ImpousVileTerror

Something that still tends to get muddled is an important distinction: Graphics vs Aesthetic A game can have limited graphics, but a signature aesthetic which really takes advantage of those limitations. Meanwhile, you can also have a game with state-of-the-art graphics that has no aesthetic style, which ends up looking dated and trash as soon as the next generation comes out. The downward spiral of chasing the best graphics is largely a marketing ploy to drive up impulse buying. As the consumer base of games become more savvy to development and marketing, the more we're seeing games with genuine and well-crafted aesthetics with minimal graphics receiving praise and attention. Eventually, the increasing costs of chasing graphic fidelity will sink in with more production/publishing bodies, and only the plainly derpy or the ones who have skin in the game of pushing hardware will continue that pursuit. That's at least my prediction. I've been out for about five years, so I don't get to nearly as many IGDA-or-related mixer nights as I used to.

I very much agree with what @WhiteNightingale is hoping to achieve here, and I've been trying to encourage similar efforts in all of the various asset creation disciplines. First things first: 3D Assets. I've not received any solid information on this, but I have heard from members of the OuroDev community that there's a significant hurdle in regard to this. Other than importing animations/emotes, I've been told that introducing new 3D assets (including the rigging for animation) is not presently possible due to barriers of a proprietary nature. Are there any modders or suitably-knowledgeable people out there who can break this down to the rest of the community and explain it; clearly, concisely, and with specific delineations between assumption and provable fact: Does the community even -have- the tools necessary to make new 3D assets for character models a reality? As for the quality of the textures; I can answer that one, at least. Without better tools, based on the skills I have, there isn't a way to increase the resolution of the existing faces on the existing model. HOWEVER! If we could copy the high-res Faces as new assets, and retexture them with entirely NEW faces (inspired by the original faces), then we could be in business. If someone would be able to make a proof-of-concept for this, we may be able to drum up extra interest and support. Additionally, I tried to start a project to blend tops and bottoms of faces together, to try and make more facial expressions with existing parts . . . but it just ended up looking like a mess. If someone else feels confident in being able to do a better job at this project than me, I will welcome it!

Not sure how this will come across, so apologies if it doesn't sound helpful, but should we organize a Hug Brigade for the GM who made Costume 5?

I made no bones about hiding that I was an outsider too. Heh, it was part of my opening. "Well, as it happens, there are probably some pretty significant factors which lead to [being a geek]." "I'm odd. Not one to fit in with normal folks so well ..." But, hey! Yeah . . . poor eye-sight that wasn't recognized by others until I was in high school. I could have used glasses for YEARS, but alas it took quite some time for the adults in my life to clue in.

So, tonight I came across something which caused my heart to sink a little: *em salute* Thank you, @GM Sijin for all the support and assistance that you provided. I really appreciated your help and your remarkable approachability. I'm sorry to see you're now retired from GM service. Likewise, I would like to thank all the other GMs who have been unable to continue in their roles, but who had provided help and assistance to the many players here. All while being volunteers. Best wishes to each of you, and I hope you are still able to find the time to enjoy this game and this community in ways which are meaningful and fulfilling to you. (On a less sombre note, folks; don't forget that https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/16240-give-a-gm-a-little-positivity/ is still a thing if you want to send a current (or past) GM some positivity.)

Other locations are name-dropped here and there. Mostly, though, I think it was a conscious decision for two core reasons: A) Gives players the opportunity for personal authorship of ideas related to other geographic and political elements on an international plane. B) There is simply no maintaining a WHOLE WORLD worth of on-going lore for a game with a development team the size of the ones at Cryptic, ncsoft NorCal (*), or Paragon Studios. * Is my memory serving me correctly here? That was the name of the studio during the interim time between Cryptic and Paragon Studios, right?

Linking to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nw-npzUY2NGc6SFoHa1ByWw202gI8DlT0ZDTQwoR7YM/edit#gid=0 is often a pain in the butt when I send it to people in the game's chat. Here's hoping this thread's URL will be suitably shorter and easier to copy-and-paste, so people can see the wonderful splendour of so many wonderful Everlasting bases!

Villains can be sneaky. Recruit as hero organizations in-character, but express their true motives OOC. Thus players who want to run brainwashed or seduced concepts have an outlet.

This thread's getting long! Not sure if this one's been reported yet, but for Radioactive Assault: Devastating Blow "change" should probably be "chance"

Yes! Thank you. 100% nail-head-hit, @Frostbiter. Steel Canyon is my least-favourite zone from a strictly lore/narrative standpoint. It's just boxes in a line. I've been to Toronto, Chicago, London (England), and New York City; Steel Canyon looks nothing like any of them, but it's supposed to simulate their downtown cores. Is there -any- real world place that looks even remotely like Steel Canyon?

Also, what does it say about me that Kings Row and Brickstown feel the most like home to me? Like real world places. Maybe if you take a drive down Barton Street in Hamilton, you'll know what I mean. Start here: https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.2675533,-79.8805813,3a,75y,102.65h,74.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSyeWYLlIXiV9Ro1V0G5xzQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 and just keep going east, seeing the sights.

With the Brickstown update, they also have "Press Conference" mobs. Basically a bunch of NPC reporters and spectators, as a Crey Rep talks about the new "safer" version of the Crey Tank Armour . . . and which point if a passing hero aggros them, the Tank shouts something along the lines of "CAN'T CONTROL IT! HAVE TO DESTROY HERO!" and the reporters run away screaming, while the Reps say "Get it contained! Get it contained!"

Reetou. One of the most significant "but wait, if Reetou exist, then why not X, Y, Z as solutions to this episode?" My old dev studio buddies in one of my first game projects were Stargate fans, and we came up with a saying to explain away plotholes in Stargate. Much like the phrase used to explain nonsense in fantasy settings, where you blame an eccentric wizard, we decided anything that didn't make sense in Stargate got a different manta. A Reetou did it! Also one of the most painful episodes to watch from a technical standpoint. They clearly blew their budget on the bad CGI effects, and cut some serious corners in production for that one.

There's a lot I want to unpack from recent posts in this thread and comment on, but I've had a monumentally shitty day at work. I hope I can find some time to clear my head and focus on these subjects here, but in the meantime . . . Thank you, @Kraqule, for starting this thread. Even if your specific approach isn't necessarily something I can agree with as-is, this thread has aired out some subjects which I can't remember seeing being tackled anywhere else. I hope you don't get discouraged, and continue to share your feedback and ideas.

Here, Bubba: Fake it by copy-pasting off of @GM Widower's current Reputation score. Master the art of the photoshopping, and no one will ever be the wiser. Except all of us who read this thread. Until we forget.

I just learnt that Ashley "DJ Redlight" Carr passed away back in 2016. I had long wondered why I didn't see any new OCRemixes by this talented artist in all that time, and now I know . . . So, I realize it's in breach of the rules of this thread, but I figured I needed to share a part of this artist's legacy: https://djredlight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/dj-redlight-far-from-home.mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp-YPmmRbRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijcIKd67JT0

Wow. That was incredibly low on Villains for Everlasting. Usually when I do these numbers, Everlasting's villain population is over 25%. (Also eastern American time zone.) Granted, earlier morning, so low numbers across the board right now, but at least Everlasting's villains are up to the 20% area.

Damnit @Saeletra! I thought @Giovanni Valia double-posted for a minute there! I mean, you even have the same number of posts for [REDACTED]'s sake!

I believe the old Security Reports have that information in them. Let's see if I can track one down . . . "Galaxy is south of the financial towers of Steel Canyon and north of the industrial warehouses of Kings Row." https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Galaxy_City_(Pre-Issue_21) So, inference from that . . . yeah, Steel Canyon is a financial area.

This was so clearly just a ploy for Jimmy to secure the position of first user to accumulate over 2000 Reputation in the Invision Community system on a single account! (Please note that this post is entirely not serious in its accusatory tone. But, all the same, Congratulations to @Jimmy and thanks to the Homecoming Team for their continued provisions to make this game accessible! Kudos!)

The usual complaints get bandied about: - It would take up Dev time. - Confined limitations forces you to be efficient with you words. I don't happen to see those as particularly compelling. EVERYTHING takes up Dev time, and ultimately they decide what to spend that time on. Add to that the whole "code is in the wild" thing, and in the end it's not really going to fly as an excuse. It's a non-answer as to why someone doesn't want something changed/added/removed, and typically there's some other motivating factor compelling the person to be negative. And having -more- space in the Description box doesn't take away from the benefits of having a pithy and efficient writing style. If someone wants to add more text to their Description, then it's no skin off anyone else's nose. People already skip reading descriptions that are over 512 characters. Or 256 characters. Or 32 characters. It's entirely personal and subjective at what point "too many words" is "too many words." Now a -reasonable- concern? Data limits. Over 188,000 user accounts. Let's throw out an estimate and say over 30 characters each and round it up to 7,000,000 player-characters roughly total. Currently 1,023 (letter-) characters per player-character description is about 6.6 gigabytes worth of data dedicated to descriptions. Double that, and it's over 13.2 gigs. Now, I've heard people say "that's nothing! With modern servers and data storage hardware, that's a drop in the ocean." But really, I'd need to hear that from a Homecoming Dev, as they're in the unique position to know the impact to these servers in particular. Chances are good that, yeah, it really is a drop in the ocean, though. And then there's the active memory thing, though I know less about how that may impact the server and the client-side programs. Still something worth considering, of course. *UPDATE: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/16094-homecoming-statistics-march-2020/?tab=comments#comment-173373 I just checked the official stats, and my estimate is WAY higher than reality, apparently. Back in March we hadn't even cracked 2 million characters yet. What all this boils down to? I'm in favour of expanding the Description character limits. I just wanted to address a couple of elephants. And also: Fix the Description-writing text box! The thing is wonky as fuuuuuuuu-

Yeah, pretty much, Bubba. I've fired up Ziggurat, Worms W.M.D., and Darkest Dungeon about a dozen times each in the past year. All the rest of my play time? City of Heroes or (virtual) tabletop roleplaying campaigns. . . . sometimes both at the same time, but don't tell my fellow tabletoppers that!

Where does one even find the time to commit that many various crimes?

Hey! @Tyrannical! Let's hold a poll, and see which Set the community wants fleshed out with full values first. Could be good for a community project.

Blue King. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/2473-coh-comic/ https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/2461-players-who-made-coh-comic-book-appearances-where-are-you-now/ https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/16556-city-of-heroes/ (there was actually a different thread I was looking for, but I'll give these links anyway)