mechahamham

I love the Croatoa groups and the story, but it just kinda peters out rather than coming to any kind of satisfying conclusion. There is a TON that can be done with the Seelie fae vs. Unseelie fae vs. Cabal/Coven angle that's just... not. Once you're out of Croatoa, the Redcaps and Tuatha only show up in the throwaways for Holiday events. Cabal and Fir Bolg just straight up disappear. I'd like to see the consequences of Katie Hannon getting married, or more details on how the Witches' magic works. Katie is mentioned a couple times as being the Cabal's 'last hope'. WHY is she the last hope? Is she the only witch who can still bear children? What's stopping the younger witches in the Cabal from having families? Additionally there are a few DE trees in Croatoa. Are those there on purpose or were they just misplaced by... was it Archon Voss who populated that zone? It seems like I remember War Witch saying he did. It'd be neat to see an arc that was fae vs. Hamidon themed. This is a personal thing, but I am SICK TO DEATH of Praetorian content. Please don't tie the Croatoa stuff to Praetoria in any way. I kinda hate that the Midnighters got tied to Night Ward. That said, the Drudges are seriously cool. I'd like to see non-Praetorian-centric Drudges show up in other arcs.

So, how much work are we talking here for rotating ? Just replacing images one time, like many folks do for vidiotmaps or texture replacements seems nominal, but wouldn't we have to have an updater or something similar for rotating images? Can CoH modder handle regular rotations like this? I can think of a couple ways to do this with shell scripting, but they all involve intervening in the CoH launch process. I dunno how extendable CoH modder would be for something like this. The actual creation of regularly changing images wouldn't be that difficult and updating them would require only very minimal supervision. A typical process is that an artist creates one PSD or XCF file that contains layers of background art and text and can then export it in whatever format is needed, like BMP or PNG. In the example of the ads for regular costume contests, you'd have the same art for a few weeks and then a changing date in the text. This can even be automated fairly easily, so long as the artist or event organizer checks the output before uploading the new version. "4:00 PM EST on 08-09-20X3 - This week's theme is 'Starving Creator'!

If you are within 5 meters of that thing when it tries to launch.... what are those, grenades?... you are at risk of life and limb. But give it to a Freak and he will absolutely weld his torso to it and call himself a 'Freak Vespa-taur!'.

You make a compelling argument, Snark.

Over the past several days, I've noticed a distinct uptick in the amount of racism and bigotry I've seen in various chats. The usual pattern I've witnessed is that one person will say something slightly or very blatantly bigoted, including obvious slurs, and if they're called out on it, a couple others will leap to the defense and attack the person who speaks up. The language is straight off of 4chan in a lot of cases. I've been wearing out the /petition button reporting these incidents. It's no secret that other private CoH servers have pretty serious racism problems. Those people are coming here, infecting our servers with hatred and intolerance. Don't stand for it. Don't ignore it. Don't make excuses for it. Call it out when you see it, and /petition the people who do it. Devs and GMs, please take the reports seriously when you get them. We're better than this. Don't let hatred and bigotry ruin Homecoming.

I believe that, before we can help, we have to understand many things: - The HC team has indicated at several different times that they are uninterested and/or unable to participate in an open-source CoH project of any kind. For a volunteer project, this is severely limiting in almost all regards. We need to understand why they have chosen this path and what we can do to work around this limitation. - The HC team is notoriously secretive as has been already mentioned in the thread. Basically everyone who contributes has to sign an NDA. We need to understand WHY this is required and if there's any way to realistically contribute without signing that NDA. One of the problems with NDAs is that they often forbid people from discussing the terms of the NDA itself. - We need to know what the HC team's quality requirements are for contributions. I've personally privately volunteered textures to the project. My attempt at contribution was met with silence, I assume because I didn't go through that NDA process. HC Staff, you can help yourself a LOT if you talk to the legal representation you've got and see how much you can disclose to us and how much you can accept from us. We genuinely want to help.

I spent an afternoon experimenting with subbing in different font files and have made the following observations: Paragon City Italic... I can't see that this is actually used for anything? Maybe just a clone of redcircl? redcircl - Account Name and Password labels, Settings button, Select a Server label, character names on select screen, combat text floaters including damage and heal numbers, level number on HP bar gothicb - account name and password fields, Exit and Login buttons, Back to Login button, server names, character AT/Powerset/LastPlayed on select screen mont_bold - zone name on loading screen mont_demibold - license text, button toolips, most UI elements including buttons, menus, neighborhood names, and chat text mont_hvbold - status text (Hidden, Held, Taunted, etc...), character placards above heads including titles, names, badge titles, SG verdana - chat balloons Font Considerations: When picking fonts, you want to consider what's important to you: Readability, aesthetics, etc. Red Circle is not terribly readable and is used almost solely for aesthetic reasons. Montreal is better, but has really crummy character differentiation between look-alikes such as 1, i, l, 0, o, or O. If you invite team members by typing their names, this can cause problems. If you invite them solely by clicking their names in chat, it's less so. A significant number of players use 'look-alike' characters to make trick chat names. This ranges from idiocy like copyrighted characters ala 'WoIverine' to more creative examples, like using 1s, is, and ls to make barcodes. If you change the font you see character names in, you're going to see some of these break. The CoH client has pretty awful font configuration. You can only indirectly work with font sizes via UI scaling and the 'chat font size' slider, which has huge jumps. In many cases, you're stuck with the sizes the client chooses for you and the metrics built into fonts. This means one font might appear significantly smaller (and therefore less readable) than another in CoH, even though their sizes are more similar in any other application. Some of the most 'impactful' aesthetic fonts are fixed-width, meaning each glyph is exactly the same width, even comparing characters like W and I. Be prepared for text to slide off the right of your screen if you use these. I, personally, do NOT like serif fonts (fonts with tags on the ends of character strokes). YMMV. TTF (True-type Font) and OTF (OpenType Font) are very similar, but not identical formats. So far I've found that CoH handles all .otf fonts I've thrown at it if I rename them to .ttf Fonts I've found that work well or are noteworthy: Raleway - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway This is a particularly good chat font, with great differentiation. Rowdies - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rowdies This is an nice, impactful bold font that's a good choice for your floaters (i.e: redcircl.ttf) It looks like a million bucks when you see 'Critical' or 'Assassin Strike' floaters. The Magnificent Girl - https://www.fontspace.com/the-magnificent-girl-font-f79686 Another aesthetic font. The metrics don't play quite as nicely as the others, but it looks awesome on the character select screen. Gamegirl Classic - https://www.fontspace.com/gamegirl-classic-font-f3331 This is one of those fixed-width aesthetic fonts. It looks great in floaters, but not so hot on, say, the consignment screen. Dosis - https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Dosis This is wonderful for differentiation, and scales very well if you use the chat font size slider or use /uiscale. At its default size, it's a bit hard for my worsening vision, though.

Satellite is the big bad Television came to warn us about.

I'm left wondering if this wasn't the cause of the same issue that was placing players into a login queue over the last week. Regardless, thank you kindly for keeping us up-to-date on the situation!

There are a few features that I'd like to see implemented to make chat a more pleasant experience. Some are visual changes and some are more about controlling what you do and do not see. These are not about controlling about what others do and do not see, and strictly about controlling one's own experience. Accordingly, these could be entirely client-side. Match filtering of chat - I'd like to be able to hide messages in a given channel if they match a filter. For example, I'm not interested in farming, and probably just more than half of the text that goes through /lfg is farm-related. I'd like to be able to hide lines that contain farm-related terms. Bonus points would be awarded for the option to do regex-based matches! Recoloring of default chat channels - You can color global chat channels pretty much how you like. (It's been a while since I've done this, but I seem to remember the selected colors not sticking very well.) However, you cannot recolor the default channels. You're stuck with bright yellow for General, dark blue for Help, and aqua blue for LFG. I'd really like to be able to change those colors to either be easier to see or to stand out less in the case of 'unimportant' channels. This has the additional bonus of making life easier for colorblind folks. Larger, preferably individually colored buttons for selecting chat channels - By default, these buttons are only a few pixels across and have very poor contrast. It was difficult to make them out in 2004. 19 years of vision degradation later, they're almost impossible to use. I'm stuck using the dropdown or typing the channel name like /gen, /help, /g, etc... before my messages. The dropdown can be slow and is not the easiest to use despite being easier than the buttons. Using channel names is quicker, but falls apart on global chat channels, where you have to hope that the channel number is always the same between logins. It also has the side-effect of stripping out the default formatting of your on-screen chat bubbles. (I'd love to see that fixed!) Easier and more consistent font control - Currently, the only way to change the default Montreal font used in the COH client is to replace it like you would a texture or a sound. It's not a bad font by any means, but the ambiguous characters, like 1 and l, and I, can cause readability issues. Additionally, font SIZE control is very, very bad. You can control it somewhat with slash commands, but the UI scaling in general is a 'tweak it slightly and hope it doesn't wreck your entire layout' affair. I'd like to be able to size the text of each chat channel in pixels or points. Limited-time Ignore - sometimes a person is doing something distracting in chat. You don't really feel the need to ignore them forever and ever, but it'd be nice to silence their messages for a bit. I'd like to have an 'ignore for 1 day' command. This could be in the popup menu you get from clicking on their name or used with a slash command like "/tempignore 1 name" Return of local ignore - This goes hand in hand with the chat filtering. I'd like to be able to ignore one character without ignoring every character on the same account. For example, some characters are used only for farming, but I have no reason not to listen to a character who's not a farmer and could be a good groupmate. Currently, however, /ignore will ONLY globally ignore entire accounts. I'd like to see a return to that older behavior. Thank you, Homecoming devs for providing a great COH experience. You don't HAVE to do that, but you do it anyway. If any of these ideas are helpful to you, please don't hesitate to use them.

Since CoH's built-in text editor is pretty awful, I always compose in a second application and then paste into CoH. This means that if you use one that does auto-saving, like, say, Sublime Text, you've always got something saved.

And Yipe! "Replacement of the equipment affected" can be anything from failing over to a hot mirror machine to some poor IT pleb digging around in a rack to fish out a dead router. I don't know enough about OVH to know which one is more likely. You'd think being a cloud provider, they'd be all about having like multiple blade-type machines they can spin up or down with a shell script as needed, but even then getting one up and configured can take a bit. Thank you #6 and Michiyo for the update!

Discord hates me for some reason. I simply cannot connect to ANY Discord server. I do always try to connect to the HC discord server, though. Regardless, thank you for the insight!

I heard a few people complaining about this in general chat. I experienced it myself when attempting to switch characters, and am now completely unable to log into the game.

'Sweetheart' glasses make 'Round' look pretty janky by comparison. I'm going to have a hard time NOT using them on my glasses-wearing characters. They look that good. Whoever modeled them should be proud. If they're supposed to reference a certain 1962 movie poster featuring actress Sue Lyon, the tops are a little narrow for that. The hearts would almost be horned rims if they were matching said movie poster, which I will not link here for reasons. Additionally, the legs are too wide to match that same poster. I'm not sure how easy any of this would be to change/add and keep the same polygon budget. Like all the other CoH glasses, this lacks hooks on the legs. That's not a big deal at all unless you try to wear them without hair or with a full mask. Is there any chance of getting that same glass texture applied to versions of 'Round' and 'Sun Glasses'?

I was actually one of your visitors this evening. Exploring 'Haunted' was a blast, and, as I said, I stand in awe of the time and effort. Kudos. Seriously, that base is a work of art and you should be proud of it. You should absolutely list it on your resume if you're looking for design or game work.

I truly enjoy haunted houses, both in RL and in games. When I played Everquest, my favorite hangouts were the undead-infested house in the Estate of Unrest and the vampire-infested Castle Mistmoore. Dr. Kane's House of Horrors is PERFECT. You fight through a Haunted House gone horribly wrong, only to discover that there is a real undead-raising mad scientist behind it. You fight his zombies, his monsters and his abominable final creation. (And the Black Whip demon!) Something that I'm seeing more and more of, since HC keeps making more goodies available to base builders is FANTASTIC haunted houses run by supergroups. These are SG bases made into mazes, and in one spectacular case a castle that puts a lot of EQ, WOW, and even OG CoH design to shame! I mean, wow, I wanted to adventure in that castle! I wanted there to be undead baddies to fight! One of the SG bases had drop-scares! (Witch Mansion on Everlast) How awesome is that?! I am just blown away with the creativity and effort players put into these bases. So, very seriously, HC devs, you need to be engaging these SG base designers and incorporating their works into the game as maps with enemies to fight. This is a good way to increase the 'vastness' and variety in CoH, and a good way to strengthen the loyalty between players and HC. The more haunted houses there are in CoH, the happier I'll be!

This is probably how I got the Hollow Reaper to run away. I was fighting against it with a KB-heavy blaster... water/sonic. Between water's KD and sonic's KB and holds, it quit being able to attack me and decided to GTFO. This would be FAR less issue in a team than with a single, inspiration- and empowerment- loaded blaster. These guys definitely need some work before the next time the event rolls past, but I'm still enjoying the variety. Clave Dark 5 mentioned that they weren't supposed to spawn for soloers, but that didn't make it in before the event started. I'm hoping that rather than completely disabling them for soloers, they'll let us turn them on and off with the noteriety settings for the next event.

I've noticed some further oddities. Sometimes the Crone Matriarch just doesn't agro, especially if you attack from range. She just sits by the door she ran out of and soaks up punishment. Also, the 'I'm being griefed' code seems a bit wonky, again, especially if you attack from range or manage to use knockback against the EBs. I had a Hollow Reaper run half-way across Founder's Falls from me and then despawn just before I could KO it. This has happened to Crones and Vampires I've fought as well.

For as often as I do my ToTing in RWZ, that'd actually kinda fit. That said, I would absolutely drone him every time he spawned! (The Horror Hotel League probably wouldn't even notice him. Or he'd try to spawn in this hospital due to door overload and get droned.)

That would be perfectly acceptable afaic.

Srsly, I've wanted to create a pixie-sized character since before CoH launched. Even if you can't let us go as small as 'mini-mode' characters, or let us use them in PVP, please, PLEASE, let us create shorter character with proportional-sized (i.e.: not gigantic for the body) heads.

I was playing with temporary powers to see if any of them were particularly effective... The mummy can one-shot a summoned snow beast at level 29! Shivan Decimators seem to do a bit better, but can still be killed in a fight with the Mummy or Werewolf, even if you're blasting from range.

Greater difficulty and planning in Trick or Treating! This is fantastic. I'm truly glad that you've added new content to this event, HC devs! That said, I feel like the bosses need at least a little balance pass. Yeah, a lot of people use the Peregrine Horror Hotel to get all their ToTing done and depend on the league to keep them alive while fighting multiple purple EBs at once. However, at least some of us Trick of Treat for the sake of Trick or Treating. Solo or in small groups. It's in these situations, especially between 25-35 that the imbalance of these elite bosses becomes apparent. All five of the bosses have a 'trick' required to fight solo. The Crone Matriarch requires extra accuracy or to-hit to get through her hurricane. The Mummy is best defeated from range since he uses ridiculously powerful super strength attacks, and if you can't deal with with his Unstoppable phase, you have to kite him. The Spectre requires that you have extra status protection... breakfrees. The Vampire requires the ability to deal with his lifetaps. The Spectral Werewolf requires a balance of all the above. At 25, however, these enemies can all use their most powerful attacks... including things like the Mummy's uppercut attack that can two-shot a LOT of characters-- even scrappers. The best method for dealing with EBs, inspiration loading, is only partially effective. A tray of 25 inspirations may or may not last in a fight against the bosses. Additionally, the bosses spawn so often that it's not really possible to 'work up' your inspiration tray by collecting and combining inspirations like you would in a mission with an EB as the end boss. This means 'door-to-door' ToTing over a large area is often interrupted by frequent trips to an inspiration vendor. The EBs seem to use the Mission Architect versions of the powers... meaning that they don't have any 'tells'. There's nothing to let you know you need to GTFO before Mr. Mummy uses his uppercut. The second-best method for dealing with EBs, using temp powers like Shivan Shards or Envenomed Daggers has the downside of requiring a bit of fore-planning and effort. The long and short of it is you can't just wade into ToTing at 25 without fairly frequent KOs, and, so far as I know, there's no way to turn those particular elite bosses off if you're over 25. (I'll test this just to be sure. Edit -- Tested this and no, there doesn't seem to be any way to turn these EBs off in Noteriety settings.) Things that can be done to balance this: First, allow players to turn off the EBs via the usual difficulty settings. This has the benefit of allowing a player to 'build' an inspiration tray and then turn on the EBs when they're prepared to face them. Second, add emotes into the EBs' attack patterns to act as 'tells' so players can learn to proactively deal with those 'instant' defeat attacks. Finally, and I feel that this is the most important, scale those attack availability with level. The Mummy at 25 shouldn't have all its most powerful attacks, but at 35, it's a lot more reasonable for him to have them all. All that said, I TRULY enjoy the new content! Kudos, hardworking devs! I hope you continue to add and improve content like this! Thank you for your hard, unpaid work!

A few different practical purposes, (and I do indeed mash that button like a youtuber fangirl), but the big one is: It's not easy to keep an eye on the exp bar all the time. As Rudra said, they turn off the exp until they're done and then turn it back on and rely on repeatables to level them. That's more or less what I have to do. Even then, I'm a bit absent-minded and clumsy. I've missed it a few times when I just didn't expect to level so quickly and missed a window of opportunity or realized that I missed something I planned on after having turned it back on. Having even one of these temp powers available would give me a bit more leeway in that regard. It's that stress, the feeling of constantly double-checking myself, that degrades my enjoyment. You might as well ask what the practical utility is of leveling at all, if everyone farms their way to 50 and then does flashback content, or of having the existing increased XP temps at p2w when we could all be leveling at the 2xp rate. We all enjoy the game in our own, sometimes subtly different ways. This would make *my* way more enjoyable.