TemporalVileTerror

I'm poking around with Outpost these past few days after hearing some of Epic Mountain's Kurzgesagt soundtracks. Specifically the Nuclear Death Toll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Q3Y2auW1Y

Yup. We're keeping our Netflix, but spouse cancelled AmazonPrime to make room for the new Disney Star. Eventually we'll cancel Disney when we've watched what we want to and possibly switch back to Prime for a while longer. Still really skeezy business practices, though.

X-Ray Beam has an Activation time of 1.67s, so it's animation is roughly that long. Cutting Beam has a 1.9s Activation. While I'd personally be okay with padding out the extra time with a bit of animation hang, I expect the Dev Team might not be (based on some of the other statements they've made about graphic quality over the past two years). So, sadly, there is a little bit of an extra hurdle in the way here. Hopefully one which can be overcome, though. The changes to Total Focus suggest the Devs now have the tools necessary to make adjustments like this feasible.

Another point of these being volunteer devs means that even if no one on the team currently has the time for this suggestion, that doesn't preclude the possibility of a new dev joining the team who focuses on this as their personal pet project. Suggestions are good. End of story. No one here is making demands. Stating that something may not be feasible due to scope is fair, but even then an expert opinion is more valuable than a guess made by one of us. Stating an idea sounds personally worthwhile or not is subjective, but fair. Stating if something is or isn't worth the devs' time is up to the devs.

A Level Boost for Sidekicks/Lackeys could be treated as a PBAoE Buff, originating from the Team Leader. How many complaints do we have about the Range on the Leadership Buffs? Err on the side of caution and make the Level Boost Buff radius a bit larger than Leadership. Hell. Maybe even introduce the Level Boost Buff in to the existing Leadership Buffs.

Also, another small note: Sorry @GM Tahquitz and everyone. I meant @Telephone when I had said "Lighthouse" in https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/22631-hey-devs-can-you-please-some-or-all-of-this-to-hc/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-327004. I had forgot to do my fact-check there.

It actually does scratch the surface, and I really appreciate you taking the time to post it, @Number Six. Thank you.

Neirsa (sorry if I misspelt that) was terrifyingly resilient during that time she was thrown in to the cage. I'm going to have to invest in some lower level characters to Malefactor the volunteers down far enough next time.

Lots, and lots, and lots to reply to (and I'll try to find some time this week) . . . but, specifically to that last message: It doesn't hurt to try. Let's try.

Thank you again for your insight, @Naomi. I suppose my point is: Do you -ever- hear the end of it, even now? I've personally never worked on a project quite like this. No commercial obligations, but also not entirely an original, personal hobby project. There's a LOT about Homecoming which is uncharted territory, and I have personally hoped from the beginning that it would afford this community the opportunity to move away from old, harmful development models. The hope that not only would Homecoming be a second chance for City of Heroes, but a chance to explore methods of de-industrialization of game development. If the sentiment is that the gamer metaculture is still much too toxic to permit for a safe space to fail, I can't fault that. There have definitely been years upon years of that attitude being intentionally cultivated as part of marketing ploys. I suppose part of me wants to believe that this game's community would step up and try to combat that. It's one of those things that I wanted to see from Homecoming's development back when we were asked about it in 2019. My hope has been for the Devs to extend the initial olive branches, and then reinforce them through community efforts. I don't want to assume anyone's lived experiences. I hope that no one on the Homecoming Dev Team has had to suffer in their professional career, but with how far reaching things have been and continue to be, I suspect that you each at least know someone who has suffered or had their passion exploited. Abuse thrives in hidden places. And I'm not saying the Homecoming Team are being abusive by keeping things hidden. But it is something we've been groomed to do by abusers. The culture of "keep it secret, keep it safe" is one which has allowed for so many problems to take such deep roots, especially in the games industry. So . . . magical imaginary theoretical situation: If the community could self-reflect enough to maintain an emotionally safe space for the Devs to share their failures without the passionate players being bent out of shape, do you (or anyone) have any additional insights on how to move toward that? What would you like to see from the community to improve communication on our end? (and not to totally subvert my own efforts here, but I would like to circle back to clarifying the core philosophies some day too. But I figure we should focus on this other stuff for now.)

In the context of a for-profit venture, I could see someone in management making that argument (and have, numerous times). Operating in that paradigm, there's this belief that "angry gamers won't buy our product, so don't do anything to make them angry." But given that we're operating in a situation where there isn't anyone's continued employment hinging on a certain subscriber base value and other Servers with divergent development branches exist, can you elaborate on any specific impact in your example which wouldn't be addressed by broadening the pool of available testers and input, and providing clear design goals in that scenario? If some unreasonable people are hindering testing and feedback efforts due to their personal beliefs and expectations, having a larger pool of potential testers would help overcome that issue by default. Additionally, even before that, having clearly defined philosophies and goals provide leadership something to point to and say "this is what we're looking for here." I'm unsure of what this nebulous scenario you're describing is exactly @Galaxy Brain, so I can't provide you with a more meaningful potential solution . . . which just circles back to exactly what the problem I've been describing is. Keeping things "in the dark" just hinders the overall development cycle. Educating everyone creates a massive resource to tap in to for better results.

Yeah, but having to sign away a part of your soul to get a membership card is kind of annoying.

Given this games' ludonarrative? I rather think one -could- just pick up those Incarnate abilities at CostCo these days.

Wholeheartedly agree, @RunoKnows. There are a lot of existing animations which could be utilized. About the only thing that would need to be addressed are animation times and activation times. Not an insignificant amount of work, but clearly one that would be well worth the investment.

Absolutely. And as breath/spit attack animations. And similarly using the death ray to fire off Fire Blasts, Ice Blasts, Radiation Blasts, et cetera. In other words: ALL the customization!

Thank you very much for taking the time to compose that thoughtful message, @Naomi. It's hits upon a lot of what I've been striving to see expressed by members of the Homecoming Team. Hopefully it's a message we can use to address concerns as they come up by other community members. Also, hopefully, it's the sort of thing which other Devs can find a little time to expand upon with their own personal points of view. I do have to question the part which says: "... avoid disappointing anyone if things take a different turn and we can't deliver." It's a sentiment I've seen expressed a number of times, but I just don't get it. My perspective may be narrow here, but it seems a little misguided to me to think that a lack of information prevents disappointment. The disappointment exists whether something was expressly considered and unobtained, or if it is quietly unobtained the whole time. At most, the disappointment is merely not expressed if there isn't the prompt. In fact, for me, knowing that something is on the Devs' radar gives me hope, even when its not implemented. It gives perspective and context; important clues as to what the future has in store. More information allows for better decision-making. For example, a Dev had once spoken about allowing for RGB Hex code to be used for costume colourization. Even if that never comes to pass, it's heartening to know that someone on the team cares about an improvement like that. To know that it's not considered undesirable. I do want to emphasize that I'm not asking for things on deadlines, as there seems to be regular misinterpretation in that regard by several community members. I am more than happy to have the team take their time. I'm asking for foundational work in communication. And I appreciate the efforts you have made here today. Thank you.

That's a point which comes up a lot, @srmalloy. I think (and admittedly this one's pretty hard to quantify with examples) that if the community puts more onus on self-reflection and informative discussion, rather than finger-pointing and nonsensical exaggerations to try and perpetuate arguments, then we could see some serious progress in that front. More time discussing facts (which could be provided by informed sources, ie: The Devs), and less time trying to undermine a point that possibly wasn't even the intended message in a post. To that end, I encourage all members of the community to spend more time communicating. Ask questions and seek clarification. Own one's own words, and recognize that effective communication and understanding takes mutual compromise. Avoid efforts to overload something that another person would prefer to take seriously with intentionally irreverent comedy. I'm not innocent, of course. I've occasionally reviewed my own posts here and said "ugh, that was dumb of me" in regard to how I've phrased things or how I've handled a discussion. City of Heroes is a game which demonstrates the incredible power of teamwork! (Arguably, of course, given the current concerns revolving around balance and Set Bonuses/Incarnate content, et cetera.) I think that the community can achieve greater things if we focus on collective collaboration, rather than assuming there's some resource to be fought over called "Dev Time." We have the capacity to support the Devs by doing heavy lifting for them! But, again, it's a two-way street. It doesn't help anyone if the boulders the community are moving are in a totally different neighbourhood than the ones the Devs are focusing on in secret.

I'm suggesting that there's a scale of reasonable examples for this discourse. The pay-out suggestion is so far outside of reasonable that it undermines any point such an exaggeration is meant to illustrate.

What does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDX6wNfjqc mean for: ?

I think it would be pretty clear that the Devs paying people $10,000,000 per character per month would not be a good idea, since I expect most people could follow the relatively simple logic of the impossibility of that proposal. In terms of giving Status Effect Protection to more Archetypes, it's a muddier and more nuanced situation. There's a question that needs to asked to examine the design intentions of the game. - What's the goal of the existing design? In terms of Status Effect Protection, we're seen plenty of players provide their speculative answers. Some of which seem well-reasoned. Others which are tantamount to "because I say so." Although few ever really hit the underlying principles which inform the design: The core philosophy. This is also the meta-question that I think would benefit the entire community to have the Devs answer. The most I've seen is nebulous answer from Jimmy agreeing with a user who said that they wanted to "feel powerful." Which was shortly before Jimmy admitted to not understanding how an as-of-yet unquantified number of community members could possibly even enjoy the game if not for the reasons which (presumably) Jimmy assumed all players were here. (I don't mean to pick on Jimmy; Jimmy's just been one of the more vocal members of the Homecoming Team in the past, and one of the only sources of insight in to their beliefs, philosophies, and intention.) For the players who just don't care, or whose beliefs align with the practical demonstrations of design changes, there's obviously not much of an incentive to overcome that communication barrier. Given the historic example set through all of humanity on the merits and benefits of cooperation, particularly with leadership which operates in the of role facilitators rather than autocrats, I admittedly assumed others would hold comparable values. I can't say I'm terribly familiar with such systems' rate of failure. Where I have personally observed the most significant failures is when leadership operates without oversight. The most successful projects I've been a part of were where oversight came from "below," rather than "above" (within the traditional paradigm of office hierarchies). I want the Homecoming Team to be successful. And to pre-emptively clarify from the question above, we've seen years of those intentions being subverted or outright changed in places by the Legacy/Retail Devs. There is an existing precedence. And after that, there are still more questions, of course. Including (but not limited to): - Does the current design meet the express goals? - Is there a more efficient way to meet those goals? - What's the feasibility of any proposed changes? I know the Homecoming Team are volunteers. Lighthouse said they have an internal roadmap. Awesome. Does the team have internal project plans too? Policies? Scope documentation? If so: Cool. In either event of they do or they don't, however . . . there's a clear advantage in sharing it for peer review with the community. And in an entirely subjective opinion; nah. I think that other Archetypes don't need inherent Status Protection. I do think the entire Status Effect aspect of the game could use some serious work, of course . . . but I acknowledge the feasibility of overhauling it would be excessive even for a fully-funded team. Not to mention the ol' "cottage rule" arguments. But it's still worthwhile to hear from players who feel otherwise without shouting them down and (I loathe to use this term, but) "white knighting" for the Devs. The players' feedback is valuable. If not for doing precisely what they proposes, than to use as a foundation to establish what the underlying problems are, and how else we might address them. And the more diverse voices we have in the process, the more likely we are to reveal an otherwise obscure solution.

Although, with the new tech demonstrated in the Accolade Powers between Hero and Villain alignments and the Jump Packs, I wonder if that couldn't be leveraged to allow for the Really Long Recharge Prestige/Transit Powers to share their cooldown between Builds. How feasible would that be?

Excellent to hear! Community efforts often yield better results in things like that, after all. Thank you, @TwoDee.

Broken record that I am, it would still be wonderful to actually know what the Devs here consider "good ideas" and "bad ideas," -divorced- from the feasibility and expressly stated in the context of "in the moment, and potentially subject to change," so we might have some insight in to what they actually even think City of Heroes is, exactly. (Feasibility considerations would also be nice to have, of course. Just to clarify.) After almost two years, it's been a helluva time trying to piece together where the Homecoming Devs stand exactly, and I don't like having to rely on rumours and speculation. And I do get that the Devs aren't obligated. I do get that it takes time to think about, compose, express, and then refine those views as typed messages here. And that expressing those views in a public space implicitly invites scrutiny and criticism by a wide audience. And that there are individuals who make snap judgements, and people who are toxic and offensive in the expression of their feedback. And, based on my personal views, it would all be very much well worth it. It opens the door for meaningful discussions that can illuminate serious shortfalls that wouldn't be exposed otherwise. It actively invites the deconstruction of any potential echo chambers which may be obscuring viable solutions. I'm not capable of forcing the Devs to do anything. Even if I was, I wouldn't. I just want to encourage them to make the attempts, time and energy permitting. And before anyone bring out the old hat, the Devs are the -only ones- who get to decide if they have that time and energy, and how much they want to commit to it, if at all. . . . theoretical clauses enforced by probable N.D.A.s notwithstanding . . .

Having additional options to customize the visibility of those triangles, such as making them larger/more prominent, may still be worthwhile.

@Piecemeal or which ever other Dev(s) are going to be tackling lore-oriented content should definitely take a look at that impressive write-up, @TwoDee. Kudos.