Lunar Ronin

January 26

Henchmen really need some innate AoE defense like pets on other online games have. Until then, yeah, henchmen should very much be taken into consideration when giving mobs AoE attacks and nukes. It reminds me of the Going Rogue game design, where the Paragon Studios developers openly admitted that they didn't take Masterminds into consideration when designing content, despite using the Demon Summoning power set to help sell it.

January 26

Villains shouldn't interact with other villains is certainly a new one. If you don't like it, you don't have to play it.

January 26

3 minutes ago, PatternGhost said:

WoW does name releases, and has for a very long time.

Plus, I've never played WoW so I may be wrong, but I very much doubt that WoW gives you a thousand character slots per shard. And from everything that I've read and heard about WoW over the past two decades, most players there concentrate on one or two "main" characters.

January 25

I have a level 50 Dark Blast/Force Field Corruptor. With Power Boost he can give teammates +44.3% defense, and then there's the -7.5% to-hit debuff from the various Dark Blast attacks. I.e., he can softcap defenses of everyone on the team by himself. I always take two Interfaces. The first is Reactive Radial, and then a second because so many others also take Reactive Radial. I'm thinking either Diamagnetic Core for the second Interface, for the extra -to-hit debuff on top of the Dark Blast attacks' -7.5% to-hit, or would that be overkill? The other choice I'm leaning towards is Degenerative Radial. Thoughts?

January 25

16 minutes ago, ShaolinSam said:

I can sign into the forums (and the HC launcher) with no issues using my username and password but when I try to log into the game itself, it keeps telling me that I'm inputting incorrect info and to make sure I'm using my correct forum name and password even though the one I'm using is working fine everywhere else for Homecoming.

Is anyone else having this issue? Any idea how to correct it?

Howdy. You need to create an actual game account in addition to a forums account. Go here.

January 25

51 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

I can't remember how long ago it was but I encouraged the Dev team to allow 50 slots per shard to start. If you're active then you get tokens for more slots. That was my idea and I still think it's a good idea. However, the Dev that replied said: they'll just go make another account.

I am sure some will go make a second account but others probably couldn't be bothered. Count me as the latter. I want all of my toons on one account and I'm good.

The name release policy is a shame cuz I do have some lower level toons that have names I like but the powers were not fun. So I have been re-imagining them and so on. Oh well.

Unfortunately, the horse left the barn years ago for that. There were quite a few people who made a hundred or more characters the week that the servers went online just to reserve character names.

January 25

24 minutes ago, Ice Ember said:

A Null the Gull option to disable Group Flight would simplify the request above.

Add + defense to Acrobatics. Not every character needs stealth to get the additional LotG or GotA procs.

There already is a Null the Gull option to disable Group Fly. The issue is that many people argue that that is "too cumbersome."

January 25

42 minutes ago, lemming said:

I solved it by soloing a Dr Aeon 4* with a different char. Plenty of rare salvage that I threw onto the AH at a high price, then bought it with the character that had the bud recipe.

I like it, but I do wonder if it's going to confuse the heck out of some people during Hami raids. (Not being targetable should get people past that)

Only as much as Rikti costumes do at mothership raids.

January 24

15 hours ago, Zombra said:

This is pretty weird.

"If you want to work with Arachnos, speak with Operative Kuzmin." But Operative Kuzmin won't talk to you unless you do the tutorial. Of course, Arachnos Soldiers can't do the tutorial. What if I'm an Arachnos Soldier who wants to work with Arachnos?

You should be able to walk right up to Operative Kuzmin and speak with him.

January 24

3 minutes ago, Senbonbanana said:

Where did you get this info? There were 11 servers hosted in the USA. A max player count of 16,500 for the entire United States does not sound right, at all.

From the Homecoming Team directly, here. It's been mentioned by other staff members on these forums before as well, and on the Homecoming Discord server over the years.

Again, the live game was smaller than people remember.

January 24

26 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Yeah, me too. I've seen nothing on Excelsior that even remotely resembles what I regularly saw on Freedumb back in the day in terms of players and activity. Not in invasions, not in GM hunts, not in the LFG channel, not anywhere.

The OP is correct that compared to the rest of the market CoX was a small population, niche game. But I'm not buying the claim that Homecoming even approaches anything resembling the numbers back in the OG days.

The servers back on live had a hard cap of 1,500 players. Excelsior has had more than that the past couple of weeks.

January 24

5 hours ago, macskull said:

There were more people, but they were also spread out across more than a dozen servers. Before the current Homecoming population spike it wasn't uncommon for fully half the online players to be on a single server (Excelsior), which was never the case back on live. Even now when it's bumping up against 1500 players Excelsior still has about a third of the total online players.

Yes, that's what I meant. None of the live servers were as busy as Excelsior is, and the majority weren't as busy as Everlasting is.

January 24

2 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

Welcome to the way the modern City is...

Speed is king. Rush to the end as efficiently as you can. Get your reward. Move on.

I'm not sure exactly when that became 'The Way We Play Now' for everything, but speeding has been A Thing with TFs and such since the Live days.

Yeah, it started late on live, and greatly escalated with the dawn of Homecoming as people played other online games during "the snap" and acquired "bad habits" from those other games. Now it's all about speed and rewards, dang everything else. I've noticed that it's mostly younger (35 and younger, yes I'm old), players. It's just how many of them play.

It's frustrating. I've led many TFs/SFs and specifically advertised them as kill most, only for people to join and try to force speed on the team. I've either kicked them, or they rage quit when I less than gently remind them that we're not speeding.

January 24

1 hour ago, carroto said:

Are we at a much higher online user count now than pre-shutdown? Surely hardware has improved significantly in the last 10+ years. How were they able to make all this go back in the day?

There weren't as many people nor as much activity back on the live servers. I've found that people seriously misremember how small the live servers were in comparison to Excelsior and even Everlasting, likely skewed by modern MMORPGs. I've seen a few people over the years say that Infinity was a small server back on live. It was the third most populated server back then, just behind Freedom and Virtue.

Posted January 24 · January 24

19 minutes ago, SupaFreak said:

Yea, I know it's shallow of me, but I only run story arcs with other people if it's through Ouroboros for the reason everyone gets the Reward Merits. As far as I know, it's always been that way since implementation of Ouro. I've suggested in the past for ways to reward people joining pick-up storyline teams, but I assume it's not a venture worth exploring.

It's not shallow, it's smart. I do the same thing. I'll team with friends for regular story arcs, but as for PUGs? Nope. Ouroboros Flashback or bust.

January 23

FWIW, Victory has been back since April 2019 thanks to @Michiyo , and has been running Homecoming's code. It's just becoming fully integrated with Homecoming.

January 22

3 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

I think the issue is most folks don't want to spend 3-4 hours doing hard mode content, as they don't have 3-4 hours to do said content. So they want to speed through it. I don't think there is any issue with that. Also optimizing the team to make the hardest content a little bit easier isn't bad . . . as long as the wait to start said content isn't 2 hours of the leader doing "looking for this or that so we can start".

There is an issue when it locks out nine to twelve of the game's ATs, and the vast majority of power sets. Also, we're not talking about three to four hours with a team with diverse ATs. I was once told that bringing a "non-viable" AT to a hard mode would increase the time by 20 minutes. 20 minutes! The sheer, abject horror! Also, yeah, I've heard "we don't have time for that," but then they go on to do a half dozen other TFs/SFs, taking two hours or more. So... I guess you did have time for it, you just chose differently.

I don't have issues with people playing how they choose, with who they choose. However, there is a severe problem with people telling others that hard modes simply cannot be done with "non-viable" ATs and power sets (and those non-viable ATs and power sets comprise about 90% or more of the game), when that is 100% objectively false. I've seen it plenty of times on these forums, on the Homecoming Discord server, on other Discord servers, and in-game. It leads to people believing that, and they won't even join hard modes if they don't have the "right" composition as a result.

But I digress.

January 21

23 minutes ago, Psi-bolt said:

Hard mode teams are going to remain exclusionary because there's a gameplay reason there for needing specific ATs. For normal TF, the "bring whatever you want" culture of CoH is one of its greatest strengths and this lessens that, if only to a minor extent.

The only reason you "need" specific ATs for hard modes is if you care about getting the rewards as quickly as humanly possible. Hard modes can be done with any AT just fine. All you need is some balance. Been there, done that. But too many of the Homecoming player base have convinced themselves otherwise.

January 21

But then my Dominators would have to change alignment back to Villain.

January 21

35 minutes ago, Psi-bolt said:

Maybe unpopular opinion, but I think one of CoH biggest positives is that on most content you can roll with 8 random players and go have fun. Sure this is only a small additional reward, but it will lead occasionally to exclusionary behavior and that's to be expected. Even if you don't bother to recruit for that, there will be times when someone on the team will try to switch to meet the bonus or some other behavior intended to ensure the bonus exists. It's just natural for people to want to ensure that they get those additional rewards. It's going to lead to minor drama.

This is one of those weird things where it would be better just not to do a thing or if you're going to encourage this behavior, then you might as well make it worth it. My preference is that CoH has made it 20 years without this and it's not necessary now.

The problem is that there is already exclusionary behavior. The only acceptable ATs on most hard mode teams are Blaster, Corruptor, and Scrapper. Defender, Brute, and maybe Tanker if they're being generous. This is a small step in trying to correct that.

January 21

7 hours ago, Terenos said:

The first time I went to Blue Side (I believe, and I could be wrong about this because it was awhile ago, that there was a point where you couldn't actually play CoH if you only owned CoV and vice-versa) I found it confusing. And boring. There was so much filler content, so many delivery missions, and way, way too many contacts with no real path through an over-aching story. Everything about Blue felt disjointed, and the writing for a lot of the arcs you ended up doing was awful. I remember thinking, "My god, why would anyone want to play this side?"

I started playing City of Heroes before City of Villains launched, and I still ask myself to this day: "Why would anyone want to play blue side?" Like you said, tons of filler content, tons of delivery missions, too many zones, dull and boring. Everything from Issues 0 and 1 are terrible, which is the majority of blue side content to this day. And Atlas Park... I hate Atlas Park. Too shiny, too bright, too many people, too dull. Even when I did play blue side back on live, I avoided Atlas Park as much as humanly possible.

This thread has been interesting, because most of the complaints in regards to red side are reasons why I love it. There's no hub zone, so there's no massive glut of PCs like Atlas Park to avoid. There's fewer, more compact zones to travel. The zones are more dingy, thus feel more real. St. Martial reminds me a lot of Atlantic City in real life. It has the glamorous casinos... and the rest isn't so glamorous. As for the lack of agency... I never saw much agency blue side either. You either perform heroics, or you don't.

To each his or her own.

January 21

There can be only... ?

January 21

Dark Miasma, Electrical Affinity, Nature Affinity, Thermal Radiation, and Time Manipulation are all excellent Mastermind secondaries. Whichever secondary you go with, I do recommend taking one with a heal, so you can keep your henchmen healed. Otherwise, pick up Aid Other from the Medicine power pool. It can be a bit slow otherwise, slowly waiting for your henchmen to heal back up.

As for primaries, they're all good. Pick whichever floats your boat.

January 21

37 minutes ago, Nostromo21 said:

And yet another queue, just wanted to have a quick bash (on Excelsior) before lunch, and all you swarming yanks are overloading the server in your Sat night prime-time, bleh.

If I transfer my current main to Indomitable, can I then transfer it back once the devs get this under control, or the traffic dies down again???

Surely there's a better way to load-balance virtual servers via instances and whatnot, than having hard-coded server architecture with hard player limits in 2024...

Yes, you can transfer back. And no, not with the way Cryptic Studios designed the character database. They didn't believe in using SQL for MMORPGs. Thus, here we are.

January 20

Other ideas now that I'm thinking about it:

Increase the drop of infamy red side to 1.2x or so. Not enough to woefully unbalance things, just a nice bonus and a small incentive to play red side. Hey, villains care a great deal more about material wealth than heroes.
There really should be a level eight to fifteen strike force in Port Oakes, comparable to the Positron TFs blue side. Right now, if you're lucky you get to do a DFB red side... and then what? Missions are great, but for those who prefer to team, SFs are better.

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