Triumphant

All these additions would be well received, I think. In fact, I'm relatively sure that similar suggestions have been made in the past. My (admittedly, limited) understanding is that the real issue is one of time and labor intensity, as the Homecoming team is small, and so have a limited ability to implement projects. They have to carefully consider, pick and choose which projects are most needed and practical to prioritize. Understandably, things like bug squashing, AT/power balancing, and so on are typically addressed before costume customization and game aesthetics.

I guess, after reading the replies in this topic, it could be said that the "Edgelord" is merely one more trope in a genre that is perhaps the tropiest of all genres. Comic books are often an inherently ridiculous medium, so perhaps it's unfair of us to view characters with melodramatic, over-the-top personalities with contempt. Hopefully, we can bring something new and interesting to these old tropes when we do use them- or at least not overrepresent one particular trope, so that it doesn't become ubiquitous to the point of blandness. Cat-girls come to mind here, more than Edgelords (for me, at least), as I see so many of them in-game and they often have a fairly generic personality and appearance that I have seen a thousand, thousand times in numerous anime. On the other hand, I have played my share of batman/superman/spiderman/captain america clones, which are perhaps as regurgitated in the American Comic scene as cat-girls are in the manga, so who am I to judge? Whatever one plays, if they play the part with dedication and skill, that is worth appreciating (and acknowledging).

Ah, I see the advantage. If you have limited play time you can RP by doing a sort of play-by-post on your discord channel. Okay, I can grok that. 😁👍

There are three (supposed) CONS that I've gleaned from the players that object to it. There may be more and I just missed them. Do feel free to point them out to me. Anyways, the three that I noticed people commenting about... My response to this is, "Why should I care?" "What does it have to do with me?" Presumably, it's because they think unskilled players are a handicap on teams. I don't see a problem, though, because: 1) When you send your LFT message you can presage it with "ITF speed run, skilled and experienced players only." Simple. To the point. In your realm of control. 2) Even on high level, high notoriety, high number of enemy settings, team play in this game is fucking easy. If you can't compensate for a few unskilled players on your team, then you probably shouldn't be complaining about a lack of skilled players. 3) This game has a community of patient helpful players, willing to show people how to learn the game. I've noticed that most people are willing to do this for lower level noobs. Why is it suddenly a chore to do it for high lvl noobs, especially when your powerful character, and your greater level of experience, makes it actually easier to teach them the ropes and still complete the mission/taskforce. 4) There is no real penalty for death in this game. There is no real penalty for failing missions/TF's, and you can replay any mission or TF as many times as you like (and most experienced players have already completed most TF's multiple times, anyway). My thoughts on this: 1) This is a comic book roleplaying game. If playing pretend stock markets is what thrills you, there are other and better choices for this. Most of us are here to play super heroes/villains. 2) The player market is a buggy piece of shit anyway. 3) Since the only thing preventing players from accumulating vast wealth is the tedium of regularly burning 30 to 60 minutes doing something most players find boring (or relatively unimportant) anyway, why not just cut straight to the point and make everything free? 4) If you really want to, you can leave the market in place and also allow players to purchase free versions of everything at P2W. The folks that want to get stuff free can do it and everyone else can still grind/buy/sell/trade for stuff the old fashioned way, on our buggy-ass market, if they so desire (no idea why you would, but that's none of my business. You should be allowed to enjoy the game the way that you want to, just as I should be allowed to enjoy it the way that I want to). Now you may argue, that: If we make everything free, no one will want to play the market anymore, so I won't be able to player the market the way that I like anymore. Okay, I have two possible responses to this: 1) You can't be sure that this is true. 2) If your correct, and it is true, that means the great majority of players have no interest in playing the market. If this is true, why are we catering to the desires of a small minority of players, rather than the majority of players? Here are my thoughts on this: 1) This is a very old game and most of the player base are (and always will be) legacy players. It's never going to be a hugely popular MMO again. It's just not- it's too old now. If you're enjoyment of the game rests upon the hope that one day it will take off and we will have huge number of incoming players, you hope in vain. 2) As several of you pointed out, with aggressive grinding, it's not hard (although, I would argue, it IS still boring and tedious) to get characters to lvl 50 and most of the player base has one or more lvl 50 characters. If you doubt this is true, feel free to use the /search command and sort players by level, at any time of the day or night, any day of the week. You'll see that it is true. If we aren't bored of this after two years of play (I'm not- and I don't think most of us who have these lvl 50 characters are, either) there's little danger of it in the future (at least, no more danger than there is in growing bored with any 10+ year old video game). 3) The fun of this game is not grinding content. The fun is in the hugely diverse number of different kinds of characters you can make, the coolness of the player base, and the number of interesting tools available (costuming, base building, discord groups, etc.) that we can leverage to RP in an interesting environment. Anyway... that's how I see it. 🤷‍♂️

To represent different forms, you can also make completely different costumes for each character. I had this idea for a hero that had the power to take different forms from old Hammer horror and/or B- movies: Frankenstein, wolfman, Dracula, the mummy, creature from the black lagoon, etc. Haven't made that character yet, but the concept is still floating around in the back of my brain.

@MoonSheep I guess you can be nostalgic and masochistic in the same breath. Why not? 😛

I don't really know what the definition of the phrase is. To me, it sounds like someone trying to make a character like Frank Castle/The Punisher, but they just come off sounding like an moody teenager with superpowers. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah... having a really cool base wiped is a deal-breaker for me, personally. Even if it doesn't happen "too often", as you say. Having it happen, even once, after putting hours and hours into crafting my base just so, is simply unacceptable to me. Thanks for the clarification on the base issue, though. 👍

I wasn't aware of that, so thanks for the link! Still, even more importantly, what about bases? Almost every SG wants a cool base. These take a great deal of work to build. Does the base remain after a server update, or is it wiped? Because that would be eliminating fully half of what makes this game so enjoyable to me. 🤷‍♂️

So, one possible solution to this issue (for me, at least) would be if I could convince enough players (that are also RP'ers) to play on Brainstorm. This would be a hard sell, I admit, because of having to remake your character every time there is a new server update. It seems unlikely very many players would want to deal with this. But... on the other hand, is remaking your character every few months (something that can probably be done in an hour to an hour and a half) really less tiresome than having to grind your character up to the level you want to play at and waste time working the player market to get the enhancements you want? More and more, I'm thinking the answer is no. Convincing fellow players though... that's a different matter. 🤔

I'm for the OP's idea, but everyone seems to think it will be apocalypse if people don't play the game the same way that they do, so I suppose this is a non-starter. 🤷‍♂️

Your advice regarding making the extra tab is good (I do this myself) but abusive tells are a violation of the Homecoming Rules of conduct. I think it is more reasonable (as you put it) to expect people to abide by those rules of conduct that they agreed to when they joined the game. If they do not, it is reasonable for them to expect the mods to take punitive action against them.

I hadn't considered hearing impaired players, Chase. That does make a certain amount of sense. Sure. I can see that. Most SG's have discord for that purpose. It just still seems odd to use it for in-game text, rather than use the built-in game chat, if or no other reason that during public RP, nearby players/characters not in your group would simply perceive you as milling around silently, which seems odd to me. Also, having to switch from the display to discord display to read msgs would feel cludgy and inconvenient to me, especially during team combat. But, hey, such things are subjective.

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from there. I do sometimes play female characters and as I'm male IRL (with a masculine voice) I can see how that might be discombobulating to some people (although, most of my female characters are butch, muscular, wrecking machines, so I'm pretty much okay with it, personally). I also actually prefer RP through typing. I communicate better through the written word, than through speaking. Typing speed is not so much my problem but, rather, multi-tasking typing and fighting at the same time (I have to pause in combat to emote/speak and it throws my off my combat game). As far as percentages that use discord for voice, I have no idea. Most RP groups seems to communicate through text, as far as I can tell. I could very well be wrong about that, though. That seems strange to me. Why add the complexity of discord? The in-game chat function is right there on the same screen and perfectly functional and you can create dedicated channels for whatever purpose you need.

I'll play almost anything that isn't crunchy. There's a lot of interesting rules-lite SH rpg's out there now. I don't care about advancement in SH RPG's. D&D style xp and level ups are anathema to the feel of the genre, from my perspective. I don't have a lot of luck finding people interested in SH play or, really, any play other than fantasy settings. This is a shame, IMO, because there or so many great games out there that aren't fantasy genre games.

Veles and his Death Knight can be particularly challenging to take down, so try not to get too discouraged by that. I've defeated Veles multiple times, but I've been defeated by him even more times than that. Just keep trying, mix up your strategies, and keep reading the wiki and threads about character building, etc. This game is odd in that it takes a lot, initially, to learn how all the moving parts fit together and how to leverage them in play )I played for months before I really figure out how to play effectively). But, once you do that, the game becomes surprisingly easy in all but a handful of cases.

Well, regarding henchmen and pets, the thing that bugs me about them the most is that they run amok and block my line of sight and create a distraction when I'm trying to focus on the combat. I wish there was a setting in the options menu that I could set to make them invisible to me. That would honestly solve all problems for me. Getting blocked by the them isn't really a thing for me, most of the time. I almost always have teleport or combat teleport, so I can escape from most any location if I get jammed up (obviously, this is not a solution for those that don't, of course).

Okay, that's encouraging. Thanks for the tips! 👍

Just wondering if there are any groups (Hero, Villain, or in-between) that use discord for voice chat and also for RP. I'd like to RP combats but using the keyboard to rp while fighting at the same time is apparently beyond my skillset. 😛

Fun is just another way of saying "enjoyable". I play games as a mode of recreation because I enjoy playing games (i.e. because it is "fun"). Fun isn't a dirty word, in and of itself. I think you've hit upon the real problem here, though, and that is when people say that MY definition of "fun" is the correct one and anyone that disagrees is simply wrong, stupid, crazy, weird (insert whatever adjective here). Anyone who plays this game regularly, thinks it is "fun". The things that we find fun about that game may vary, though, and we will probably all disagree, to a greater or lesser extent, about those elements of the game that detract from that fun, or what elements might be adjusted or added to make it more fun.

I'm a spry 49 years of age. I used to feel like that meant I was getting pretty long in the tooth but, after reading the rest of these replies, I'm feeling pretty good about it now. So, thanks! 😁👍

Fascinating. Thanks for that bit of historical information. On the surface, it seemed ridiculous to me that the ancients would have bothered with what I've always considered to be nothing more than modern aesthetics, but this actually makes perfect sense.

It really depends on my character concept. Mercenary types that aren't overtly malevolent, become Rogues. Heroes that don't want their hands tied by rules and believe in fighting villains on their own terms will be vigilantes.

Those are all fair questions, I suppose. I guess I don't view things like the KB to KD in force feedback as worth wasting an IO slot on. I do get that keeping the mobs grouped together for AOE's instead of having them bounce around all over is an advantage, it just bugs me a little to have to buy and slot an IO for each power if I want to do that. I don't know, maybe I'm just a little raw about it because I really like energy blast/manipulation and those two sets have lots of KB? When I would want to toggle the power off isn't for me, you see. It's for when I join a pickup group and the majority of the group doesn't like KB effects, I might want to turn it off as a courtesy to everyone else for a while. It irks me to have to buy and slot IO's when I'm doing this for someone else's play enjoyment, rather than my own (Again, I love knockback. Yes, I do have to chase the mobs around, but the effect of the visuals is so satisfying I find this entirely worth the effort). Ideally, having the toggle be by power would be most satisfying, but I would settle for a single switch that would toggle it off on all the powers at once. And yes, I'm cool with the Team Leader having the ability to toggle it off. If I ask for an invite to their team, I feel it's reasonable for the team leader to have the freedom to set the ground rules. Anyway, just some thoughts. I'm not like super aggravated by the IO requirement and if it doesn't ever change, I still love KB and will continue to play sets that have that effect, as it simply makes the battles feel more like comic book super brawls to me. I don't actually know if anything I just wrote made sense. I had insomnia last night and didn't get any sleep whatever, so feel free to ignore this reply if the content is gibberish. 😛

I love knockback but I also think players should have the option to toggle it on and off. Watching mobs ricochet off of walls, floors, and ceilings is one of the coolest things about this game, but not everyone agrees with me about that. More choice = better. Well, that's my opinion, anyway.