Maelwys

To be fair; if they're looking for ways to drive up adoption numbers then Die Hard (groan!) Badgers are probably a perfect target... 😜 Assuming we're talking about the optional checkbox deal (so other players on the server would still use rez powers just fine + none of the Game's Lore would need to be changed; aside from possibly a brief note about a few new heroes appearing who are "Conscientious Objecters to Mediporter Tech" or whatever)... then I imagine that the easiest way to tackle self-rez powers would be to disable choosing these on level-up using the same conditional prerequisites that are currently set for stuff like Sentinel Super Reflexes Practiced Brawler and Master Brawler - these are mutually exclusive; and it's done via a prerequisite power possession check. (i) Grant the Ironmanners a Silent Invisible Passive Power immediately after character creation; called "RezImmunity" or whatever. (ii) Set "not possessing RezImmunity" as a prerequisite for choosing each self-rez power in the game. (iii) Tweak the other rez effects so that they cannot affect any target that has RezImmunity active (similar to how Null the Gull turns off "Group Fly" effects) (iv) Disable the effect that is attached to Rez Inspirations- not just getting them as loot drops/purchasing from AH + various reward vendors/attaining via combination, etc. And currently levelling up whilst dead revives you too; because you gain the effect of each of the Large inspirations.

This is what the discussion about an idea is for. Finding better or more efficient ways for something to be added. Congratulations, you did it. Actually... YOU did it. Unfortunately the OP has thus far only ever expressed an interest in a dedicated environment where everyone within that environment is forced to play the same "hardcore" rules. And whilst voluntarily adhering to a set of Hardcore rules or even joining a Supergroup full of like-minded people might seem like a reasonable compromise, it was already suggested but not accepted by them. "It is time for a HARDCORE SERVER!" "Its the future, I'm positive its going to happen! So many other games are adding Hardcore servers as well" "if there is a hardcore server made, guarantee it would be the most populated by far!" "It's not the same to set "self rules" or even group rules. A server that makes your character immediately unplayable upon death is completely different, especially if every person you see has followed the survived thus far. Seeing lvl 50s actually would mean something" So congratulations @Super Atom; I can get behind your suggestion👍 Let's hope the OP can as well.

+ Powers and Lore tweaks so that these and all this does not become utterly pointless. + Sufficient Demand to Justify the Ongoing Cost (for a Server) and the Dev Time (for both) The former is probably surmountable if the latter is achieved. It's worth pointing out that the vast majority of dissenting comments in this thread (including my own) have not shot the idea of IronMan-mode CoH down; but focused instead on how deeply unpopular and financially unwise implementing a mandatory version of it on a new dedicated Homecoming server would be. Enabling HC-mode via an optional tickbox on the existing HC servers is a drastic departure from what the OP's original stance and ask was. And given that adding that wouldn't require an ongoing monetary drain on HC or an alternative codebase (self-rez powers could be locked out or redirected rather than removed; and allied rez effects could be made ineffectual on ironman-enabled players) the only real drain would be on the Dev Team's time. Therefore it'd be far more doable technically. Whilst all it would really be doing would be removing the need for self-policing (the "honour system" that the Ironman-mode players currently adhere to)... unlike the original ask it's neither utterly ridiculous nor harmful; and a few people might benefit from it. So yes; perhaps it'd actually have a fair chance of eventually being added to the Dev's ToDo list. But... THIS. The difference between an Optional Checkbox and a New Dedicated Mandatory Server is Apples and Oligarchs.

IMO this analogy is pretty spot on. Gasoline-powered devices certainly exist. They're useful. And rather popular. And people even enjoy watching streaming media about others using them. CPAP machines are a very niche product and their user base is a very specific demographic of people. So: TERRIFIC IDEA In order to make the leading brand of CPAP machines more popular, lets strap a gasoline engine to it and then stream the results on Twitch. (DAMMIT ALL YOU SILLY CPAP DEVICE USERS WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THIS IS THE FUTURE AND EVERYONE WOULD LOVE IT YOU'RE ALL WRONG AND TOXIC AND I SHALL NOT BE DETERED BY YOUR WEIGHT OF OPINION, EVIDENCE OF PRIOR FAILURES, COST-BENEFIT DISPARITY DISPLAYS OR SO-CALLED COMMON SENSE!) The "criticism" of the idea started in the third post in the thread. And the first two posts were the OP.

We're still glossing over all of the backend coding work that would be required behind making that checkbox actually DO anything though, right? And all of the lore and power selection bits that would need tweaked for the gameplay experience to remain even remotely sane, right? Right? Right. Never mind then, carry on...

Well darn; that's me told then, isn't it...

You mean like PvP? Agreed, go tell all the PvPers no more updates because there just isn't enough of them. The ask here is for Homecoming to MAKE A NEW "PERMADEATH ENFORCED" SERVER SHARD. Homecoming's published Server Infrastructure Cost for last month alone (for the current 6 shards) was $4,853.37 That's a average of a smidge over $800/month per server shard. Step back from yourself for just a minute. Given the preferences displayed by Homecoming's players (on the forums or otherwise) and Developers... can you honestly claim that anyone in their right mind would possibly consider it good value for money for a NON PROFIT ORGANISATION like Homecoming to commit ongoing funds to setting up a new "Enforced Permadeath" server? Let alone also provide enough manpower to implement a brand new fork of the codebase with "death=deleted" baked into it; alter all the powersets and lore accordingly; troubleshoot the aforementioned obvious issues with things like AE farming and emailing yourself "cheat items", etc. and then constantly maintain this separate codebase going forward for the life of that new server? That's not just a /jranger; that's a... By comparison; the most PvPers ever cost the devs was some fresh polish for Castle's steel toecaps after the severe kicking he inflicted upon them back in issue 13, although thankfully HC have recently thrown the poor sods a bone or two. Still; a PvP-only HC Server would doubtless end up far less of a ghost town than an Enforced-Permadeath HC Server... 🤔

Fair point! I must have missed a few pseudopets... 😀

"Developing Content"? Sure. "Wasting large amounts of time and money on something that has a target audience smaller than the Cybertruck Appreciation Society"? Notsomuch. Tell you what, forget how utterly stupid this whole inconceived notion would be from a lore and development time perspective for a minute... you've claimed that there're only twenty forumites here who are sitting inside our own little we-hate-this-idea echo chamber. So try finding even half that many Homecoming players who actually desire a server with mandatory enforced permadeath. We'll wait. Whilst we all take our afternoon naps and listen to some vinyl, obviously.

That's the most convincing argument yet to actually try to make it happen... 😆 Ehh, it took until my fourth post in this topic to bring out the /jranger, well after it was already obvious that the OP wasn't actually reading the linked threads. And afterwards I still ventured another few follow-up responses with reasoned arguments that were bordering on helpful before this delightful exchange started. But that's quite alright, by all means add mine to the other 19 matching opinions that you're dismissively ignoring whilst accusing us all of not understanding that the non-profit game we've been happily enjoying for years needs to suddenly change because a specific way of playing other MMOs has recently become popular on a particular Video Streaming website... 🙄

Let's recap, briefly. Your average CoH player also tends to NOT ENJOY PERMADEATH. Again, just because a handful of players do not enjoy something does not mean everyone doesn't. It is demonstrably not "a handful" of CoH Homecoming players who do not enjoy permadeath. Iron man SGs were a very niche thing even back on live, and you only need to read the threads I linked earlier to see how those very same players are now in even more of a minority to the point where the practice has become practically extinct. A few players might, yes. But you're ignoring the fact that almost Every. Single. Response. to this over the years has been overwhelmingly negative, even by the standards of the suggestion forum. So of course I can make statements like "If you polled the entire Homecoming playerbase right now with 'Would you be willing to play on a server with built-in mandatory permadeath?' you'd get fewer positive responses than a PUG Dr. Quaterfield run." . Because it's obvious from prior feedback that this is a deeply unpopular idea and (as has already been pointed out) it is also an notion that makes no sense whatsoever given the game's existing lore, balance and power selection; and would require substantial development and ongoing revenue. And it has even been tried already with no observable benefit on other non-HC servers. I therefore refer you to my previous /jranger.

Your average CoH player also tends to NOT ENJOY PERMADEATH. If they did... you'd see a lot more Supergroups out there like the old Iron Eagles one. And introducing Iron Man Mode might have breathed some new life into Thunderspy; regardless of how "unofficial" or "small" they are. And the folk on HC who actually enjoy playing challenging content and pushing their characters would be nodding instead of naysaying every single time this crops up.

Twitch? That's the guys who are trying to compete against Usenet, right? Fancy-smancy MMX technology. It'll never catch on. I maintain that games that are hard and/or make it tricky to avoid "dying" aren't exactly a new development.... ...it's just not something that the majority of the playerbase here at HC are into. (( see also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard )) I very much suspect that you could log onto Reunion at about 4am GMT and divide the number of active players by 10; and the resulting figure would be a reasonable approximation of what the peak population of a Homecoming "Enforced Ironman Mode" server would look like. Maybe. On a double XP weekend.

If joining random Four Star content runs is your goal; by all means choose one of the specific flavour-of-the-month builds. Whilst that content can be run by almost any toon; it's considerably faster whenever you choose toons/build combinations that go all-in on generating maximum damage output and leave the bulk of the damage mitigation to constantly rotating Defensive Incarnate Clickies. So naturally stuff like Ice/Cold Corruptors are often going to get first dibs; especially if you're PUGing. However personally I'd always choose a Sentinel who was conscientious enough to make a separate dedicated build for 4 Star content over another "meta" DPS who just rocked up with their generic do-everything PVE build. Further Reading: That said... Four Star content is a very niche thing; even assuming you view CoH as one of those games that doesn't really start until after hitting the level cap (and over all the years I've been playing... I can count the number of players I've encountered who hold that view on one hand!)

Personally I definitely found Powerboosted Fortitudes to be worth it back when I was playing an Illusion/Empath Controller on Live. That toon's PB Cycle time was ~29.5s which meant that it could keep a PB'ed Fort on up to four people constantly plus a non-PB'ed fort on the other three; for +31.87% Defense buffage on the squishier folk instead of +18.04%. Plus it affected Group Invisibility too; for another constant +5.26% Defense to everyone. Admittedly I was PUGing quite often so the more mitigation I could throw on everyone the better; and very few players back then were T4'ed up... but I'd still shy away from skipping it if I were to reroll that toon today. The other obvious potential use case is Forcefield. On a Defender a case could definitely be made that the extra +Def from PB is overkill unless they're running Incarnate content. But on a Controller/Corruptor/MM? I've got a (admittedly seldom played!) Demons/FF MM. PB brings her pets' defenses from a constant [17.68%+12.01%+10%=39.69%] to a constant [25.06%+12.01%+10%=47.07%] so technically 2.07% of that is "overkill" on the pets outside of defense debuffs... but any player character teammates would still be sitting at a mere +37.07% defense. Which still leaves some room for the usual culprits like CJ/Maneuvers/+3%DefGlobals and Barrier. I do agree on the "being locked into a particular epic/patron pool" thing though. MMs probably have it easier since Mace Mastery meshes better with other +Def Buffs; but locking Controllers into Energy Mastery and Defenders/Corruptors to Soul (or Energy if you're a total masochist) can be rather annoying...

Homecoming is intentionally low effort and high reward. People aren't here for a grind, they're here for the fun of playing the game. (Sure, PUGs may be quieter about it. But join a SG or hang out on Discord...) That's why it has a comparatively high population. Also the whole NCSoft legitimacy thing, but that's still a relatively recent development. On live you had to grind for Incarnate stuff, IOs were far pricer, and stuff like START and at-will Triple Exp wasn't a thing. There are still grindy servers out there. And some of them even have caked-in Iron Man Mode. But the players here generally aren't the right target audience for that stuff. So to recap: (i) It's been asked for before on multiple occasions. (ii) It didn't go down well then and unsurprisingly nobody has since warmed up to the idea. (iii) This is General Chat. The "Suggestions" subforum is --> thataway.

It would, however, still be a total ghost town. HC already makes it totally possible for you to play in "Iron Man" mode if that's your kink. There are even supergroups committed to the idea. It doesn't need a dedicated server for it. Just watch that honour system.

No.

It has. There is. And it isn't.

It's sorta ironic that folk keep reviving the idea every so often...

I mean... the game isn't balanced around permadeath, it'd make a fair number of powers pointless, and a LOT of the lore would need rewritten... ...but if you want to make those tweaks and then host the result just for poops and giggles?

Last I checked Energy Melee, Fire Melee + Katana were all pretty much within a hair's breadth of each other (with MA hot on their Heels) in terms of raw damage output. Katana's Lethal damage and Energy Melee's Smashing Damage Component are both resisted much more frequently + severely than Fire damage though.

My Tuesday night GM swapped from Roll20 to Foundry VTT shortly before I joined the game* and it's been quite successful so far. Few niggles with recent upgrades temporarily breaking spell macros etc; but the gameplay has been grand + much better environment than roll20. Only 4 of us at present too (sadly our 5th has health issues and probs won't be back for a bit!) but it's a decent number + gives everyone a chance to contribute. *2nd Feb 2021 judging by my session notes. The party had just hit Lv5 and we're currently a bit shy of Lv14. They're taking it SLOOOOOW!

Try "Bless" or "Shield of Faith" instead and if anything gets past tell 'em to take a short rest and use their hit dice to recover like proper adventurers 😛 (Healing Word/Cure Wounds certainly has its place... to pick someone up from unconsciousness. Just don't do that in the initiative order right before the enemy. Heh...)