Dazl

Congratulations Homecoming, it's been a long time coming. I hope you use this to get the word out to the old players who haven't joined us yet and those who haven't even heard of us.

I saw a post, possibility on MMORPG.com about CoH returning. Then got an email from former team mates during live. Glad I got back in shortly after Homecoming launched and didn't miss too much.

I couldn't agree more. If there could be only one fix to the league system, this would be the one I would love to see. I had this problem with the hami raid on Excelsior tonight. Range leader got disconnected and the new team leader didn't respond to my tell to pass the star when I got the leader back. Fortunately I held off inviting new people alt'ing and I had enough room to move the range team members to other groups to get the leader back to the top, otherwise I would have had to kick them all and then re-invite them once the leader was back in place. The devs and the homecoming team have done great things to improve this game, but the league system really needs to be fixed over some of this other fluff stuff.

Not being deliberately antagonistic, I just have a different opinion. Getting rewards for something you can do afk is quite a bit different then doing something with a group for a reward. Sure any team or league effort will have people contributing at various levels but most people work together to complete the task. Even solo content (outside of AE) requires you to focus and interact to complete. If someone feels there is no difference between afk and a solo/group focused activity, then we will simply agree to disagree.

Looks like the Dev's disagree, nice try though.

Technically you didn't really "earn" the emps, they are a gift given at certain leveling milestones. I understand though, everyone gets a trophy.

There seems to be a bit of hyperbole about the impact of this change and the fallout it will create. It’s a transaction that never should have been allowed in the first place. There are plenty of merits to be had, if you want them go earn them. This only takes away the 4100 free merits you would get if you sold all the vet emps. While that is a decent sum, it’s not game breaking and can be earned relatively quickly over time. Even more so after the change because you will have new ways to earn them, along with the tradition methods. Why do you think so many of us do hami raids?

You can send Transcendent merits to your alts to build out their incarnates.

I do agree that some of the cost for items on the reward vendor should be adjusted. ATO's and purple recipes should only cost 50 merits, and regular IO recipes should be 25. Winter IO's and ATO's both cost 100 merits, and they are not close to being the same value. As I asked before if you can't buy emps with merits, why can you sell them for merits? Isn't the incarnate salvage supposed to be account bound. In the end it's not really that many emps. If you just farmed for the 20 emps you would get 160, which is only 1600 merits. It's pretty easy to earn that outside AE.

Why were you able to sell emps for merits in the first place? You could never buy emps with merits. Incarnate salvage is designed to build your incarnate powers and is account bound.

I remember back to the last big change they made in AE and the whole game when they removed the disabling of experience for more influence. I understood doing that inside AE but it should not have been nerfed outside of AE. The big argument for those who supported it was “We have to reduce the amount of influence generated because it will cause inflation”. If it was so bad back then, why isn’t it even more of an issue now if you can do the same thing on steroids? It's not the “Farming” it’s the “AFK” that is the issue.

If you are building a farmer to earn emps to convert to merits, you are right that would be tedious and slow. I’m not even sure how efficient it is compared to other ways to farm merits like hami raids. I have no doubts about your good intentions and you're a probably a rare exception. I have a few farmers I use mainly to level up new toons. Sure, I guess if I have to go to the bathroom, they would still be alive when I got back but I wouldn’t “AFK farm” them intentionally. Maybe it does or doesn't hurt anyone else. I guess I’m an old fuddy-duddy that thinks you should put the effort into it and not just put it on cruise control.

There does seem to be something fundamentally wrong with “AFK Farming”. Being rewarded for doing nothing should be an issue.

Well done devs. This is a very good solution to an ongoing problem with AE. One simple change that will have a big impact. 01

This is admiral and I think I understand what you are trying to do, but something this big needs the dev’s and HC who wanted this to address the community with your rational.

Stealth is available from the P2W vendor. Seems the stuff is still there, just in a different order. Everything is unlocked for all players. Looks like HC got this one covered for the minor game system it is.

Yeah the biggest problem with that raid is they don't do it everyday at the same time, so it's going to be harder to fill if people don't know when it's coming. The few time I have been there it filled pretty fast, but that has been a while. Bad time of day for me.

The Abyss is the only hami zone available to villains, they can't enter the Hive. So if you wanted to be able to get the max number of people you would hold it there. The down side to the Abyss is the giant monster hunt is harder because the GM's are spread out and not clustered together like the Hive. The only raid I know of on Excelsior run in the Abyss is Confusion? raids run on some days around 6-6:30pm ish. That raid tends to fill pretty fast when it's run, so not sure about the raid you are talking about unless someone else was trying to run one there.

If you have ever played any other MMO’s you have probably seen this issue when servers lose populations and mergers happen. People want to be with other people in any MMO, so you want more players. If the goal is to add new people then there really needs to be some clarity and resolution to this issue with NCSoft.

Welcome home, sorry it took you a while get here. Things have changed since live and there is a lot of things that will be new or you forgot about. Enjoy being a newb again. Sure you can remake your old mains at some point, but starting something new in a new-old game might be a better experience.

By the way if your interested in a potential "quad bloom" raid you should join Everlasting's Midnight (est) Saturday Hamikazi. There is a chance for a quad bloom every time we do it. Doesn't happen very often and many times we kill the hami twice with the same lore pets. Good fun.

Yeah you get a quad bloom with a failed zerg. Cleared one of those on Everlasting, it's hard, but feels cool when you are done. Much like last night, seemed lots of people just liked it for the challenge. Green mitos heal the hami and the other mitos. So if the control team can keep them busy it makes it easier on the melee/tank teams to clear the yellows, which are the biggest threat. We aren't going to kill any green mitos before the range team gets back, so we run cover for melee and spread our hold around to try to prevent the greens from healing the yellow mitos the melee/tank teams are working on. When the range team gets back, we kill the greens and by them the melee/tank teams are good. Would be interesting to actually plan a "quad bloom clear" raid. Just creating the quad would be wild.

Yeah it was quite an epic raid. Great work to Magma who led and all you who stayed and helped clear the triple bloom. I don't have any pictures I'm afraid. That would be the first triple bloom I've ever helped clear here on Excelsior. Since we have moved to the one bloom clear method now, a triple bloom is always going to be the result if we fail to kill the hami. Since we know this method requires us to gut through the 75, 50 and 25% blooms, it is critical that your keep you EoE up the whole time we are killing the hami. I joke and say "Take your damn EoE !!!" , but it's also true and really important. It's easy to get kind of complacent toward the end when it looks like the hami is about to die, but that is the most dangerous time were one good blast from the yellow mito's can wiped half the league. It was really cool to see everyone rise to the challenge. It doesn't happen often and now you can say you cleared one.