ArchVileTerror

I believe that's how Jaunt worked during the initial phase of testing. I haven't tried Experimentation since then, though, and I heard that Jaunt underwent some rather serious changes.

Hmm, interesting thought . . . make each of the custom Henchpets' components a unique "Weapon" slot to amend to the bottom of each costume file. That would even allow the Mastermind to have different Henchpets for -each- of their own Costumes! Pretty massive, but also a cool solution I hadn't thought of before. The immediate issue that comes to my mind with such a proposal is that if you added a whole series of Henchpet Head/Torso/Lower slots using that method, then the game wouldn't be able to stop itself from effectively rendering all 6 of your Henchpets any time your Mastermind was online. Even at level 1 when you'd effectively only have one Henchpet, this method would call upon the custom files for all six. As I understand it, the game always has the weapon geometry loaded for a set like Assault Rifle, but just sort of stores it in a "hammerspace" until it's time to visually present. That's not too extreme for one to three individual assets . . . but then a customized Henchpet would have (lowball) about 20 assets EACH, and that's 120 additional geometry assets loaded for all the Henches . . . I mean, I could definitely see the Legacy Devs just NOPING this due to the hardware of yesteryears, but maybe we're at the point where we can tackle it now? What kind of load would we be looking at to the active server memory if the all Mastermind Rikti Raid had everyone changing costume slots at the same time? The other issue is the UI changes. While we've seen that it was possible to adjust the itemized list component of the UI for asymmetrical pieces, we weren't explicitly told how much of pain that was to do. And the REAL challenge . . . how do you preview your Henchpet's appearance in the costume editor? I mean, the zoom-in function can zoom to the head or to the torso, and when you have Dual Pistols, it can even invoke a special emote when it zooms. So, theoretically, it might be possible to instruct the editor to zoom all the way out to a ring of the Henchpets standing several dozen yards away from the player model in the preview space . . . but what's the feasibility on coding something like that? How much effort would be invested, and how janky would it be? If you tried to rotate, it would probably still pivot from the player-character model, so you wouldn't be able to rotate the Henchpets so much as just cycle which one is standing in front of the camera. To visualize what I mean, go to the Power Customization tab as a Mastermind, and watch the preview of your Pet Summon Power, then rotate the view. Do this a few times for each cast cycle of the Power, and watch how/where the Henchpet spawns in relative to the player model and the camera view point. I mean, all things considered . . . I'd do it. I'd do it in a heartbeat if I had the technical skill for it. Jank and "unprofessionalism" be damned. Having a little unintuitive user experience in -this- game isn't anything new. And while it's definitely subpar to introduce unintuitive UI/UX, we -do- have a lot of veteran players who would be able to write up guides to help new players with this process. And the payout would be stellar! So . . . I guess the first test bed should be Phantom Army again? Or maybe we can use Ice Control to see about making a custom Jack using this technique?

As much as some of the worst writing in this game gets under my skin too, and as much as I want to be able to know who was responsible for those worst offences for my own sake of closure . . . I don't think we need to name-call any of those writers. Except Sean Fish! Meanie-head thought he could destroy the beautiful love story between Captain Mako and Manticore? PHA! *shakes a fist-shaped tentacle* (No, but seriously. No hard feelings against Sean either.)

Arachnos Soldiers and Widows are fantastic. Kheldians . . . meh. I've made one of each, and have barely touched them. The shapeshifting is a cool concept, but overall the Archetype is creatively very stifling, and overall I find the Archetypes have very little in the way of reward for my playstyle preferences.

100% I want my Black Tendrils to be -black- tendrils, not just really faded grey.

OH! I know that one. That's a good point, actually. That demon spawn tunnel -is- unusually dark. I mean, it's not unusual that a tunnel without any light sources in it should be so dark. I mean from an aesthetic cohesion standpoint. It's dark enough to stand out for being so pitch black, but is otherwise an unremarkable tunnel.

@EmmySky did, yes. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/18824-thinking-of-rolling-a-stone/?tab=comments#comment-210079

While Street Sweeping, it's important to know that some enemies are actually scripted to run away. These are the purse snatchers and illicit-materials dealers. Keep an eye on their dialogue, it should give a hint along the lines of "crap, a cape! I'm outta here!" Also note: Sometimes they get buggy, and the wrong NPC utters the dialogue while his buddy runs away.

Welcome Home, @Missy-Anthropy!

Damn . . . @Fista . . . I mean, I know I have a terrible memory, but I've tried to keep my ear to the ground on this game for years. That's the first I can remember seeing your suggestion. And it's such an obviously great one! Hear-hear! Being able to toggle a checklist of available animations to cycle between randomly (or in a specific set order?) would be absolutely stellar!

What about Netscape? (sorry, kidding.) But in all seriousness: Thank you for tackling this! It's been a long time coming. You're doing quite the service for all of us. Extra HUGE thanks for not making it a "fandom" website. Like . . . seriously, I can not express how important it is that you've got some other hosting set up. So, thank you for that too, Mimiru!

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/12345-how-to-hack-rikti-invasions-and-stop-them/ Sorry.

Welcome Home! Do you have any questions about what's changed or where to find certain things? We're happy to help.

I'm with Red. It's not like a topic of discussion has any moratorium on it other than if a GM expressly states so, puts a lock on it, or hides it away. 'cliffe brings up a point which I hadn't seen in previous discussions either, which adds a nice bit of further context to the whole social aspect of Prestige and Base Building: Guides apparently existed to min-max Base Prestige Upkeep against Function. While I don't think we all need to necessarily come to the same conclusion as 'cliffe (even though I do, personally), it is a nice infusion of life with a bit of pertinent topic expansion. The argument between Sunk Cost Fallacy versus a Sense of Pride and Accomplishment is one which we've seen getting a lot of attention in the broader games media dialogues lately. While I know I do my best to express how I personally fall squarely on the side of being ostensibly against time sinks, my objections are more due to those taking away a player's -choice- in the matter by gating content. How we define something as nebulous as 'content' in a game, especially one as vast as City of Heroes, is challenging. All the same . . . Prestige, as far as I'm aware, served three primary purposes: Reduce overall Inf (which I'm personally against, but more on that later in a more appropriate thread venue), provide a metric for competition (but Base Raids never did fully materialize, leaving that aspect vestigial), and to create a sense of imaginary investment in Bases beyond the actual time and effort as a means to extend player retention (a classic underhanded tactic to draw out subscription payments). It could be argued that Prestige was also meant to be an additional incentive to draw people in to fewer Groups, but I'm just going to pretend that's not the case under the assumption that the original Devs wouldn't do something so cruel and thoughtless. As it stands, we see a lot of players citing a desire for "having things that mean 'something'" when this topic comes up (along with other, similar topics). The haves-versus-have-nots concern gets raised during those discussions frequently, as does the explanation that many players do not want their creative freedom taken away or locked behind arbitrary barriers. As creative freedom is easily argued as City of Heroes absolute strongest selling point, I do hope anyone working on the Development of this game (here or anywhere else) continues to keep that in mind any time this comes up. But, yeah . . . on the flipside, there are competitive people who play this game. While I do not personally care for it, and it's therefore very difficult for me to empathize with those players' point of view, the express design philosophy of Homecoming is to make all the players feel welcome. So . . . optional Prestige for some competitively minded players? Ok, sure. But I think that a heavy emphasis should be made to new and existing players that such would be -absolutely- optional. I can already imagine the grief some players would feel at being turned in to crimps for some Group which tricks them in to farming Prestige. And to maintain that it's optional, it should not have any unique in-game rewards associated with it. Otherwise it's -not- any more optional than it is to say that it's "optional" to simply not play the game at all. Don't be EA, folks. EA is awful. (*EA meaning the publisher, not Energy Aura nor Electrical Affinity.)

If adjusting the gamma, contrast, or brightness of your game/display doesn't help, you may wish to request some help from the modding community of this game to implement so high-luminosity versions of the textures which are causing you problems.

Not that I'm against it, but I do also see some potential complaints coming up. Some people feel that it crosses a line to make a character who be construed as a representative or authority for an in-game faction or non-player character. And just to stress, I'm not saying I necessarily fully agree with this; just sharing a complaint which I've seen pop up time and again. The 5th Column specifically could be extra thorny, given that between it and the Council, the Column is more associated with and assumed to be a hate group due to real-world connotations (ironically, Nemesis has far more lore expressly stating his bigotry than the 5th do in-game). But, as ever, I always fall on the side of "more power to the player for character customization."

It's a popular topic. Here's a small sample of some of the other threads where it's come up. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/9713-mastermind-pet-clones-andor-female-minions/ https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11793-mastermind-pet-customization-no-not-a-rehash-of-this-old-topic/ https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15343-mastermind-pet-customization/ The most we've got in the way of Homecoming Team acknowledgement of this feature is a GM who said the team saw it was one of -the- most requested features ever, and: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14132-enhancing-new-phantom-army-customization/ So, the tech exists, if a bit less than ideal to implement precisely and functionally, and there are hurdles in the forms of non-humanoid Henchpets and with potential harassment/misconduct . . . but yeah. And, of course, it has been said many, many times that new UI are an absolute pain to implement, so alternative user experience and interface ideas may be required. Not that it's necessary to "keep up the pressure," but it also doesn't hurt to talk about this topic to brainstorm ideas and potential solutions to the highlighted issues. Have at it!

Yes, but malonkey hasn't posted since April, so naturally (Galaxy Brain and) I get to steal claim all the credit.

Alternative topic header: Double the head (details), double the fun! I did honestly think this thread was a proposal for two-headed characters at first. BOY HOWDY, would that be an undertaking! But, yeah. Disengaging the limits of various costume details would just straight-up be fantastically awesome. More options is best options, after all!

I approve of this latest Natural-friendly Control Set! I would immediately reroll a few characters if this became available.

. . . well, crap. I totally forgot that I made this thread. Does this mean I get to (irrationally and unreasonably) claim that Electrical Affinity was my idea all along?

Delayed reply, and apologies for that, but after using initial version of Jaunt during the Page 5 Beta . . . I am more full of desire for an instant-cast Teleport than ever. Damn, that insta-Jaunt was amazing . . . so good that I even took a silly little super-speed Power just to unlock it.

If I follow what you're saying, Troo, then as I understand it; several of those mechanisms are coded in to the mission code specifically, not the enemies themselves. It would certainly be nice to have more new content and have old content adjusted to include those features for added depth and engagement, but I believe that would pose more of a technical hurdle than many other suggestions. I still believe the lowest hanging fruit with the dramatically largest pay-off is to provide a toggled difficulty option which triggers the spawn of enemies who buff the rest of their mob, or otherwise have Powers which synergize with and exponentially enhance the existing enemies for various factions. Similar to what was mentioned in https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/18409-flex-lvl-scale-for-missions-arcs/?tab=comments#comment-208287

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/1433-the-big-question-of-continuity/

Ah, was it Matt Miller who wrote the Graves arc, Hustler?