TemporalVileTerror

Problem is that those don't always render the same for everyone. For example, under "Flags," most of them just show up at black flags for me. The gendered ones also show up for me as the icon followed immediately by the Mars or Venus symbol. Some just straight-up don't show up at all, given that they're are several gaps or empty boxes. For example: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/21971-september-magic-themed-costume-contest/?tab=comments#comment-255621

And then there are factors such what the judges ate for breakfast that day. I mean, if you're on the Shard with a GM who is hangry, and someone has the exact same costume as you on the Shard with the GM who is well-fed and feeling good, and those two GMs would otherwise have made the same decision . . . It's just too many potential factors to consider. It's really more of a random lottory than it is anything approaching an actual contest.

Reverse Repel, Alt. We're talking about the new Reverse Repel, Draw-In, Drag, Pull mechanic. Whatever the Devs have decided to name it.

Perhaps something along the lines of: Hellion Boss.: "Did you get the Talisman of Glamour?" Hellion Lt.: "No. Some heroes busted up my crew and managed to get it back before we could escape." Hellion Boss: "You failure! How are we supposed to infiltrate City Hall now!?" Hellion Minion: "Yeah! And what if some hero uses the Talisman to sneak in to HERE!" Hellion Boss attacks Minion. "Shut up! No one asked for your opinion. Idiot."

On Legacy/Retail, I made "a living wage" by winning Costume Contests with my main. Back when 9999 was the maximum Inf you could trade at a time. I was able to fully slot SOs every 5 levels until the 40s, while also screwing up and not knowing what I was doing and wasting tonnes of Inf in the process. These days? I get the occasional "that's creepy" for that same character's appearance, and haven't won any contests yet. Although, I've got a sugar-momma now who does market crap, so I've been able to afford to run contests and events instead. Contests where I give special attention and credit to players who might not receive appreciation from more "mainstream" aesthetic sensibilities.

The short answer: No. And they can't ever be, because taste is subjective, AND City of Heroes has generally attracted a fairly diverse number of people (albeit it in a Western socio-economic bubble, but it's at least a bubble which has seen influences from around the world). So, the most we can hope for is to be one of the lucky chosen few who a GM adamantly exclaims to the others "that one! That's the one I want to win. I won't take 'no' for an answer!"

There's also someone new at the villain elevator, replacing the old bouncer.

Aye. Thrown Weapons. I need me some Throwing Knives, after all. And there's a lot of potential fun for people who want to throw Axes too, as @MTeague said. Playing cards . . . as long as they don't glow with "kinetic energy" or something like that, I think we'd be fine. So, some renaming suggestions: Throw Blade Envenomed Blade Trick Shot Blade Barrage Aim Explosive Edge Masterful Throw Cutting Dance One Thousand Slices

I popped in and out of a few of the new Pocket D doors with some various Primal Alignments. Everything seems to be working appropriately, although I admittedly didn't try all four doors in each of the wings with each Alignment. I just couldn't stand all the loading screens. But they all seem to be working as intended, I think. Didn't test anything with any Praetorian or unaligned characters though.

No patch notes yet, but it appears https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/29123-beta-patch-notes-for-may-24th-2021/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-365141 is up on Beta as of this morning.

@Hyperstrike may have escalated things a little quickly, so by scale this won't seem as impressive, but to enter "not a knife, this a knife" arena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aja6kMX6--k

Precisely why I know it will never happen. I just always felt that Levitate and Telekinesis were WAY out of place thematically for the Set.

Thanks for explicitly stating it, @Faultline. I'mma just bookmark that post, there, and drop it whenever people try to use the "I want X instead of Y because of Dev time," where X and Y are totally unrelated development types.

Just gonna boop this in here, 'cause @HelBlaiz wanted some of that Pull mechanic love for Telekinesis too: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/29027-telekinesis/ But, yeah. I am looking forward to seeing there Pull, Drag, and Knocktoward effects getting put in to more Powers. I know that it's not going to happen, but I still think it would be great to drop "Telekinesis" and "Levitate" from Mind Control, and use them along with 7 other new Control Powers in a Telekinetic Control Set where every Power utilizes these new and wonderful game mechanics. (Then give Mind Control a Single Target and AoE Stun Powers to fill the two gaps, to remain entirely Telepathic.)

I would expect most browsers to have a Save Page function. At least Opera and ancient Internet Explorer do. But printing it out? Talk about a MAJOR waste of paper. Yikes. I would recommend seeing if someone would be willing to author a script for you which trawls through the website and saves threads in to offline HTML packs, then view them on a tablet or e-reader. That's probably the most environmentally friendly AND efficient method.

Hey now. Not all villains are about that "furious anger" stuff. Some of us are more about the "Cult of Personality" thing, you know? . . . uhhh . . . not that . . . um, not that I have ANY experience with that sort of thing. *shifty eyes*

I can't say. I mean, I can't say the whole reason. Violation of the Code of Conduct to get in to the knitty-gritty, you know? *coughs nervously* ANYWAY. So, short answer . . . roleplay. The best, soul-revealing, and personally meaningful roleplay I've ever had. And there's something satisfying about taking down -super- threats and watching all the bullet casings fly as a Natural-Origin Mercs/Traps Mastermind. "Dakka dakka!"

To offer the benefit of doubt, perhaps the organizer had a real-world emergency? Did anyone attempt to reach out to the player who was announcing the contest and find out what happened?

I personally take more of a collectivistic view and less of a Hegelian dialectical one to this process,. I think it would be more productive and structured to establish the parameters of grand design philosophy at scale with a stratified tier separate from the implementation and practical application discussions.* I've made efforts throughout the past two years here to articulate my own views, and found it a constant struggle, as I can't quite engage in such a confrontational system as the one you describe, @golstat2003. It doesn't "fit" my methods, my professional and hobbyist work experiences, or me as an individual. That's not to say that I haven't sometimes found myself getting defensive or even feeling a desire to react with hostility in these forums, of course. Sometimes buttons get pushed. I just see so many users here who seem to thrive on intentionally demoralizing others. Others who are trying to contribute toward either method, or just generally expressing their own opinions. So, because of all those factors, I am trying to encourage an approach which I believe has the chance to yield a better end result. Clearly I haven't yet figured out the best way to encourage others to attempt this method with me. Teamwork as opposed to PvP, in terms that may help some of the players here to understand my attempted approach. Granted, with so much of what goes on with the Homecoming Team obscured, it's kind of like trying to play a Task Force with the UI turned off, to belabour the metaphor further. Not impossible, particularly for experienced individuals, but it sure doesn't make it any easier. * Didn't know where to address this without disrupting the flow, but I do want to stress that I also understand that things do change over time. The specific goals and intentions which even the Homecoming Team may have for City of Heroes will be subject to shifting personal views, better understanding of desires and expectations of the playerbase, skills and professional development, and (extremely frustrating to me on a personal level) legal obligations with NC. And I do recognize that expressing the goals, intentions, and philosophy takes time and energy that are finite resources, and resources that are shared with actually committing to development of City of Heroes itself. (Albeit, I think having a dedicated "mouthpiece" / P.R. rep for the Homecoming Team might seriously help cut through a lot of those problems, but that's yet another conversational tangent.) So, I acknowledge that maybe I too need to lay some groundwork and actually dedicate a thread to discussing -my- goals and intentions, and the philosophy which informs them. Thusly, I suppose I'll put a pin in this thread for now and try to work up the energy to give some foundational parameters to help better reinforce this thread and future ones.

I -think- I've mentioned an idea along these lines a few dozen times, both here and in Legacy/Retail . . . although I don't know if it was ever in its own thread. But . . . yes. Very much yes. Even if we can't go back and fix all the old content, it would be great if all FUTURE content was built with these fundamentals understood and accounted for.

Again, it seems I've done a poor job at delineating here. I think discussing the pros and cons of the suggestion here is fine. I think discussing the broader reaching elements of design philosophy in terms of "what even is a game, and what is gatekeeping" is important to have, but draws us away from the specific focus of this topic. Focused Feedback versus Design Philosophy. Both valuable, and both interrelated, but I felt it would be valuable to organize them accordingly. Of course, at this point, this thread has certainly mutated in to a meta-discussion on the discussion itself, so my intended plan clearly backfired.

It seems there has been a miscommunication. I am welcome to receiving criticisms of my philosophy, though I suggest it takes place in a thread dedicated to discussing the design philosophy specifically. As I view that as a broad-reaching topic of discussion, I think General is the appropriate board for such. I want to maintain this thread as discussion to the specifics of the suggestion itself. I am asking for people to organize their thoughts and criticisms appropriately per the structure of the forum boards. Naturally some cross pollination will occur. Hence why I requested it, and didn't make it a demand. The "fix" here is that groups of friends will need to make fewer compromises in determining which content they can play together. Additionally, all players may extend their pool of potential recruits, if they are willing to. If someone really wants the Lady Grey Task Force, for specific example, then it will be easier to form a team, as the number of players available to create that team has been effectively increased. Improved player choice and self-determination. Providing players with additional tools to determine the parameters of their own gameplay matches design philosophies evident throughout the development history of City of Heroes. Frankly, I see this change as the natural progression of a series of intentional design choices stretching back to the original inception of Sidekicking.

"Sad" is a tricky one, as it can be sympathetic or outright just an admission of being disheartened with something that somebody else expressed. I generally only use it when I feel that the message is clearly in one of those two extremes. But "Confused?" There was a period of time where several users would "revenge Confuse" others, which I can only rationalize as those other users misinterpreting the "Confused" to mean something other than exactly what it says on the tin. For what it's worth, I haven't seen any Thumbs Down in practice yet. . . . which makes me wonder . . . are they invisible to other users, like one of versions of the recommendation of the Facepalm Reaction that was suggested last year?

You know . . . Nothing. I gave it a lot of thought, and frankly? Homecoming is presently delivering the best version of City of Heroes that I've ever played, if I am honest with myself. Sure, there's room to grow. Room to improve. Things that I would have done differently. But that's ALWAYS been the case. Nothing's really that different from Retail/Legacy in terms of the game itself, just a whole piles of quality of life improvements and the shifting nature of what we -could- do with the game. So, no. No rose-tinted glasses for me here. I will maintain that City of Heroes isn't perfect yet . . . but this is definitely the best it has ever been for me. And to that end: Thanks. To everyone. Devs, GMs, and community alike.

Going to recommend that https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/29123-beta-patch-notes-for-may-24th-2021/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-365141 get pinned to the top of this thread to help new posters realize what's in the pipeline.