Astralock

Welcome back! Did you check all five shards? Also, delete the playerslot.txt file under your account folder in the game files.

I'll take, "How to tell what shard someone plays on from one post" for $200, Mayim.

Already fixed in Page 4 beta.

There is precedent for it. Remember when level 53 Hami-O enhancements were added to the game in Page 1? Quite a few people who were away while the page was in testing came back later to find billions of INF they had stashed away in the black market were gone.

There already is a Mission Architect chat channel built-in to the game, called Architect Chat. Just no one uses it as you have to manually add it to a chat tab.

1. Correct. The VEAT story arc is shared by both ATs, and is rather short. It’s barely worth doing and forgettable. 2. Alan Desslock’s missions can be done at any level. Brick Johnson’s and Fortunata Hamilton’s missions must be done at level, however.

Fire Blast, Radiation Blast, Dual Pistols, and Psychic Blast are the top four blapping primaries, IMO. Blapping secondaries, I'd go for Atomic Manipulation, Electricity Manipulation, Mental Manipulation, or Sonic Manipulation.

Remove Empyrean merits from veteran levels and the 50% and double XP boosters as well, and I would move over to that shard yesterday. Never going to happen of course. It would further split the community, and add work and expenditures to the Homecoming staff for little gain. But it would be nice.

You are right, and wrong. Veteran loss is due to what you said. AE farming is, however, one reason for new player loss. I know a lot of people have it in their head that Homecoming hardly gets any new players. They are, of course, wrong. A new player signs up on Homecoming. He or she sees that Excelsior is the most populated shard, so he or she creates a new character. The new player’s character loads into Atlas Park. What does he or she see? Loads of people begging for farms in the LFG channel constantly, and occasionally in zone Broadcast. He or she will see AE farmers tell people in the LFG channel not to join a Citadel TF that was just advertised, because TFs are “crap XP” compared to AE farming. He or she will see AE farmers tell others in the Help or General channel that only AE farming is worth doing, because it is the fastest way to both get to level 50 and get your Incarnate abilities. Then that newbie may get a blind invite from an AE farmer, thinking that PLing the newbie is a favor. The newbie, not knowing any better, joins, gets PLed to level 30+, and then leaves. He or she has no knowledge of the game, does not know how to get to another zone, doesn’t know how to get a new mission, and has no INF to buy enhancements because the AE farmer told the newbie to get double XP boosters. The new player has just been taught that Mission Architect is the entire game. More than likely, he or she will log off and never return. Everything I just described has happened quite a few times that I personally know of, with some variation. There’s been a lot of “What harm does AE farming do? I am not harming anyone,” in the thread. There’s your harm. AE farming has overall a negative impact on the health and longevity of the Homecoming community as at least some new players are driven off.

Level 54 is indeed hard-coded. The best you can do is level 54 with level shifts, as seen in some Incarnate trials. Also, there was a bug prior to Page Three that allowed you to set difficulty at +5 if you were level 49 or below, (since, again, level 54 is hard-coded). There were a few different threads about this. All it showed is that any difficulty beyond +5 was simply a slog. Not more difficult, not more challenging, just a slog. Things took two or three times as long as they would at +3 or +4, but there was no additional challenge. Mobs just took a long time to whittle down. The answer for increased challenge is the Advanced Difficulty modes seen in the Dr. Aeon SF, and now the Imperious TF.

The issue is that such a policy would be incredibly difficult to enforce for an all volunteer GM team. The more egregious AFK farmers already violate the Homecoming terms of service. You can't just go by IP address, as there are a few different ways around it. in the end, the only way to enforce a "no AFK farming" rule would be to have GMs randomly peek into players' missions. No, the solution has to be developer coded, which this is an attempt at. IMO, the prior solution, removing veteran levels from Mission Architect, was the better solution.

Considering how many accounts Homecoming has, and its steadily dwindling population, the odds of that aren’t good.

Any other method is less efficient compared to setting up a couple of farming characters, three or more "sitter" characters, and use macros to rotate AFK farming missions every ten to twenty minutes while you're working or reading a book or what have you. The only effort expended is to strip the "sitter" characters when they reach veteran level 51 - 75 and remake them. Sure, it's against the ToS and I strongly advise against doing it. But is it being done? Absolutely, by quite a few. The issue is that it's very difficult to monitor for, unless you want the GMs (who are volunteering their time), to peer in everyone's missions. You can't even use IP address logs, as there are a few different ways around that. That's why I still advocate that the original solution of removing veteran levels from AE is the better solution to the issue. It hurts people who use AE at level 50, sure. This solution though impacts everyone. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

You can largely tell who plays on Excelsior and who doesn’t by their responses to the AE farming nerfs. Those that play on Everlasting, Torchbearer, and Indomitable largely don’t see the issue as to why AE needs nerfs and why the AE buildings in Atlas Park and Mercy Island absolutely need to go. Those who play on Excelsior and largely don’t farm on the other hand… Excelsior’s situation has largely become universal because about two thirds of Homecoming’s entire population is now on Excelsior. You put in a solution for a problem affecting two thirds of a player base, that’s going to affect everyone by necessity.

Removing veteran levels from Mission Architect, in and of itself, was a fine compromise considering that the issue is the convergence of Empyrean merits via veteran levels and Mission Architect, considering that veteran levels should never have granted Empyrean merits in the first place.

I assume that Fort Trident being listed as an available (but locked) zone in LRT as Resistance, and The Crucible being listed as an available (but locked) zone in LRT as a Loyalist is expected behavior? Obviously, they cannot be unlocked gold side, so no real game issue. I just wasn't expecting to see them listed as options.

Welcome! Yes, as a Praetorian, you can become Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, or Villain at will once you reach Primal Earth via Null the Gull in Pocket D. As a Rogue, you have to be in a blue side zone before being invited to a blue side team. Were you in a co-op or red side zone when the invite was sent?

You need two separate accounts, a forums account and a game account. It sounds like you only have the former. Create a game account here. Welcome!

That would work... for about a week. Then everyone would be right back to AE farming. Why? Because even if you give everything a fresh coat of paint, and up the rewards a bit, AE farming would still give exponentially higher rewards with far less risk compared to everything else, and that's all many people seem to care about. And no, buffing everything else up to the level of AE farming is not an answer. You can never buff everything else up to match an outlier, because the outlier is... well... an outlier. In the end, you have to nerf the outlier.

That's not just SG bases. It's happened to me while creating a villain character. Reserved a character name, spent a hour or so in the costume creator, selected to do the tutorial, selected Breakout, started loading into Breakout... then I received an error message that the map was shutting down and my game client was terminated. Thankfully, I saved the costume file while in the costume creator.

There is also a third: Most players are unaware that it exists.

Yep. Like when the /enterbasefrompasscode command was accidentally leaked, and then spread like wildfire among the player base to the point that many people assumed that it was intended. That should have been nipped in the bud once the leak was discovered.

The issue is the convergence of Emyprean merits (via veteran levels), with Mission Architect. The original solution to this issue imposed strictly on Mission Architect. This new solution imposes on all forms of content. IMO, the original nerf to veteran levels in Mission Architect is the better solution to the issue as it dealt strictly with the convergence factor. Have you ever compared the numbers of users on a couple of hours or so after maintenance on Tuesdays, to the exact same time on Wednesdays and Thursdays? They're interesting.

They can, but not by default. It’s an option under Chat > Pets > Pet Response Text.

I sincerely hope that this change helps rejuvenate the PvP community because they have suffered long enough. That said, I request that the various red side accolades no longer require badges from PvP zones. Blue side accolades do not require badges obtained in PvP zones, so I do not see why red side accolades should. I am specifically talking about the Triumphant, Swashbuckler, Weapon Inspector, Arachnos Rising, Lobbyist, and Last Stand badges. Perhaps place copies of them in red side PvE zones if removing the requirement from their respective accolades is not an option. I realize that this is only tangentially related, but the normal excuse typically given is something along the lines of, “PvP zones are dead. Just go on global hide, get in, grab the badges, and get out.” With the PvP zones hopefully being brought back to life, that is less of an option. I would just like parity between alignments, and to give people one less reason to not play red side.