but still couldn't really use the fighting pool to solo +0/x1 IMO, the majority of problems with the Fighting pool attacks are not their cost, or even their utility, but their damage output. If you left the end cost the same and doubled the damage output, they'd still be pretty underpowered. Right now, when I take Boxing or Kick on any character, it's 100% as an 'investment' for the sake of taking Tough and Weave later. The ONLY time I bother using them is if I'm fighting Harbinger, or another enemy with ridiculous slows, and that's the only power I have left up. If I want melee damage or utility from the power pools, I will take Air Superiority for its almost guaranteed knockdown instead.

An opportunity missed by the Paragon dev team for the Winter Event was that they never included any frozen furniture items that were blue-colored Longbow agents on the Frozen Agincourt map. The reason that this is worth adding NOW is that permanently frozen enemies would have a huge reuse value: "I am eeenveeencible!" *click* *click* *click* Imagine visiting future Christmas maps where enemies are frozen in place as storytelling elements. Other places where they could be used are in AE maps. Imagine a time-travel story arc where the player character was stuck in a moment in time while the usual panicking citizen NPCs were frozen to the ground instead of running around. Imagine a SG base belonging to an ice- or time- powered villain who kept frozen heroes as trophies. Difficulty: Very Easy-Easy-Medium. We've got LOTS of statues and mannequins in the game already that are clearly using models made in the costume creator. One only need to copy the data for those furniture objects to new furniture objects made of blue-colored Longbow or other enemy groups, possibly with the older ice-armor effects. They don't need to be animated at all, but if they are, the 'Lost converts to Civillian NPC' effect can be used to 'thaw' them. That might be more difficult. For bonus points, add a frozen Arachnos team that was trying to infiltrate the base before Lady Winter showed up.

This hints at something that's become a bit of a problem. It goes something like: "Group Y has given me something I really want. Therefore Group Y are good people." That's okay in and of itself, but then goes on, "I will tolerate NO CRITICISM OF GROUP Y! THEY ARE FLAWLESS! IF YOU DISAGREE, YOU ARE THE ENEMY!" No. None of us are flawless, and organizations tend to compound the flaws of their members. Homecoming has done a WONDERFUL job championing the game we love and adding new content to it despite being an entirely volunteer organization, but mistakes still get made. Problems still exist. Because it's a volunteer organization, because the game is in OUR hands now, we ALL have to work to make it better. That means testing, reporting bugs, helping new players, and providing constructive criticism where appropriate. If someone says 'x feature is neglected. I feel the developers are missing an opportunity to make the game better,' and the response is, 'How dare you criticize these wonderful people who've given us back the game that was taken away from us?!?!', that doesn't do a damn thing to actually make the game better, and it's not hard to find MANY examples of similar lines here on the forums, and I hear something similar at least two or three times a week in-game. Now, on to the costume items: Once upon a time, I remember reading from the Paragon devs (Maybe even from SexyJay or NobleSavage?) that requests for female costume parts outweighed requests for male costume parts by a huge amount, so the margin of 'stereotypically' feminine costume pieces doesn't really surprise me. Over time, I've personally found my desire to make male characters at all has dropped to near zero. I want my characters to look cute or sexy or punk, but primarily I want them to look feminine. Even with that extra margin of feminine costume pieces, I'm still unable to create what is, for me, a convincing 'frills and lace' style magical girl costume. Think something along the lines of: , which crosses well over into the ream of 'Elegant Gothic Lolita' fashion. (I think this person is cosplaying a character from the Touhou games, but wouldn't swear to it.) We were getting there. We were getting more and more costume pieces that would allow one to create costumes that approached this style before a certain Korean company locked our art team out of their offices. Now, similar work is VERY difficult for the reasons stated in the OP. And, despite all that, the Paragon dev team was VERY resistant to feminine costume pieces for male characters and only slightly less so to masculine pieces for female characters. Importantly, a costume like the above WOULD NOT be to everyone's tastes, and that's absolutely okay. Some people would prefer more utilitarian costumes. Some would prefer less sexualized or even less sexually differentiated costumes, and again, that's okay. I'd like for all of us to be happy. I'd be over the moon if we could stick a character with male geometry into said magical girl costume. I'd like it if we could get there, but I'm realistic in that it would not only be a ton of work, but a ton of work for one or many volunteers using obsolete tools. And 'ton' is an understatement in the very least.

Every time I hear this, both from WB and from analysts, it sounds to me like "Why can't our hastily written sitcom with middling special effects pull down the same money as a well-crafted blockbuster? Why does Disney get to have all the money?!" Disney is having to ask themselves this same question over and over again now that those who were doing the crafting are no longer doing so. NF does one thing really well: Monetize existing properties. If that's all WB is going for, then NF can probably do it better. Sadly, this probably means we're going to end up with more stuff like Arrow-verse TV shows rather than Gunn-style Superman and Suicide Squad. James Gunn made us all weep for a cartoon racoon. He somehow made Captain Polkadot vs. Starro work... and work REALLY WELL on the big screen. Hell, he had me personally convinced that Chris Pratt was a great actor. If NF cuts him loose, it will be a liturgical, critical, and financial mistake.

Importantly, BNY is a 'hostage' type follow and not an 'ally' follow and without exception, hostages cannot see through stealth of any kind. Some allies can't either, but it's a 100% thing with hostages. If you have something like Shadow Fall, Steamy Mist or the like that does AOE stealth as some MMs (and many others) do, he loses sight of you after just a few steps and says his 'Typical mortal...' line. (This is a real pain in the tuckus for Stalkers.) I think it was Solace, but one of the GMs told me that their biggest source of tickets related to the Rescue BNY mission was from people who didn't realize they had to turn their stealth off to get the little gnome to follow you. As for the falling through and getting stuck on the geometry I wish I could offer more help to you. My personal strategy with ANY NPC follower is to take lines as straight as possible and avoid any obvious vertex on the terrain. Always go over a change in the terrain as perpendicular as possible: Make a ---|--> motion across ledges and the like.

After doing quite a bit of thinking about it since it's release, I'm of the opinion that the badge leaderboard functionality and the tracking and progress functionality need to be divorced. One need not even make a new kiosk, although there certainly could be one created. Just keep the red-screen computer for the progress functionality and have the leaderboard functionality accessed by clicking on the base of the hologram display. A hint could even be included on the display given by the computer to click the hologram base to view or submit one's character for the leaderboard. I think I remember reading that the kiosk was powered by a Lua script that ran SQL queries? Please correct me if I'm wrong. If they're split off into separate entities, then the tracker/progress script has the potential to use Lua's collectgarbage functionality to reduce its memory usage after players leave Pocket D. Likewise, I remember reading that the script polls every player who enters Pocket D. If the leaderboard ONLY polls players who actually click on the hologram or its base, then neither the tracker nor the leaderboard have to poll every last player who drops into Pocket D.