BlakeTheDrake

And also trying to resummon and buff your pets after you land in the middle of a small army of Rularuu can get hairy.

This one's peculiar. I know it doesn't apply to ROBOTS, based on some other Masterminds I just ran a Shadow Shard TF with, but I don't know how Zombies, Ninjas, Mercenaries, etc. react. I just know that the Beasts have a serious problem with the Shadow Shard, or at least, its primary mode of transportation. Basically, if I have all my pets out - 3 wolves, 2 lions, 1 Dire Wolf - and use a long-distance Geyser-jump, I'll land on a distant Island (if I did it right)... and find my Lions teleporting to my side. JUST the lions. The wolves - both the three Howler Wolves and the Dire Wolf - simply don't show up. They're still visible in the Pet Window, they show full health, but they aren't THERE, aren't ANYWHERE, and don't respond to orders. I can only get my pets back by either A) Dismissing the nonexistent pets and summoning a fresh batch B) Entering an Instance or C) Getting mass-teleported, such as by 'Assemble the Team'. Again - not sure how other Mastermind pets respond in this situation, I only know that Robots DON'T have this issue, with all of them teleporting in when you land. Unfortunately, this makes it rather difficult to operate as a Beast Mastery MM in the Shadow Shard, without Group Flight...

Wait, so, the servers are STILL down because of this? The 'Aftermath' bit kind of implied that it was already over. I wanted to log in to check if any of my characters were missing anything, but...

I think it's worth keeping in mind that 'Petless Masterminds' aren't actually just baseline humans. Sure, they are squishy and weak relative to other metahumans - but they can still shrug off a lot more bullets than I could realistically hope to do, leap fully their own height (without even slotting anything in Bound), run at Olympic-athlete speeds for ages, and will likely possess at least two actual ATTACKS, even if they're not spectacularly powerful. On top of that comes an entire set of support-skills, which may be defensive (enhancing their minions and allies) or offensive (debuffing and hampering their foes.) And that's without getting into whatever they might have taken from the Power Pools, Epic Pools or Patron Pools. Basically, being independently competent - even to a superhuman degree - doesn't disqualify a fictional character from being a CoH-style Mastermind. So I'd say that Dr. Doom, for instance, is a fair example, what with his love of Doom-Bots - when he's able to be a serious threat to, say, The Fantastic Four, in and of himself, it's usually because he's tapped into some external power-source. Ra's Al Ghul, too - sure, he's good with a sword, and I certainly wouldn't want to pick a fight with him even if he didn't have his ninjas on hand, but on his own he's not really a threat to anyone in the Justice League. Of course, none of them act exactly like a CoH Mastermind. That playstyle is, in essence, an interpretation of the comic-book mastermind's fondness for planning, plotting, and sending in waves of minions to do their dirty work. If it had been translated more literally, the MMs would basically have been playing a top-down RTS while everybody else is third-person brawling...

Strange! It is possible that something glitched, indeed, but the fellow who helped me did not seem at all surprised at the issue... I mean, *I* only have the one datapoint, but his reaction made it seem like this was a well-known issue. Perhaps I have been misinformed...

If that is the case - if the issue only appears when you run that mission 'au naturel', so to speak - that might explain why it hasn't been noticed that the issue (still) exists. There's a lot of content, and it's easy to outlevel stuff like a level 20-29 arc - especially one that can only be accessed by completing a DIFFERENT level 20-29 arc. If most people are just running it through Flashback, if at all... well, I've got another villain-character edging close to 20. Once I get there, I'll be sure to run through it (he's a Stalker, so he tends to skate through anything that doesn't involve 'kill all' objectives) and maybe take some screenshots if it does indeed reoccur.

Hmm. One variable comes to mind. Were you running it through Flashback, perchance? Because I WASN'T. It is entirely possible that could make a difference.

This issue has, according to a veteran player who helped me clear it, apparently existed for several years - but I could find no reports about it in this forum, so... I'm going to make one here, since this is just shy of a 'showstopper' class. The mission mentioned above - "Get the PPD files in Independence Port!" - has several steps. You first infiltrate the local PPD, fight some police inside, access a computer - and, if you do not chose to betray your Freakshow allies, you proceed to the basement prison-cells to free a Freakshow Tank there. Whether this issue occurs if you DO betray them is unclear, but it seems to be highly consistent if you DO NOT and thus carry out the side-objective of rescuing the Tank. After fulfilling the 'Rescue' objective, your new objective will simply be "Get to the PPD files!" However, there is ZERO INDICATION of where said files ARE - the objective-marker that should be pointing you towards them is missing. Worse, this isn't a regular instance, but rather a reused 'Mayhem Mission' map of Independence Port - meaning, a rather large chunk of that zone's map. You are supposed to leave the PPD station and enter a warehouse elsewhere to recover the files, but without an objective-marker (or a veteran player who is already familiar with this mission and its bugged objective), the only way to FIND that warehouse would be to run around and click on every door on the map until you randomly find the right one. How this bug has gone unaddressed for four years (the helpful fellow mentioned running it back in 2020 with the same result) I do not know - but considering how consistent and easily replicated it seems to be, it shouldn't be terribly hard to fix, if it is simply brought to the devs' attention.

Okay, this is hardly the kind of bug that makes anyone ANGRY, but... it's so utterly weird, I felt compelled to type out a report. I couldn't reproduce it if I tried, and I've never seen anything quite like it, but for what it's worth, here's what happened... At around 3:30 CET, a friend asks me to help him on the 'Stop Snaptooth' mission from DJ Zero, part of the Valentine's Day event. I'm currently on my Level 24 Sentinel. Agreeing, I join him - but, the fight proves too much for us. We die repeatedly. Resolving to bring out the big guns, I log out and back in again with my maxed-out main, a Mastermind. Joining his mission again, I quickly bring the battle to a close, defeating Snaptooth and everything else that dares stand in my way. I receive no reward from the mission, of course - I didn't spend enough time in it. But, on that character, I already had both of the badges you can receive from that mission (Partygoer and Heart of X), so who cares? With this resolved, I log back out, returning to my Sentinel. Time is maybe 3:50 CET. My friend now joins ME for a mission that's been giving me trouble. Lots of dying ensues. Other friends join in as well, finally bringing the mission successfully to a close. Shortly after, my friend decides to call it a night and log out. It's about 4:10 CET at this point. I carry on with a solo mission, still on my Sentinel. About five minutes later, at 4:15 CET or thereabouts, while doing a random mission on Sharkhead Island - beating up on some Freakshow, I believe - I suddenly get a reward-popup. Congratulating me for beating Snaptooth, and letting me pick from the usual rewards - the two badges, and a measly Medium Inspiration. Surprised, I select one of the badges. Promptly, the popup pops... back up. Congratulating me once more on my victory. I select the other badge, It closes, and... nothing more happens. So, I now have both 'Partygoer' and 'Heart of Darkness' on a character who has NEVER been present for the defeat of Snaptooth. He was IN the mission, sure, but noped out before the boss could be defeated. And that mission concluded half an hour earlier, anyway. I have no idea what happened, but the badges ARE there, so it certainly did happen... 🤔

Gotta admit, I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about this... I'm a Badger, so more badges to collect is always nice, and I can certainly see the argument in favor of taking this approach in favor of the old, discontinued idea of Aether. I LIKE seeing people announce TF's in the LFG channel with "Everybody's welcome, as long as you meet the minimum level requirements!" It'd be a shame to lose that... welcoming attitude. Not sure if the originally-proposed rewards WOULD have caused such a shift, but I'm clearly not the only one who saw it as a very real possibility that it might. However, it honestly seems wasteful to have a whole system like this set up for just two badges that a large percentage of the player-base won't care about in the first place, and which the rest will just... get, very quickly, and then forget about. Of course, this could be expanded by having separate badges for doing this with every TF and Trial (or at least with the 'core' ones and otherwise most significant ones) - but I'm not sure how much that would ACTUALLY change. As others have also proposed, the clever play here may be to add some kind of reward to these 'Diverse Team' badges - by its very nature, it'd be a one-time reward, so it would be unlikely to engender any kind of large-scale shift in player behavior, but it WOULD provide a motivation for those otherwise uninterested in badges to engage with this 'Balanced Team' system in the first place. Mind, there ARE other options than just providing a one-time Aether Particle payout - that one is obvious, considering the original shape of the system, but if more 'Team Composition' badges were added, they could also add up to an Accolade with some kind of desirable power attached to it. Suggestions for other badges utilizing this system? How about "Dance Partners" for running a TF where every member is matched with their archetypal counterpart on the other side (Defender/Mastermind, Blaster/Corruptor, Tank/Brute, etc.) - whether that's just as a duo, or as four full pairs? Could be fun, and pretty easy to do these days, since you don't need a 'Co-op' TF for it. Or, just for the name, "Seven Nation Army", requiring a team of five different 'basic' ATs, covering all five roles, AND two different EATs! (the eight slot being a wildcard, I suppose!) Shame 'account-wide' Badges are such a hassle, though - otherwise, a particularly fun challenge would be to run a 'Diverse Team' TF as each of the five roles! Which would, obviously, require multiple characters... though, thinking of it, EATs would have to be excluded from the count there, or else mess it all up by occupying three roles at once, each. Maybe not ideal, then - but it WOULD be nice to have something like that, to encourage people to try more different archetypes. Some people just land on one Archetype, and wind up playing dozens of different powersets for it without really feeling any drive to try something else...

The issue is rather straightforward. In this mission, referred to as 'A Mind for Detail' in-game, you first move through a lab filled with Clockwork that con as Neutral - until you find a glowing crate and interact with it. Afterwards, all the Clockwork turn hostile. However, if you have other players with you, the Clockwork will REMAIN Neutral to them, and there is no way for them to change this, since they can't interact with the crates. This means that the Clockwork won't attack them, and also that THEY cannot target or attack the Clockwork, effectively making the mission a 'forced solo' one. Having friends along will only make it harder, since they will cause extra Clockwork to spawn, but can't help you fight them...

Hmm... I suppose it may simply be down to unfamiliarity with the set, then. And teething-troubles, in a sense. Returning to a complex game like this after literal decades away, it can be easy to be overwhelmed by the sense of familiarity and assume that you have a better grip on it than you really do. I do, indeed, remember the Melee/Blasting 'hold' type powers dealing low-to-nil damage. I DID see the bit in the description of Suppressive Fire about it dealing 'significantly higher damage' with certain ammo-types, but between the name and basic description making it clear that it was was CC ability, I just figured it'd be one of those times where you get a significant PERCENTUAL boost to what is still a tiny absolute number. "Oh, with this ammo, it deals +200% damage! So 3 damage instead of 1..." With this information, yes, things look a lot cleaner. Getting a potent single-target attack at EIGHT instead of EIGHTEEN makes a huge difference... I'll respec the character and try playing it some more, see if it doesn't feel a bit better. The whole thing about 'all powers suck at 1-15', though, I can't agree with. I'm not making these judgements in a vacuum, after all. I've got 10 characters by now, all different Archetypes - that is my basis for comparison, and out of all of them, the Dual Pistols set is the only one I've really bounced off of. I had some trouble getting to grips with the Arachnos Soldier right at first, too, but that's likely just because it, like the Kheldian HEATs, is designed primarily for team play. Everything else I've tried has played just fine, including soloing at lower levels.

I skipped suppressive fire since it's a hold, and I was desperate for more damage... but my impression may be mistaken. Perhaps I'll try a respec. As for all this, though, you're missing my perspective. Suppose your FIRST character on the server is a Dual Pistol Sentinel, because oooh, new archetype! Oooh, dual-wielding handguns! Coool... and as a Blaster with Extra Defense, the Sentinel certainly LOOKS perfectly solo-capable - indeed it IS, with most other main powersets. The character creation interface TELLS you that it's capable of running solo, and terms it as a 'Ranged Damage' class, not support. Now suppose you picked the 'Praetorian' starting option because oooh, a whole new SIDE! Yeah, good luck getting a team together over there with any kind of regularity. And you don't have a higher-level alt who can fund you. Sure, you can just roll up another character, on blueside, and play them up to high levels, then use them to 'fund' your Sentinel and get it maxed-out SOs in order to compensate for the weakness of its attacks... which is exactly what I've done, and I'm having a blast with my Level 50 Mastermind, and several other characters in the 20's and 30's. Does that really detract from my point, though? If you need to do that, there's something wrong with the powerset. But, I restate once again: There's nothing wrong with the set as a primary for CORRUPTORS. Or a secondary for Defenders. With those classes, you're going to be team-focused regardless, so the debuffs and AoE that Dual Pistols offer are a fine match. It's just a poor match for the Blaster or Sentinel, especially since there's nothing that, at a glance, tells you that "This powerset will turn you into a team-focused pseudo-support instead of a primary DPS."

All good points, and I can't claim to have tried every Blast-set... perhaps I'm prejudiced by my own experiences, but it's worth keeping in mind that most of my problem with the set is that the EARLY LEVELS are an absolute slog to SOLO because of the lack of single-target damage. You've got two good AoEs, but those only come into their own on larger teams, and are bog useless when you're just fighting a single Lieutenant. It really does wind up feeling like you grabbed a BB-gun by mistake in those cases. Things such as slotting for lots of procs, or using specific sets, aren't helpful to a character that's struggling to reach level 18 and get the Executioner's Shot. Especially not if you don't have some high-level alt who can donate resources. Now, here's the thing... having played a Dual Pistols Sentinel to Level 15, I know in my heart that I'm doing the vast majority of my damage with the Premium Attack Powers, rather than my actual powerset. Do I have hard numbers and reams of data to back that up? Nope. Could I get it? Maybe. Will I? Heck no. Because it doesn't matter. What matters is that the set feels weak. That it feels frustrating and slow to play when soloing - which, depending on what 'side' you start on, you may have to do a lot of! Even if some spreadsheet was pulled up to demonstrate that I'm wrong, and that the guns actually deal perfectly decent damage... that doesn't change that feeling, nor does it make that character any more fun to play. At most, it suggests that there are different measures that needs to be taken to make the set feel more powerful. In the end, you can only exist in your own, subjective reality, viewing the world through your own eyes and nobody else's. If the same liquid tastes better to you in a Coca-Cola bottle than a store-brand cola-bottle, then it tastes better - even if they are manufactured wholesale by your brain, the results remain.

So, I spent some of the server downtime reading over the notes for the next update, and was... rather saddened to find that despite changes to several powersets, there was no mention of Dual Pistols. They works decently well for Corruptors and Defenders, who can focus on support instead, but as an actual damage-dealer for a Sentinel or Blaster, they're woefully inadequate. The first character I rolled up was a Sentinel with Dual Pistols, because hey, they look awesome! ...he's currently stuck at 15, while the next character I made is about to hit 50. An in-game friend of mine made a Dual Pistols Blaster, for basically the same reason, only to discover that he struggles to solo even on -1. The problem is that the pistols just DO NOT INFLICT DAMAGE. Their damage-output is, in fact, hilariously inferior to that of the Bow and Arrow set, nevermind the Assault Rifle or Beam Rifle sets. They DO have some decent 'other' effects, including modest CC, debuffs and a fair bit of AoE, and that can work just fine as a supplement to a support-set, but if your entire role is to inflict damage and your primary set just... doesn't, you wind up with a character that feels weak, ineffective, and unfun to play. Which is particularly unfortunate when it's a set that so many people want to play, because of the sheer 'cool factor'. Executioner's Shot, which you have to get to 18 to get, is the only reliable (single-shot) damage-dealer you get. Up to that point, you may as well be wielding a pair of water-pistols. The last two powers, Piercing Shot and Hail of Bullets, deal good damage too of course, but have too long recharge to be a reliable part of your rotation. The set completely lacks the sheer punch that otherwise marks Blast-type sets. For Sentinels, this turns you into a nonentity - you don't take OR deal much damage - and endurance-management becomes a serious problem when soloing due to how much even the simplest fight can drag out. For Blasters, it's nothing short of crippling - it's one thing to be a glass cannon, but something else entirely to be a glass cannon that only fires water-balloons. They're supposed to embody the ancient truism that the best defense is a strong offense, so without that offense, they've got nothing left. Mind, I don't necessarily know how to FIX it. The early skills definitely need to be boosted, though - somehow. More damage, faster cooldown, whatever. Perhaps Bullet Rain could be altered to do more damage if there are fewer enemies in its AoE? That would make sense, from a logical standpoint - same number of bullets hitting fewer targets, or just one. Perhaps the ammo-types could be made stronger, particularly the incendiary ammo which currently deals somewhat pathetic amounts of DoT. Whether there are adjustments needed in the later levels, such as shorter cooldowns for the actually hard-hitting big-ticket attacks, I can't say, since I haven't managed to get my own Dual Gunner past level 15... but, I'd love to hear from the people who've stuck with the set to the bitter end!

This... debate looks a bit spicy, but... well, I'm quietly hoping they'll eventually institute that name-release policy, since I too would love to recreate my old main from Live. I wasn't surprised to see that its name was already gone when I started here - I began playing CoH EARLY, to be able to nab it - but I certainly haven't seen anyone around actually USING it today. I can also say that personally, if I step away from a game for several years, I don't expect to be able to come back to it and pick up exactly where I left off. I'd expect to have been kicked out of my SG for inactivity, missing most of my friend-list since they moved on in the meantime, and yeah, for some or my character's names to have been grabbed by people who'd actually use them. Nothing lasts forever - we all know that. Leave things to gather dust, and they will decay. This is the nature of things. Now, as for creative naming in general... I feel like the current 'lack of good names' is a bit of a double-edged sword. Sure, it can breed creativity and clever names. I've certainly been in a situation where the first three or four names I thought of for a character were already taken, forcing me to come up with something even cleverer! But on the other hand, I've also seen loads of people running around with names that are deliberately misspelled to circumvent the issue, which niggles me - and even a couple who found ways to make this misspelling 'invisible', such as using a capital i in place of an l, which can make it a huge pain to send tells and invites. Basically, the large number of names that are locked down by inactive players can prompt a variety of behaviors, some of them good, others not so much.

Don't really wanna get into the... debate, I just checked in here because I wasn't really sure what the actual consensus WAS on this stuff. I've seen dozens of rather unoriginal characters around the place too, but here's the thing... I basically never see them TWICE. Sure, making Spiderman or Saitama or Wolverine or whatever can be fun, but that fun wears off rather quickly. The characters that people wind up STICKING with, and playing for the long haul, tend to be either A) Creative concepts or B) Mechanically optimized powersets with a generic superhero/villain skin slapped on. I shan't pass judgement on which approach is better - what matters is that those are the characters people enjoy playing for the long haul. Not sure if that changes anything from a legal standpoint, but from an emotional perspective, it's worth remembering that we aren't REALLY being overrun with endless copycats. Hanging around the high-level zones or running high-end TFs, you'll see few if any.

This one's both interesting, and very easy to replicate. 1: Either be a Peacebringer/Warshade or have one in your Team 2: Play the mission 'Crash Odysseus's Auction' from The Magician in Night Ward. 3: During the first part of the mission, a number of Neutral mobs will be present, turning hostile only after a scene where you confront Odysseus. However, some of these mobs will spawn as Quantum Gunners, and these will be immediately hostile, even during the 'Neutral' opening. ...hardly a crippling bug. In fact, it's actually kind of helpful, since it allows you to remove whatever Quantum Gunners spawn in the Auction-Hall right away, BEFORE the big fight starts - the Neutral Mobs, after all, will not react in any way to you trouncing their Quantum-armed mates. It's pretty easy to figure out what's happening, too - and why it only happens in this ONE mission. Storytelling with Neutral Mobs is something you only really find in the Praetorian zones, and the groups you fight there do NOT have access to anti-Kheldian Quantum Tech - expansive though the Council's distribution-network is, it doesn't extend to other dimensions, it seems. So for the most part, you can play through First Ward and Night Ward as a Kheldian, without running into any Quantum Gunners - neutral or otherwise. But that ONE mission from The Magician, right near the end of Night Ward, takes you briefly back to Paragon City to deal with the Warriors, Tsoo and Circle of Thorns, all of whom DO get Quantum Gunner spawns... hence the fact that they're not coded to turn Neutral during these scenes becoming apparent.

I've already had it turned off for, like, multiple hours, on several occasions. Gotta do things like sleep, eat and work on occasion, after all. Now, granted, simply turning your machine off and on again won't clear that cache unless you've manually disabled Fast Boot, but Restarting WILL, and I HAVE. Still no change, still getting assailed by these messages. EDIT: Got a hold of a GM in-game, who suggested that this problem would likely be cleared by either A: Staying logged-out for 24 hours or more, or B: waiting for the server reset that happens every Tuesday morning. Just putting it in here for anyone who has the same problem and is searching for a solution! For now, I suppose I'm waiting for Tuesday... 😛

Well, I figured it was arena-related... but, as mentioned above, I've logged out and back in again several times since my one bout of arena-matches, to no avail. Several days have passed, and the messages are only multiplying, basically taking over the entire Global Chat window at times. I'd try to 'clear my computer memory', if I knew what that meant! I mean, I've rebooted my computer on more than one occasion since, so the RAM has been flushed - and I can't imagine there's anything on my hard-drive, since the whole thing is running on the SERVER...

Um... I think it's getting worse... or, they could possibly be linked to people actually using the arena? This happened at a rather more populated time. I'm on Reunion, BTW.

Based on some of the chatter I've heard, Homecoming is scheduled to MERGE with at least one other server that currently has a 'pet customization' mod built in. Considering that the players on there would probably be rather sore about LOSING such a nifty ability, it seems likely that it will be implemented across Homecoming at that point. There's no ETA on that, though, but it DOES suggest that it WILL happen... eventually.

I was a badge-hunter back in the day, and now that I'm back, I'm picking up where I left off. Being EU, I've settled on Reunion, but while there's certainly a fair few other badge-hunters about, I haven't seen any sign of an organized group. Badge-hunting SGs, Coalitions, a special Channel, maybe a Discord-server, I dunno - but a fair few badges REQUIRES a level of organization. There are Raids that only Badgers ever bother to run because they're only WORTH it for the badge, there's the arena where you need 8 well-organized people for a Swiss Draw Tournament and 10 for a Pentad. And just a lot of grinding that's a lot more fun to do with some like-minded nutcases than solo... So, IS there any kind of group, with a presence on Reunion, that I could link up with? Maybe I've just missed it 'cuz I don't know the Secret Handshake yet?

Yeah... kind of a pain if you're playing a Stalker, that, though I DO get the reasoning. Would be pretty weird if you could just stealth-stroll outta there with the hostage in tow while all the enemies either ignored them or pointlessly attacked the invincible NPC. (Oh, note though - in missions where your escort is a COMBATANT, and thus a valid target, they WILL follow you even if stealthed... and then get immediately murdered by the first mob you run across since they'll all target the perfectly-visible escort.) Other than that - and, of course, the possibility that OP has encountered a bug or glitch - the most likely explanation is simply that you're not staying close enough to the escort. They can easily get stuck on geometry for a while, PARTICULARLY while going up or down inclines or stairs, and if you get too far away, they'll stop following. In some cases, they'll even turn around at that point and start running back to where you found them...

I've certainly had some badges show up with SIGNIFICANT delay at time. Like, several MINUTES. It's rare, but it happens - presumably when the servers are having a bad case of the hiccups. And that would indeed seem to be the most likely explanation for this... but if you DIDN'T collect an exploration-badge (that may have been the last one you were missing from that set) a modest amount of time before entering that instance, yeah, that's WEIRD. Honestly, though, it's almost more surprising that a years-old character running around Dark Astoria doesn't ALREADY have the Passport-badge... I mean, it's dead easy to get, even if you don't wanna chase exploration-badges you can just hang out in Pocket D for an hour while chatting or browsing the AH, and that Long-Range Teleporter is pretty damn useful...