FoulVileTerror

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/19655-weekly-discussion-53-how-to-increase-villain-population/page/7/?tab=comments#comment-222763 . . . I need to clone my brain. Get some of these projects under way . . .

@Replacement . . . I GM tabletop roleplay and in-game events (not to be confused with "GM" in the context of Game Moderators, mind you). I am no stranger to talking to myself for the entertainment of others. I just try to avoid it in the forums as there are some people who are really upset by it here.

If you know of some other means to achieve the desired result, I imagine the devs and community would appreciate having a breakdown on the details. And I don't mean that with any amount of sass; I strongly encourage everyone to share ideas and criticisms of the game in an effort to improve it.

This largely goes back to the discussion that occurred about "getting people Redside," and it was brought up by several people that one of their chief barriers to entry are the Rogue Isles themselves. Those players would be happy to play villainous content, but the thought of navigating in Redside zones was so intensely unpleasant to them that they just couldn't do it long-term. There are, of course, other opportunities to tell interesting stories and perhaps infuse new forms of gameplay. While strictly speaking; these problems could be addressed in other ways, there's also a "coolness factor" for a lot of people to get to experience "life on the other side, on the same side."

From the perspective of someone who's been on the other side a few times, I have to say my experiences lead me to safely conclude that is not the case. A secretive development cycle doesn't change the amount or intensity of complaints, just defers them until later and does harm to the trust between developers and players. In my past professional experience, the only group who legitimately benefit from this format are publishers, who exploit fears from both the devs and players to increase employee retention and player spending. Not every publisher is necessarily skilled at this, of course, and we have a few delightful examples of it blowing up in their face . . . but usually when they screw up, it's still the devs and/or players who end up suffering. Homecoming represents an opportunity to get away from that. The Dark Melee experimental content is the only foray I've seen so far, and I still contend that clearer communication of it being an experiment and what the devs were looking to achieve would have largely mitigated the issues. Issues which, unless I missed something that got moderated out of the forum, were significantly less severe than the waves of complaints, concerns, and ensuing backlash to changes made in a vacuum and released without warning.

We've done this song and dance before: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/20081-page-6-guesses/ Here was my answer: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/20081-page-6-guesses/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-238340

So, @America's Angel, @CU_Krow . . . if you're serious about having some "dirty deals done" in the vein of Rikti Monkey Fight Club for observers, I shall have to request some more intricate details on how this tournament will run in terms of brackets, timelines/scheduling, and the like. Also, how to ensure that matches are documented accurately and fairly.

You have until the end of October to enter in to the official contest: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/22344-first-ever-homecoming-base-contest/ Do you imagine you would be able to finish it off before then without burning yourself out? If so, I'd like to encourage you to make the attempt!

Something like https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/22314-if-you-could-radically-overhaul-1-thing/?tab=comments#comment-259972 @ABlueThingy? It's been on my list of things to get around to drafting up a Design Document for when I find the time. . . . finding time has not been easy, lately.

Would there be any special consideration in situations when Controllers are teamed up together? Would the mechanic continue to function exactly the same way, or would there be any kind of diminished values when multiple Controllers are able to lay out Control from multiple sources?

I think @GenesisMan has pretty much nailed it. Nicely done! Possibly add a little damage component to Invoke Panic, and change its name. "Harrowing Visage" perhaps? "Screaming Terror" and make it use a Howl animation?

It's been a little while, so my memory's spotty on my original motivation for that post, but I believe my intent was to use yours as a springboard to address those additional points for the benefit of everyone else who's reading this thread. Not trying to suggest that you don't believe the points raised, but that they didn't appear to be explicitly brought up in your post, and I just wanted to add them. I do my best to avoid attacking people, and I apologize for failing to make my words reflect that.

Ok, I think we've waited long enough . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI More rainbows in-game? I am okay with this.

@Lines, @EmmySky . . . no no no. It's not a question of whether or not it -works- to decide if it's wrong. It's a question of whether or not Emmy ENJOYS it. So long as she does, regardless of the outcome; 's'all good!

@alittlesoupy, I recommend you bring up that particular type of concern with a GM directly in private. Airing something like that out in public has a a poor track record.

Aye aye, @Ukase. I noticed that as well. I'm curious if that's a Legacy feature or something that was added with SCoRE.

Badges as a teaching tool is exactly what I'd like to see too, @Luminara. The potential is there, and it even looks like the Legacy Devs were slowly leaning in that direction close to the end. And then somebody went and upped the requirements for the Inf Badges.

We're probably all pretty familiar with the rhetoric many of us espouse around here that goes along the lines of: "As long as you're enjoying yourself, and not ruining it for anyone else, then you're not playing the game 'wrong.'" So, here's a little video that I came across today. I'm still mulling it over in my head, but at the very least I think it has some interesting things to say on the subject of player goals in games, and how that affects motivation and (ultimately) retention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypOUn6rThM I figure that if we, as fans of this game, can develop a more robust language to describe what we find valuable and meaningful in our play experiences, then we can help inform the developers more clearly and concisely when it comes to our feedback.

As a professional cook and ex-professional games' industry employee, I question the direction of this thread . . . much as I question my own direction in life.

Folks are interested, as there have been a few threads which definitely hit upon this subject before. As it stands right now, it seems that the Homecoming Team don't have access to the proprietary tools necessary to get new 3D assets in to the animated characters in the game. The most they can do is jury rig some stuff by taking bits and bobs from one place and attach it to another. Since the hats with hair were modelled as single piece assets, they can't be separated without the appropriate tools. As ever, though, I would be very happy to be wrong about this. I haven't seen any Homecoming Devs ever give a straight answer on this topic before. The most we got was Jimmy saying that the Team wouldn't be enabling NPC costume pieces for players due to those pieces not meeting the Team's expectations of quality. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14462-could-we-please-get-these-costume-pieces-moved-from-dev-only

Honestly, I think it's the Bolos on Utility Belt that are going to trip up the Devs. Pun originally not intended, but when I realized it was coming, I just rolled with it.

Excel file. Opening it in Apache OpenOffice 4.1.6. Opening XLSX files normally doesn't cause this kind of slowdown. I just tested with a few other XLSX files, and all of them opened within 1 second. I saved your spreadsheet file in to the native ODS format for OpenOffice, and shaved almost half the file size, but it still takes over 15 seconds to open for some reason. I'll try rebooting my whole system later, and see if that changes anything.

Very good to know, thank you. Even still, this is top form! I do wonder why it takes so long to parse and load, though, considering it's only just over 700kb. For some reason it took about a minute and half to load, while spreadsheets I have which are 700MB take a split second.

Thanks @Bopper. This is pretty awesome! Although, am I reading it wrong, or does it not contain any of the information such as Buff/Debuff/Control/Special Effects?

I counter with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir-y6-L6Vlk