RunoKnows

Bonfire?! Adjusted, nay, NERFED down to more reasonable levels so an Ancillary power can no longer outperform another power from a dedicated primary or secondary? This is unthinkable! Bonfire, my love, you have not been struck with such fervor and force since Overwhelming Force! It's almost as if... Perhaps... SOMEHOW... unexpected interactions with other powers or IOs brought you over the top?! But how could this be? Oh, Bonfire, if only we had access to damage numbers in-game so we could review the disparity ourselves! Surely then we would see that you aren't OP, you're simply built different! 😭

Well, if the 'removal of the buff in AE' you're talking about here is the changes to double XP boosters, that was a bug fix Moving the AE out of Atlas really doesn't do anything besides make you hop over to Kings Row or Pocket D. This would be a huge deal if we were still playing, I dunno, EverQuest, and crossing over from one zone to another was a prospectively hours-long journey full of death, dismemberment and getting disconnected because your sibling decided to call their best friend without saying anything to you (again) and you're on dialup, but fortunately this is 2022 and you can just shuffle over there in a minute or two if you're being lazy about it. As an added bonus, you won't accidentally skip leg day Homecoming moves away from how the live game was with every new update, but that isn't a bad thing. Short of leaving the client in a completely stagnant state devoid of any updates or alterations, change wasn't just an inevitability, it's integral to keeping the playerbase interested, engaged and coming back to play Literally every successful private server for any other MMO has made alterations either in the interest of QOL and general improvements or because the developers have a different vision than the live team did. Private servers that leave years- or decades-old games completely untouched either fail and die off, or they're still around and their populations serve as a reminder that change is as important here on Homecoming as it is with any live MMO - no matter how good the original game WAS, no one is going to stick around to play the same old content on the same old classes with the same old abilities forever But the takeaway here should be that nearly two decades after the game came out, almost a decade after - as far as we knew at the time - it was seemingly gone for good, we now have a fully-functional, completely free version of City of Heroes to play; to share with those who missed this game, and with those who never got to experience the game in the first place. We have City of Heroes back. And that's something we very well could've never had back to begin with.

The glorious thing about freedom of speech is that if person A makes use of freedom of speech to say something... I don't know, incredibly stupid, person B also has the right to tell person A that they said something stupid. That's it. That's how it works That being said, you can certainly post what you want, but if you're running into the situation where people keep disagreeing with what you have to say, you should probably stop and reflect on what you've been saying to make sure that you aren't going all Skinners on everyone.

You guys have pants?!

If you keep backpedaling like this, you might just be the first person to fall backwards off of the internet.

Once upon a time, someone I really had a beef with said, "Man, I love coffee". My hands shook with the fury of a thousand quaking volcanoes, the rage in my heart boiled over like a pot of spaghetti noodles left unattended, and begrudgingly, I was driven - nay, FORCED - to respond with tears in my eyes, "Me too" I haven't slept for more than an hour a night ever since. It's been 57 years.

No. I don't really use the ignore function a whole lot (my in-game ignore list has all of like, one person on it), but if someone is on my ignore list, it's because I don't care what they have to say I think it's important to recognize the distinction between a person choosing to ignore someone else because they make them 'mad', or ignoring someone because they have better things to do than than acknowledge a clown car full of bad takes in human form.

I'm not referring to people who dislike change, and I'm not talking about the people who voice their disagreements in a level-headed manner only to get ridiculed for it. I am talking about those who cannot express their dislike or disagreement without needless entitlement or childish behavior For that matter, jumping on users who DO have valid critique is equally bad behavior, but it doesn't excuse the kind of aggression and hostility that some players choose to communicate with Again, not all changes are going to be well-received. In fact, a lot of changes will probably look very rough at best or outright bad at worst. That is why feedback and active testing is so important. Letting the devs know when the community sees a change in testing that we don't like is 100% necessary, because that's how you wind up tossing out all the quartz and refining any diamonds in the rough.

You aren't being "attacked" because you aren't 'straight up saying you love the devs'. I do find it interesting that people that share your stance conveniently ignore the fact that, if or when people 'attack' you, it's due to the way people voice their dissent or disagreements. It isn't wrong to believe that impending changes look like they won't be fun. What is wrong is if someone attempts to excuse their childish behavior, and then when they do get scolded for it, they immediately respond with "I can't believe you just slapped me on the wrist!" No one is asking the world of you here; no one is asking you to write up a 50-page minimum essay about why [change someone disagrees with] needs work, or anything even CLOSE to that. People are asking those who have, do, and will disagree with changes past, present and future to carry on rational discussions or even outright debates without jumping to baseless accusations. But when they're asked to do the bare minimum, when they actually need to put in any measure of work to have a say that isn't just 'screaming on the forums', for some reason those same users don't have the time or energy to walk the walk. Feedback and criticism ARE crucial parts of the process, but the way we voice our criticism is key I just want to stress that this is basic etiquette that is present in any official game testing environments. Not 'development', specifically game TESTING. Literally any invite-only/application-only alpha or beta test that a player like you or I can join in on, they all share a particular expectation: "Communicate like adults, even if you don't agree with a change or someone else's opinions". Those testing environments don't need people who are so passionate about the game that they go off the rails when they find patch notes that just make their blood boil; those testing environments need people that are capable of making logical and fair examinations of pending gameplay changes, without distracting from the point by drowning the conversation in drama I miss when this game's only flavor of the month deal was unusual builds and not Baskin-Robbins' 31 flavors of conspiracy theories.

No one is mentioning that the devs are volunteers because they want to be made developers; some folks have the foresight to realize that we wouldn't make good devs because we don't have the skillsets required for video game development, and we aren't pretending that we do For those who disagree with the devs' decisions, that's fine. Not every decision is going to be perfect, and not every decision is going to be GOOD for that matter, but the way the community presents any criticisms or critique has to be put together in a manner that is conducive to player-dev interaction What isn't fine is trying to pardon yourself for your bad behavior. Stop making excuses for why you think this is an acceptable form of communication and stop making excuses for why you 'don't want to test anything' and go put your money where your mouth is. It is literally that simple: Log onto the test server, actually test things, and submit feedback. If you can't even contribute the slightest modicum of effort when it comes to voicing your thoughts on impending updates, I don't know why anyone would or should take you seriously.

This highlights a very important part of the issue, IMO; if that is in fact a direct transcript of the supergroup's official response, you dodged a serious drama llama-themed bullet. If it isn't a direct transcript, then you might not mesh with the SG in question (or vice versa), which isn't the end of the world! There are a lot of RP supergroups out there and not every roleplayer is a good fit for a particular SG, and not every SG is a good fit for a particular roleplayer

"Be open to finding new and different venues of roleplay" isn't a 'borderline attack'. That's one of the basic, requisite social skills involved in finding RP @OP: You may get some mileage out of peeking at the supergroup directory here on the HC forums; there are at least a couple RP supergroups around that seem to be fairly active, and applying to an SG that suits your character is likely one of the best ways to find story-driven RP. It's worth keeping in mind, though, that a lot of RPers who prefer story-driven roleplay still float around Pocket D or the various themed clubs, so hitting up the D when things seem slow and getting to know people might lead to more organic and engaging introductions to an active RPSG

At the risk of bringing up a divisive topic or accidentally using necromancy to resurrect a dead horse just so it can be beaten again, I was looking at a few of my level 50 characters and I realized something: "Whoa, this character has a lot of threads. Oh, so does that one" Ordinarily that would be a good thing... except some of these stacks of threads are on characters that have all or mostly Tier 4 or Tier 3 incarnate powers, or characters that I don't really intend to invest in incarnate powers on, and are pretty much set in that department. So I know being able to turn threads back into merits would probably be a little busted and hurt the in-game economy, but I was wondering if it might be possible to add a functionality to Merit Vendors that would allow us to convert large numbers of incarnate threads into a new type of salvage. As an example, maybe we could "bundle" Incarnate Threads at any merit vendor at the cost of 100 Threads and... I don't know, a single reward merit? A million influence? There are a lot of possibilities here. Converting 100 Threads and 1 Reward Merit (or whatever the cost may ultimately be) into one unit of a new type of salvage -- say, an 'Incarnate Swatch' or something -- could let us share that new type of salvage across our own account (but it would not be able to be traded/sold to other players, just like normal incarnate salvage). I feel like this would be useful for those of us diagnosed with a case of acute, crippling Altitis, but whose treads are just going to waste on other characters where we've focused our efforts to the point that threads have zero use for them. What do you all think? ~@Runo

First off: Quote any one of my posts -- heck, quote multiple posts if you'd like -- but I'm pretty curious to see where I said that it would "literally delete people's characters". That is not what I said nor was it my point, and I'd really prefer it if you didn't put words in my mouth Secondly, riddle me this: I outlined the fact that people HAVE spent billions of influence, bought, acquired, crafted or traded for a ton of IOs, and spent a long time unlocking their preferred Incarnate powers for a reason. This is real life HOURS of work. For many people it is, and I'm using the word in earnest here, LITERALLY tens to hundreds of hours in-game. Are you really trying to say that pointing out that needlessly nerfing people's builds after they put that much time and effort in it is 'sensational'? Lastly: You're playing a game called City of Heroes. This game has freeform customization for superpowers and a fairly deep and robust costume system. One could infer from this that, in fact, people might be rolling their dream comic book characters and, in fact, might not be in support of having their vision of that changed because of some random, sweeping nerf. You two seem to have a VERY different idea of what 'sensationalism' is compared to what I am pretty sure it really means.

It must be incredibly disorienting when you look down on people whose horses aren't as tall as yours, huh