ImpousVileTerror

Not helpful to resolving your bug, @Cradicias, but I just wanted to say: Nice look!

Inspired by this conversation, I present to you, @Piecemeal(tm) . . . For consideration of use for your forum profile image/"avatar."

eh. Unless you also remove the Line of Sight requirement, I think we'll be fine. The ziggurat tomb may be high up, but 1/2 a mile Teleport is bound to put Adasniper behind some terrain that will break the usefulness of Moonbeam. But I am actually rather serious about the Powers for Lughebu. He's depicted as having a Bag of Tricks, and being a God of Mischief and Misery. Illusion Control / Ninjitsu is just so poetically Lughebu! And, of course, any Phantom Army or Phantasms/Decoys spawned by Lughebu should also look like Lughebu. Just piles and piles and piles of Lughebus! So, ergo, Lughebu's signature Power would be a short duration Maximum Over-Stealth, which causes Lughebu to reposition with either a short-range teleport or just ran-away behaviour. Which Lughebu is the real Lughebu!? Sets for the other Banished Pantheon Deities would be: - Savage / Electric Armour for Rambetu. Also requiring a long-range Lightning Rod Power as a Signature, and Quickness in there too. She's fast! - Spear Melee for M'Teru. Just . . . Spear Melee. But with Rage, Build Up, and Aim as Signatures. And Fury. And Defiance. And . . . ok, basically M'Teru's a one-trick pony, but he should be very, VERY good at that one (pointy) trick. - Bone (Plant) Control / [anything with lots of Confuse, so Mind Control? Psi Manipulation?] for Ullutay. World of Confusion as a Signature (Lore Bible says Ullutay was constantly trying to usurp Leghebu's domain of Mischief). Also very high Defense to Melee. - Willpower / Self-Gravity Control for Tomdala. Yes. "Self-Gravity Control." Basically? I want Tomdala's Signature to be Propel where the "object" thrown is always Tomdala himself! The way to make this work would be to model a Tomdala Object for Propel, and activating the Power causes Tomdala to become untargettable and invisible. Tomdala then teleports to the location of his target, which also triggers the Tomdala Object to despawn. All other Gravity Control Powers are turned in to PBAoEs. Super massive fat hole. It would be relatively easy to make the first four with existing costume assets. Tomdala . . . Tomdala would be tricky. Tomdala's supposed to be covered in mouths and tentacles.

That . . . uh . . . that's actually what I used for 1/2 of my Lughebu in Mission Architect. The other half was Illusion Control. . . . Lughebu is SCARY!

Good gravy, this one took a while . . .

That better mean that the Sweets Inspirations idea is happening, @Piecemeal(tm)! *shakes a fist*

Wink wink, nudge nudge! https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/20784-give-all-mobsnpcs-stuck-command/ Say no more! But in all seriousness; yes! I like the idea of a "/nudge_target" command.

Ah! Wonderful to hear, @Coin! First thing I recommend: Walk back on the Dungeons & Dragons thing. Why? 'cause there are so many better systems and settings out there as far as accessibility and ease, while still being engaging and meaningful. Dungeons & Dragons has market dominance to the point where "tabletop roleplaying game" has been called "D&D" much in the way that "tissues" are called "Kleenex." It has nothing to do with the quality of the product, but everything to do with marketing. So, to make things easier on you and your family, I strongly recommend an entirely different system! What's your flavour? Do you want something minimalist, easy to learn, and flexible? That would be my personal recommendation. What tools do you have at your disposal? Do you have any particular dice, decks of cards, miniatures, map tiles, or other game pieces which you can cannibalize for play? This will help narrow down which system to use. Seeing as you already bought the starter kit, we can utilize the materials from that. What's the setting? This one surprises some people, but choosing a system totally depends on the setting; it's theme and tone. Game rules are often treated as interchangeable, what with all the conversations and reskins out there. But the truth of the matter is, the rules help craft the story. You don't want to use the Dark Heresy ruleset for a game of fun and laughter and joy, for example. Similarly, a campaign set in the Warhammer 40K universe would be a bit tricky to run with the rules from All The Little Things. Give it some thought. I can definitely help you with some free systems which might do you better than D&D. Regardless of if you run with D&D or pick up a friendlier system, there are three key tips I strongly recommend: 1) Know Your Audience. Know their expectations. And the best way to -know- is to -ask.- Have a conversation with your players, first and foremost. Do they want to be murder hobos? Do they want to have an epic adventure? Do they want to tell their characters' stories? Do they want intrigue or power or silliness or . . . et cetera. Take some time during Session Zero to find out what everyone wants from the campaign. And since they're all new to it, help them through this process by guiding them along in terms of what you are confident that you can offer! Give them options based on a reasonable reading of your own abilities as GM. That can be tricky, of course, especially when just starting out . . . back start small, and build you way up to bigger and better things over time! 2) Remember That This is a Cooperative Experience, NOT Competitive. That -Includes- YOU as the GM. You're not here to "Defeat" your players. You're here to work with them to craft a mutually beneficial experience. If they want things to be challenging, then by all means; challenge them. But chances are, starting out, they'll be looking to you to -help- them. Give them hints. Offer them opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them, rather than punish them. Don't say "no" to anything. Say "yes, but there's a cost/catch/complication." This also makes for more engaging story telling! Also, it helps to know the strengths and the weaknesses of your players as people, NOT in terms of their characters. Lean on them for support, just as they lean on you. Work together! Is one of your players really good at remembering minutia? Ask them to be co-GM and have them help you with remembering rules (less important with a softer system, but almost a requirement with D&D). Is one of your players really good at descriptive articulation? Ask them to help set the scenes in terms of sights, sounds, and smells. Is one of your players really good at understanding motivations and has excellent empathy? Ask them to give you a hand fleshing out NPC characters. 3) Debrief After Every Session! This is one which eludes a lot of people, even veteran GMs. It's always good to give players a chance to review the things they liked and the things that bothered them after a session. This feedback can be instrumental to crafting positive criticisms of your actions as GM. Focus on building up more of the good, and weeding out the bad. Each new session should (hopefully) be better than the last! Sometimes the feedback will be negative in regard to another player. As GM, you've got to take the responsibility here to work with that. Get the details on what went wrong, and then work with each player to ensure that things can be resolved. Sometimes those resolutions involve having to ask someone to bow out, but that should be treated as a last resort. Ideally you can find compromises which appeal to both/all players! Be prepared to think outside the box. If you have any specific questions, I am more than happy to help! This is the stuff I live for!

It's the parking meters and fire hydrants for me.

This is Korean Hero, @plainguy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wnxaneUxQI In particular Spark Blade: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Spark_Blade

No Redside list is complete without Peter Themari from Cap au Diable. Newspaper/Mayhem to unlock him. Available from Levels 10 to 14.

Very early, yes. I started out on the Victory Shard in Issue 0. It's all so hazy now, but I distinctly remember a period of time where Victory (and a few other Shards) were down, so I made a character on Guardian to kill some time. I ended up playing that character for far longer than I had hoped, as Victory wasn't back up for at least a 24 hour period. And I've heard stories of . . . was it Champion? Which one was dubbed the "Drunk" Shard for how frequently it remained offline after each maintenance window?

Remember when the Legacy servers would sometimes be down for days? Still blows my mind that volunteers are running a tighter ship for server maintenance and uptime than the old retail daze.

It isn't the first time either. Everlasting consistently maintains the healthiest Redside ratio. I'm on as Commandant Nongratis right now. Everlasting Redside Represent!

Ah! Perhaps a mix, then? Summon Adamaster with a ritual of Avatar of the Banished, and a swarm of Levelless Shamans will arrive on the steps of the ziggurat tomb to make the Avataster (Avatar + Adamaster) hyper powerful. Lots of fun to be had!

I like the idea of making Judgements less enticing, but I think that having them heal enemies would be too disruptive and easily abused. In a mission where it's a map which kicking a troublesome player would remove them from the instance, it's an interesting game mechanic for sure! But in public zone events, it could be a real pain.

Awww, @She-Wolf . . . you got rid of the chains.

By their reports, I would assume, like in regular professional QA.

Would you be willing to elaborate on some more of the details of that iceberg?

Some excellent points, @Jimmy. Has the Homecoming Team discussed the possibility of incentivizing testing with in-game rewards on the Live Shards, though? ie: Player who engages in X number of minutes of Beta testing, following the guidelines set out by the Devs, receives XY Merits in their in-game email on the Live Shard servers. Obviously this is just a slapdash model to express the idea. Detailing the method would be more involved, and questions as to whether players would exploit this or not would need to be examined. I just think that in an environment where you can't pay people for their serious, professional work . . . maybe you can at least offer them something in gratitude or to inspire those players to be testers in those moment when you really need them?

In a word, Yomo? Choice. The game was designed to reward players in a way that they ultimately got to choose. That choice is good. The freedom and option stands to enable players to participate in the game on their own terms. It is, in my view, a fundamental principle that elevates City of Heroes to the quality of game that is so well loved by so many. Choice. Real, meaningful, personal choice. Not that nonsense like "oh, you can choose to grind, or you can choose to spend $5 of real money to skip intentionally designed busy work carefully designed to drive you toward that $5 purchase, and thus hook you on to a microtransaction downward spiral." And really, I can't speak for everyone here in this game . . . since I just haven't done the polling and research here, but I have done it in other games as part of past profession. Which means, with immense irritation and loathing, I can not legally share with anyone what my research is. It's owned by someone who is not me, and that particular someone has been accused of being particularly litigious when they feel someone is distributing their property. Why are your guides no use? Because for the players who chose to play the game in a way that was personally meaningful to them, they had no need to even look at the market. And that's Good Game Design. The market should NEVER be mandatory. It should never provide such an unbalanced advantage as to invalidate the reasonable choice of players to avoid it. Just like no one should be forced in to PvP (which, frankly, I contend that the market is PvP, and should be treated exactly the same in terms of development). Did the original Developers deliver on this vision perfectly? Nah. But they did at least ensure that when changes were made to facilitate teaming at all levels, they left the Double Inf option available for players to choose. Part of what the Homecoming Devs did in making this change was to imply that the choice offered by the Legacy Devs was invalid. This leads to the understandable view of players who made that choice that their play-style, which existed for years before closure of the original Legacy servers, is no longer welcome. It tells them that their experiences and enjoyment of the game do not merit the same attention and metered respect of the market players, whether that was the Homecoming Team's intended message or not (which, honestly, I don't think really blipped on the Homecoming Team's radar). This game means a lot of different things to different people. Some take it more seriously than others. I think it's pretty dismissive to suggest that "it's just a game" and "you shouldn't take it seriously." So, by mere din of someone -saying- their play experience is seriously impacted means that it IS seriously impacted. And taking twice as long to achieve what was originally and long-standingly already available at a recognized speed . . . I'd call that pretty serious. Negatively impacting players' time like that is bad. Hands down. No argument to really get in to there. It's bad. It's wasteful and actively detracts from the experience for people who already can barely afford the time to engage in their leisure activities as much as they need to in their efforts to destress. Did the change have the intended impact on the market? I can't say. Sounds like it, at least, from several players' reports. But part of my past research really delved in to the whole issue with cognitive suppositions and confirmation bias, particular in online gaming. Without the Homecoming Team publishing clear, delineated data . . . we're not really dealing with anything but subjective feelings from players. And that's not to discount the importance of how players feel, of course. But it also means that we're not being permitted in to a position where we can make truly informed responses to "the economy." This whole on-going episode is, I think, a wonderful opportunity for the Homecoming Team to seriously re-evaluate how they approach development of this game in relation to their express mission statement. One of the two needs to change. I would personally prefer it's the specifics of development methodology, 'cause I personally like the sounds of the mission.

@arcaneholocaust basically just did, @Yomo Kimyata. Although with far more bile than I would have preferred . . . though I understand the source of the frustration and anger, at least. But to strongly clarify: Comparing the time it took to achieve certain goals in relation to Inf-purchases and crafting, prior to the removal of the Double Inf Feature and now, players who relied on Double Inf to provide them with their in-game financial needs have had their best tool effectively sliced in half. Without just cause.

The other constant issue that I see in this thread, and others associated with it, is this bizarre perspective that the market itself is somehow equally accessible to everyone. It isn't. If you've had success with the market, and you don't understand how other people can't achieve that same level of success, then there is a bias at work here. The market isn't being treated as truly optional in the game design right now. The time investment for achieving the same level of work is wildly different between market players and non-market. And anyone who is a market player, I want to encourage you to remind yourself that your success is not universal or achievable by everyone. I'm not a big supporter of farming. I personally find it dull, and I have at least a little moral "ickiness" related to it. However, I will promote that this game should be just as validating for non-destructive farmers as it is for other players. If that's their choice in play-style, that's there decision to make, no matter how difficult it is for me to wrap my head around their concept of "fun." But the removal of the Double Influence Feature (again, I will do my best to detangle this nonsense about the removed feature being the same as the patched bug/exploit in Patrol Exp) was very clearly a change which impacted some set of players over others. And this is while -other- solutions were available to address the problems experienced by the market players. Price caps. Tax brackets. Charitable incentives. There have been numerous discussions about other ways to motivate players to stop price gouging or limit its effectiveness. The removal of an established gameplay feature, which was originally added as a valid incentive by the Legacy Developers to encourage cross-level teaming, was not a decision in line with Homecoming's express mission statement. And farmers were not the only ones harmed by this. Players who wanted to take "the slow path" were impacted. Players who do not touch the market at all and make use of internal drops and fixed price purchases were SERIOUSLY impacted. So. Yeah. This thread, and threads like it, are going to continue to pop up to the top of the boards. No amount of hammering a "but MY market experience is better now" attitude is going to change that the experience for -other players- has been negatively and unnecessarily impacted. I hope that the Homecoming Team takes this as a learning opportunity, and more closely considers the impact to changes on this scale to what I can only guess they considered "niche interests." I hold that the player-market is never more important or significant than any other group of players' interests.

Some folks get a thrill out of being an active part of the development cycle, though, so testing -is- more fun for them. Not necessarily all the time, but being involved in the process significantly outweighs and kind of sense of loss when test characters are inevitably deleted. There's of course no discounting the positive emotional benefit of your testing work being a key component to the benefit of the whole community. Some of us find -that- to be the most important part of playing this game. I feel that a clear and codified explanation of the differences between Theoretical, Experimental, Intensive, and Final Approval testing would be helpful for everyone at all levels of development here. Especially given the ease at which openness can now be achieved. If clearer guidelines on the hows and whys of testing methodology, and unambiguous thresholds like those four categories I just listed are established, then I believe the (from my perspective, having seen -much- uglier turn outs) relatively mild backlash of the Dark Melee experiment could be significantly mitigated. Thus giving the Development Team here the much needed focus from the testers while also simultaneously achieving a less homogenized and more productive test group. Standard volunteer timetable criticism applies, but I've seen decades of success in codifying standards for these sorts of projects. I 100% believe that getting those standards clearly established and communicated now will save massive amounts of work hours in the future. The sooner we have them, and display them publicly, the better off we'll all be.

I like how Ninjitsu does different things than most Survival Sets. I like the mixed bag. It's one of my absolute favourite Sets in general! More new Sets like Ninjitsu, which break the mould of their archetypical formatting. Oh, but could we please fix the bug in the Tier 3 Power? It's supposed to unlock at Level 4, but doesn't unlock until Level 6 for some reason. Or is that intentional? It's very perplexing why the Set would do that intentionally.