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

Read the OP's idea in the first post. If the softcap is removed, it isn't going to literally delete people's characters in the process, but it WILL break a lot of characters. Why bother putting together billions of influence and tons of IOs for enhancement set bonuses over hundreds of hours when all of that work -- might I add, work that people have ALREADY put into their characters and wil likely continue to put into them if the original suggestion is disregarded as it should be? Why would you ever roll a defense-based armor set when their primary method of staying alive is rendered worthless? That is not hyperbole. That is not a strawman. That is fact. The proposition outlined by the OP is not the answer. Adding more (optionally) difficult content is a thing that a lot of players want (myself included), but artificially imposing an increased difficulty level by arbitrarily nerfing well-built defensive characters is not the way. And if I may ask a question: if this suggestion DID go through and the softcap was removed and/or other methods of defense were dramatically lowered, do you honestly think people are going to stick around if they log on and find that their character's build(s) have been drastically altered for the worse? Do you think that the people who mentioned that they'd leave if this happened are just full of hot air? It's not an instance of moral rebuttal -- it's being realistic. There are ways to satisfy both sides of the crowd, but certain people seem to be adamant that a happy medium isn't good enough and that the game has to play the way THEY want it to play, and no other playstyles are acceptable. And in a game that is, was, always has been and likely always will be about making your dream comic book character and playing them in whatever way you find fun, that's absolute horse-hockey.

Or people are saying that a sweeping, unnecessary and ridiculous change like this would legitimately drive them to play on other servers. Divisive communities or not, something tells me that obliterating a ton of people's characters for zero reason and to no benefit whatsoever might just be enough to cause people to drift away or even quit outright

I just took a look at your proposal in the first post and I'm all for it -- if the notoriety system can be modified, that might indicate a very promising future for players who want to partake in a "Hard Mode" at say, 50+5x10, or what have you... or even to make missions and story arcs easier with-- I don't know, a 'Story Mode' notoriety setting or something, for those who simply want to experience the many stories across blue, red, and gold-side There are several benefits to a difficulty/notoriety option that lets us toggle off IO set bonuses -- heck, maybe a separate additional option that lets us toggle off Incarnate powers, too. It could be fun to challenge our characters by running missions, task forces or AE content without the benefit of sets -- and the more ways there are to optionally add varying levels of challenges and trials to handel for those who want them, the better. That way the choice is there for people who want it, but it does not erase the hard work and time of players who might not Ultimately I feel like the important takeaway here is that it would be an optional setting that players could toggle on or off as they please. We don't have to have it on if we don't want it on, but it would be an extremely useful utility for the reasons outlined in earlier posts; it can be hard to get an idea of how easy or how punishing an AE arc might be for those who want to play it before being level capped, or if they're missing IO sets/uniques/procs or have little to no Incarnate powers.

The only thing stopping you from forming teams with likeminded people is you

City of Heroes IS a game with a baby system, baby mechanics and little challenge. It is one of the easiest MMOs out there, which is part of its appeal. Some people, like me and a whole lot of other people, enjoy putting a bunch of work into hitting level 50, getting the perfect IOs, and maxing out your Incarnate powers, then absolutely steamrolling content that was already unlikely to pose much of a challenge. We're superheroes and supervillains doing super-powerful things with our superpowers, that's kind of what a lot of the game should be like to begin with I'd love the addition of more challenging content, including higher difficulties or additional incarnate content, but breaking the way the game has played and destroying people's characters is flat-out NOT the answer.

There is a solution, right there in front of you, for you and the people that share your stance. It DOES address the problem (a problem, might I add, that you only perceive as problematic when it seems to be otherwise universally accepted that it is a nonissue), and it only requires the tiniest modicum of effort to get what you want done It also doesn't involve destroying the game for other players that do not want to see their characters nerfed into dust. Assuming that this would fly over well with everyone else in the community is silly If your answer is "I don't want to put in any effort to play the game the way I want to play, so the devs should force everyone else in the game to play that way", then it is a pretty terrible solution.

Well, Paragon Studios created those "obviously broken and exploitable" mechanics, then continued to expand upon them; the Homecoming team continued the trend when they took over and seem to be intent on continuing even further, and as far as I'm aware literally any of the other CoH servers floating about have also continued the trend Things are not broken. Things are not being exploited or abused. If you want to play the game without softcapping your characters, that is completely your prerogative, but the people trying to push for breaking the softcap and the overall performance of characters with a lot of IOs/Incarnate powers and/or choice powerset combinations should be the only ones that would be impacted by that decision. I already mentioned this above, but in case it needs repeating: make your own teams. You have in-game channels and supergroup chat, DIscord servers, the Homecoming forums and more at your disposal. Trying to push a change that would ruin other people's good times when the change you want is already available is selfish and petty.

As someone who's been on the D&D scene for a while: people who build for softcap or otherwise powerful builds are not munchkins. They're using systems and mechanics that the game has provided to everyone, fairly, without cheating, exploiting, or fudging any rules. The "DM" is not catering to 'munchkins'. Actually, you're asking the DM to break everyone else's builds because you've been wondering for the past five sessions why your wizard with a -1 Strength modifier can't kill things efficiently if they just ignore their spellbook and try to stab an adult dragon to death.

The consequences would stem from people being annoyed and frustrated that the extravagant amount of time they spent building their characters to play the way they want to play -- then being struck with an unnecessary, heavy-handed and outright silly nerf. People wouldn't "ragequit" due to their 'addiction'. They would leave, likely for another server as @golstat2003 mentioned just above, and we would lose people. Probably a lot, if I had to guess. None of us can offer an estimate or an exact number, but if you think people wouldn't (rightfully) be ticked off and head out, then you're fooling yourself You have two options that don't involve destroying other people's hard work: 1. Do what softcapped players are doing -- but play how YOU want to play. Build the character YOU want to play. Your playstyle, your build, that is all entirely up to you and no one else can impact how you play. You don't have to build optimal/meta characters to play the game, not even on public teams. You're probably the only person on the team that cares about, let alone noticed, your performance -- and even if you join a team that has some utter beast of a Rad/Rad brute steamrolling everything and carrying a 50+4x8 singlehandedly, or a Fire/Kin controller knocking out repeatables so fast that you don't even have time to load in and out of the mission before your team is done... Okay, I'm sure that's frustrating, but if that is problematic then you have option two: 2. Make your own teams. You have resources for this out the wazoo. Create a supergroup of characters that are only allowed to build a certain way (maybe a simple rule of the thumb, even: "no softcapping". Put together an in-game channel so you can organize impromptu teams, and create a schedule for events on Discord or even here on the Homecoming forums. Bam. Problem solved, and without initiating Exterminatus on everyone else's time and hard work. It is SERIOUSLY that easy With those options available to you until/if/when the devs see fit to add higher-difficulty, more challenging content for level 50s and Incarnated/IO'd characters, you have no excuse not to do something about what troubles you in the meanwhile. And if that sounds like too much work, then I don't know what to tell you, because the only time I've seen people vehemently defend the idea of nerfing the softcap or otherwise neutering high-performance builds are people who aren't willing to put in the work to make characters that can compete. Quite frankly, that's silly, since the same builds are available to any and all players past, present and future. You have the tools -- now it's up to you to create the solution you're after.

I don't think anyone said "everyone" would leave. That is elevating what people against the idea have said to hyperbolic levels The argument is that there is literally no benefit, no advantage, no purpose to nerfing the softcap. People worked hard to get there. They're AT the softcap. People in the future will build their characters and they, too, will be at the softcap. This would senselessly destroy a ton of players' work, in some instances across multiple characters. Why obliterate their dedication when we can try to push a fairer suggestion towards the devs, like (optional) challenge modes/difficulty increases? Ultimately, other players having overpowered characters doesn't really hurt the players who don't want to invest time in leveling/IOing/Incarnating their builds, but nerfing the builds of the players who spent an extraordinary amount of time getting those characters to the state they are in does hurt those players. This is a problem that is very easily solved in the interim, as well; just avoid IOs and incarnate powers that would make your characters break the game. And if teaming with players who do not find that playstyle fun is problematic, form teams with player who share your point of view and that way both parties get what they want