strix_

Are there any fun ideas (that the dev team can talk about, of course) that were kicked around for the various CoH sequel/successor pitches we've learned about over the years? Did any concepts from the early pitches get repurposed for CoH content in the later years that the game was live?

RTM was just the name for the final version of Windows 8 that shipped packaged with computers of the time, iirc. It's the release-to-manufacturer version, so it probably just means people are playing the game on PCs they never updated to Windows 8.1/10. vNext means some SysAdmin's been playing Homecoming on their work computer. 🤣

Sure! So for extra clarity, I am specifically talking about issues regarding replicating or homaging characters from the setting of CoH/CoV (i.e. Hero One from another timeline, a Clone/Robot of Statesman). This is where the ambiguity in present enforcement of the CoC copyright policy lies. I am fully aware that homaging characters from other properties are a separate issue and one that must be more stringently enforced. For examples of clarifications on enforcement that I think could be made more easily accessible, this 2023 discord post from GM Flints states that there is a degree of "if the character is evidently intended to be a robot/clone, this is fine under the Code of Conduct" enforcement around characters such as Statesman, whereas a character who is trying to be the Primal Earth Marcus Cole is against the Code of Conduct. In the current CoC, this is stated outright for organisations in rules around things like "naming your super group to be a subgroup of Longbow/Arachnos is fine, claiming to be the leader of Arachnos is not" It's a little more unclear about whether that's okay with characters, which only states that you cannot make copies of existing characters from the lore. This 'clearly an automation/clone' guidance would be really helpful to have in a more accessible form, whether that's directly in the CoC or in an FAQ on the subject of best practices to avoid getting Generic'd. There's also this recent thread on the topic of Copyright Infringement where GM Crumpet has given a ton of useful advice on where Crumpet, as the GM who does most of the generics, draw the line of parody/homage with third party characters: Which really helps determine what's okay to do and what isn't! I'm not suggesting any rules or guidance that the GMs haven't already been providing in these discussions. I just think that making these thought processes more easily accessible, through alterations to the text of the Copyright policy section of the Code of Conduct or through an FAQ explaining GM decisions, would prevent a lot of confusion before the Generic-hammer gets swung.

I'm not asking for rigorous rules on what constitutes an infringing character and what doesn't, I'm asking for an easily-accessible document that can clarify the thought processes that go into the decision not to have those rigorous rules (for the reasons given by other users above), and that the pre-existing advice that has been given by GMs informally through various mediums over the years to be collated in an easily-accessible form, as at-present finding it requires a user to do a ton of background reading to dig up.

I appreciate the explanation, but I feel like it misses my point that this would be information that would be great to have in more permanent form directly from the GMs/Devs either directly within the Code of Conduct or in an explainer/FAQ thread on the subject of character homage pinned in a visible spot on the forums, rather than nested in several 2+ year old threads and then repeated second- or third-hand by users with no association to the GMs.

It'd be nice to get some more clarification on the policy around homages to CoH/CoV characters (esp. for RP purposes, i've seen and played a lot of characters who were inspired to take up heroism by their idolizing the Surviving Eight or were visually distinct clones/AU versions of signature characters and having spoken to other people who make those kinds of characters in a "hey! same hat!" manner we're all fairly unsure of where the line is that would get us Generic'd) and where exactly the lines get drawn on those vs. the more rigid "obviously, don't make Wolverine" rules around copyrighted characters. There's been a few informal clarifications from GMs in various forum posts and messages in the discord server over the years on where they draw the line on "copies" of in-game characters and their reasoning for it, but it's still something that feels like it's gonna put you at the risk of falling afoul of a GM who draws that line differently to another.

It's so much worse than it used to be, in more ways than one. Glad it's not just me who's been having issues

In my head P2W was bought out by the START Corporation through a series of complicated mergers and acquisitions. That being said, since they fit in with M.A.G.I and the other starter agencies now: Special Training and Applied Research Team

Noticed this! It's extra bad lately, especially on Everlasting.

Ignoring the philosophical divide of whether you should be able to solo all content at 50+x8 (There's definitely an argument to be made that there's a sweet spot waiting to be found by the devs of content that's fun and interesting to play solo without being so difficult that you need to team or drastically rework your build to make soloing more viable, if you're bored of the constant TF/iTrial/MSR/Hami grind that group content becomes), and that if players have been bumping up to x8 to enjoy solo content more (whether that's for the rewards or not), that kind of content is not being found by them at 50x1 and so asking them to turn the difficulty down kinda misses the point of what their underlying issue is: They're... mostly fine? I've had a decent time fighting the Council/CoT on my Level 50 char after the revamp both solo and in group content, despite a lot of my feelings on the Council's rework just shuffling out some very repetitive enemy types for different very repetitive enemy types. CoT are as annoying as they've always been, but at least they're annoying in different ways now. Council have a few boss-type enemies that can be death for low-damage output teams, but they're still the faction with the least gimmicks. I think after a patch or two of revisions (CoT bosses are really weak comparatively, and Council revives can proc a little too often) they'll be unanimously better than what they replaced.

Super Strength is an OG Issue 0 set that got outpaced over time as more and more powersets got added for Tankers and Brutes that had similar strengths but lacked its downsides. Street Justice feels like the big one, given that it fills a similar thematic niche while having more useful tools for playing the modern game, since KDs are pretty consistently valued as more useful than KBs. Couple that with HC Brutes/Tankers inheriting the proliferation of power sets during the Score years giving them even more options, it being pretty heavily impacted by the loss of Bruising for Tankers vs. other sets that have -Res directly built into their kit, and the fact that Super Strength hasn't gotten the love other powersets (like Battle Axe) have gotten in recent reworks, and it's picked up a reputation for being underpowered by comparison. It's not bad, it's just old.

I'll keep experimenting to see whether this is just a problem on my end! From further testing, it's a very consistent 2 second spike of heavy lag for me upon opening Enhancements in the AH on Everlasting and Excelsior, with smaller (~1 sec) spikes on Indomitable, Reunion, and Torchbearer. On Brainstorm, it's pretty consistently a spike of over 2 seconds lag on opening Enhancements, leaning towards 3.

There's a very noticeable lag spike that happens every single time you open or close a category in the Auction House now on Brainstorm (literally jolting my character back a few metres if I open it while running, which never happens on the live server even at peak times and in crowded zones), and the problems with needing to force the pricings to load do not appear to have been reliably solved. (i.e. No History Found still appears on some listings, even when the item is clearly listed and has been recently traded.) edit: after further testing, this seems to be affecting live servers this morning too, but it seems exponentially worse on beta

It's just a good trick for posing for screenshots, mostly. Holding down RMB lets you angle your character around for good lighting, while then pressing PgUp/Middle-Mouse-Button locks your character's rotation in place to make small adjustments to the framing. You can do it manually still in the Test Server by letting go of RMB and then using PgUp+Mouse Move, but it's a much slower process now that you have to release one to do the other.

Oh yeah, the fact that a lot of the in-game feedback that pushes Brute into adopting a tanking role is hiding in "You Taunt [X] with your Fury!" messages buried in the oft-ignored Combat Tab deep in a chaotic chat scroll and their vestigial Fury bar that never quite fills up entirely is definitely something that needs refinement and better signalling to the player, especially when all the language around Fury in the inherent powers section itself doen't highlight that it's a power for drawing and keeping agro (in the way that Gauntlet does explicitly tell Tankers that it's a Taunt power), it just describes that you deal increased damage for giving/taking hits. But that's absolutely a convo for a different feedback thread, lol

This! The Playstyle/Role expectations argument ultimately falls apart under scrutiny, because multiple ATs fall under multiple playstyles within that menu and unlike other MMOs, player choice and build variety is encouraged and fostered by the power-buy mechanics and enhancement abilities which encourages experimentation, not rigid adherence to a meta. Players tend to pick powers that "fit" their idea of their character, not vice versa. This degree of variance in what ATs "should" do is quite literally baked into the game at its foundational level, and compounded on with all the supplemental power pools and their value for player self-expression. To pick the Brute, because it's in the Melee Damage AT menu along with the other Melee Damage ATs, because you want to play a Melee Damage character for solo content and casual teams while you're levelling, and the Brute advertises itself within that playstyle menu not as a Tank AT, but as a Damage AT with strong damage output and survivability, and to then spec powers and enhancements into single-target damage and health regen because you want to play the AT as a survivable Melee Damage dealer but not take Taunt because you don't really expect to ever have to seriously Tank high-level content? Sure, that can be called an off-meta pick, but it's clearly and repeatedly signalled to the player as a viable and worthwhile playstyle in every single visual and mechanical signpost that's presented to the player through the process of building their character. It's not helping nudge a player into understanding their role to then put that player into a big box saying "you will always be a Tank, to us, even though you very clearly picked this AT because it was in Melee Damage and have been allowed to build your character in an entirely different direction because of that", it's adding additional layers of confusion due to unclear signposting between the visible playstyle distinctions and the obfuscated role distinctions, especially when the EATs are apparently allowed to qualify for multiple roles in a team while other ATs don't. (There's obviously reasons for this, but these distinctions would likely be lost on the hypothetical new player who needs nudging in the "correct" direction to play their role.) Couple into that unintended-but-fun playstyles that run counter to the "intended" role of a class (obviously, a Dodge Tank Scrapper would take much longer to get going during levelling than a Brute Tank and probably requires a substantial investment in enhancements to make it viable, but both can ultimately fulfil the same team role for the bulk of casual content that comprises the game). and the game just rejects easy role categorisation at times, which is fine, and I would argue comprises a huge part of what makes the game unique and vibrant to play compared to more restrictive MMOs on the market. Ultimately, I'm fine with these badges (& suggested earlier to make ones for each TF, because that'd be fun!), but there could be a lot less confusion and backlash to the AT groupings if they were just "playstyle diversity." and reflected the menus that have been visible in the game this entire time, rather than this new arbitrary and hidden distinction of the "role," which is only made even more confusing to new players because the roles have the exact same names as the playstyles, only apparently different ATs count for one but not the other.

Oh hell yes. This is such a necessary QoL change and it's going to make the game so much more comfortable to play, for me

I actually love the idea of adding Same/Diverse AT badges to each TF a lot! It could really incentivise the all-same-AT runs that already seem popular with players, and incentivise more experienced players to teach newer players the functions/tricks of the AT. I know I'd definitely be interested in running TFs I haven't experienced already if someone was recruiting for an all-Brute run, for example, and being able to ask those players for advice on how they've slotted enhancements after seeing how their builds perform could be really helpful in planning out my own character builds. More casual and social content in the game is always a net good, for me. Also: the dev team could give them all funny names. That alone usually makes a badge worth getting imho

Running this zone for the first time on the open beta! Just wrapped up the Straxt story arc, and working my way through Orpheus's contact now. Lots to love, lots worth critiquing. I'm going to try to keep gameplay feedback brief, because I'm aware that I was playing co-op missions solo so my experience might not be representative of other players' or the intended experience: - Missions felt decently paced, but bosses go down a little easy. - I felt decently able to solo everything on an appropriately-levelled Arachnos Widow with crafted enhancements (wanted to test out the new VEAT changes!). Died a couple times in more hectic fights. - Bomb locations in both the cargo ship and the warehouse were really obscure and out of the way in places, which got a little frustrating, but that could just be poor RNG on the spawn locations. While I love the content itself, I have some feedback on the grammar and word choice in the NPC dialogue I've read so far that really make me think that a few bits of dialogue could use another polish/editing pass before release to make things clearer for the players. However, I'm also conscious of the fact that, as the build is currently at Release Candidate 2, it's probably too late for substantial overhauls of the dialogue before the final release of Page 7. As such, I've included a "tl;dr" at the bottom of the post that just consists of purely of grammar and formatting errors I've noticed during my playthrough, rather than my more in-depth thoughts about the quality of the writing so far (very good) and ways I think the presentation could be improved (extra clarity on a few lines of dialogue). Here we go: And the "tl;dr" of quick fixes to grammar and formatting: Anyway, this zone rocks. Sorry for the long post!

Took Killer Scream for a punk rock Sonic/Sonic Corruptor! As part of my altaholic spring cleaning, I've released a few names people might be interested in: - Century Girl - Eidolon Alpha - Midnight Wasp - Mudslide - Praetorian Knight - Regime Change (perfect for a Malta char imho) - Be Gay Do Crimes (thought it would be a funny title for a queer rogue to name themselves ICly, the novelty did not last)

Finally had a chance to run around the Vanguard base, and I've got some performance reports for how the level runs on lower-end hardware: on my Ryzen 2200g at 1080p windowless bordered with maxed out settings (& 200% char/world detail), there's a bit of noticeable performance hit as the level initially loads in around the Infirmary/Lady Grey area after teleporting in from Atlas Park (roughly consistent to framerate tanks on a heavily-decorated SG base) but it's manageable and after the initial bump the game runs smoothly. Similar results while having cel-shaded mode on. Not sure how having big leagues running around for MSR could affect performance, but it's difficult to test that on the beta server. Overall, the redesign is awesome, and I really hope we can see other areas get similar treatment later down the line!

Wholly agree with this, it's inordinately damaging to casual/solo players for next to no benefit. Love the idea of giving the CoT more enemy variety (the critiques of them being balanced upside down in live is pr much true lol), but the current implementation of that in the beta isn't the play. In a broader sense, it's also damaging to try and shunt the power-levellers towards AE farms? Say what you want about MSR/PI radios, but at least those put power-levelling players into going through content where they might learn fundamentals of the game from other players or catch story content that gets them invested in the setting or characters. I know when I was first learning the game, I caught most of the basics of knockback/knockdown and how CC works in this game through doing MSR for the rewards. Changes that push newer players towards passively door-guarding in AE fire farms against generic enemies in the same three environments is ultimately a net negative for keeping those players invested in learning the game, esp. if they're being incentivised to do that by more established players who wouldn't see dragging them through 50 content as valuable if these changes get implemented.