GraspingVileTerror

I believe that they've (re)moved the Ruined Galaxy Tutorial Badge. So, it's (to the best of my knowledge): Isolator in Outbreak for defeating 100 Contaminated. Jail Bird in Breakout for entering Cell #15 on the third floor at the starting area. Avid Reader in Praetorian District for clicking through all of Rothstein's dialogue options. Alternatively, Primals may also get it by becoming an Incarnate and clicking through Prometheus's dialogues about the Well of the Furies.

per in-game chat: [22:28:02] [other person]: Have you tried bringing yarn? [22:28:14] [me]: Alas, no yarn in-game. [22:28:37] [other person]: Time to suggest a knitting emote on the forum. So. ;knit please. Thanks! (Yes, I know that new emotes are going to be a long time coming. We've seen that 3D assets are now possible with the OuroDev kits, but I still haven't seen any evidence of new animations circulating yet.)

Glad to hear you snagged it, @Saverok! I hope that some day you will consider paying it forward to the next new/returning player who would like to unlock the Patron Pools. Good luck in your travels!

I don't want to crawl too far up my own rearside, so I apologize in advance for how this post comes off . . . but I generally feel fairly accomplished as a roleplayer. I've taken on many roles, ranging from all sorts of walks of (un)life, social locations, eras, settings, mental acumens, personal identities, and beyond. Some roles have been challenging, and some required quite a bit of research to get "correct." Others fit like a well-worn [REDACTED, FOR GOOD TASTE]. And I'll never claim to be an expert. In anything. There's always room to grow. There's always room to learn more. But the role which I consistently freeze up on and just end up feeling like crap whenever I try and then fail to take on is . . . Club-goer. Real life nightclubs are pretty much the antithesis to my being. I've done BDSM dungeons and felt very comfortable in that space, but spaces with loud music and drinking but no other -purpose?- Nothing structured? Nothing organized? Nothing to do? Just "socializing?" What even the hell is that? I can't even. This isn't normally a problem, but I do want to branch out a bit and get to making some connections with more roleplayers. The club scene is a pretty strong one on Everlasting. It feels pretty bad for me to be unable to tap in to that scene so utterly. Does anyone have any insights that they may be willing to share? Any ideas on how to potentially work around this issue I have without dragging down or disrupting the scene for anyone else? I'm happy to learn!

The limit is currently 200. I am at it on my main account. I've already had to drop about four or five folks from my GFriend list to make room for some new folks. It's always a tough decision to make . . . Having the limit increased would be stellar! Although, at a certain point, it'll probably happen again.

Actually, I have a whole series of Blueside characters who I roleplay as working primarily as community outreach and operate in a capacity to reduce poverty and resource disparity. Would be nice if there was something in the game for them to do to reinforce that, though.

Honestly, it's a post-(/ongoing-)war city. They should probably have full-blown Disaster Response Centres all over the place, not just fire stations. Maybe they're housed inside the Warwalls?

@Riverdusk has the general thrust of it. Hiding the chat from your viewers, but keeping it visible for yourself is ideal. While I don't believe there is a strict policy in place to protect the privacy of people sending messages in the game, it would be polite to give players the additional buffer. Granted, people sending messages which cause pop-up speech bubbles are a little trickier to address. Declaring yourself as a streamer with anyone who you happen to roleplaying with or teamed up with would probably also be a good idea.

May I recommend a small tweak, @Sailboat? "I can't hear you over the sound of HOW AWESOME MY PUNCHES ARE!" Or something to that effect?

More precisely to my previous post, be on the active reward roll as part of a team which completes any of these following missions, and earn their respective badges: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Ghost_Widow#Draw_out_Numina https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Scirocco#Defeat_the_genie_Serafina https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Black_Scorpion#Defeat_Dr._Quatrexin https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Captain_Mako#Eliminate_Ace_McKnight

You only need to get the mission completion reward for the last mission in any of the Arachnos Patrons' first Story Arcs. That single mission in each arc will reward that Patron's specific Badge, and also unlock the Patron Pools for all Patrons. You don't even need to be level 35++ to join such a team and unlock the Badge, but the Powers still won't unlock until Level 35. Villains and Rogues can start the Arcs at level 35, or join a team at any level, and Vigilantes may also join at any level. Only full-blue Heroes are excluded from the teams, since they take place in Redside zones.

An interesting mental exercise. Although . . . how quickly will it get twisted in to a debate? Think we can run a little contest and see how long folks can keep this thread on-topic? --- A challenging server, I think, would need to do away with the player-market entirely and smooth the Inf-gain curve across all levels. Perhaps put a daily Inf-gain cap in place on a per-character basis, which has the added benefit of further incentivizing creation of Alts. Oo! Or a per-ARCHETYPE Inf limit. That could be interesting. Got a tonne of "farmin' broots" on your account? Sorry, Brutes can only gain X amount of Inf. Time to move on to another Archetype. Not necessarily a -good- idea, mind you. Just an idea.

No. Not to the best of my knowledge, anyway. It's when @Snarky starts screaming about a cookbook that we resort to cannibalism.

That's another topic worth discussing . . . when the reasonable, sensible player-narrative runs up against the wall of unreasonable canon. Incarnates being a prime example. A.M.A.s suggest the Legacy Devs didn't intend to write the Incarnate system to be "it was all Magic Origin after all," but that's the explicit message the lore delivers. That, coupled with what's going on as the Hot Topic in General right now with Monos' thread on Challenge/Progression, is my primary reason for wanting there to be Anti-Incarnate content added as an alternative end-game. Naturally, for narrative cohesion it would have to be mutually exclusive with the regular Incarnate path, but to fulfil the implicit promise of City's core design, we should have the unlimited option to flip-flop between Incarnate and Anti-Incarnate mode. Such as a Null the Gull option (though I would prefer something a little more diegetic, ideally, but I'm not against giving people a convenient way to toggle it either). . . . well, adding that to The List . . . (and because I can see Coyotedancer right now, also adding the Typo Name List to The List . . . ) "What List?" You'll see . . . soon. Or maybe Soon!™. Assuming I can stay on task for more than ten minutes . . .

There's also the philosophical question of: If no one is there to witness the Paladin drone itself, is it immune to the Drones? Also also: When I see the title of this thread, I want to read it as "The Paladin is Dead. Long Live the Paladin."

Context! "Welcome Home" is hopefully rather self-explanatory, but my reading of the popularity of the statement has to do with the sense of coming back to a place which is familiar and carrying great sentimental value. "Redside is Bestside" (or some variation thereof) is something that we were actually trying to track down the etymology of: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/27840-need-help-from-a-historian-redside-best-side/ It may actually have started on Legacy, and not gained traction until now. "But Jimmy ..." is @Bionic_Flea's fault, near as I can tell. I'm personally not a fan. I'm not sure of the first instance of it, but it goes back over a year at least. (@Jimmy's knife) is explained here: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/28948-jimmy-reacted-with-a-knife/?tab=comments#comment-363935 (there's a "But Jimmy" right after it, go figure). "Looking for DFB" must be a Shard-specific colloquialism. I tend to see different phrases creeping up in Everlasting's LFG channel much more frequently.

The solution I would propose is two-prong: 1: Establish some clear, publicly-available design documents for future content/gameplay, which specifically address intent, scope, methodology, known issues/hurdles, proposed solutions, and skill requirements. 2: Expand the Homecoming Team with specific and focused calls to action for these projects, ensuring that recruits are on board with the projects they are signing up to. Motivate cooperation and adherence to the projects with a number of various incentives (none of which are financial, for obvious reasons). Now, I admit that this might be me being blinded by past biases in the industry, but it has been my experience that projects with clear leadership and goal-setting are more successful by leaps and bounds! Homecoming has the passionate and skilled community members chomping at the bit to get in there. Having the project design files public gives two advantages: Curated recruitment for projects, and an opportunity to address serious flaws at a foundational level (such as intent, scope, and methodology), which can then be leveraged to acquire clearer feedback and apply it. The first step, however, is educating the entire community. I've been there so many times when a kid who signed up to be a QA tester thinking "playing games for a living will be fun" was faced with the realization that what they were signing up for was real work. The ones who faired the best were the ones who were provided support and information from others who were more experienced. None of that "sink or swim" bullshit. That just tanked entire projects due to a cascading collapse. The best leaders (individuals or teams) that I worked with in the industry were the Teachers. The ones who took time to clearly establish and effectively communicate goals. I think we could benefit from that here. I believe it could be put in to great effect, including the creation entirely new forms of play, which could then be constructed with the crucial understanding of what came before, where it failed to deliver or where it succeeded. We could reach a critical sustainability of development, entirely with dedicated volunteers, passionate about City. The new Progression that people could chase is the development of the game itself. Does that sound appealing to anyone?

A perfectly valid explanation, @Tachstar.

@Monos King, I believe I understand what you're trying to get at in this thread, and I also understand why other players seem to appear to either be missing your point or talking around it. At the risk of repeating myself, I suppose I should be explicit myself: "Progression" is also arbitrary and the value of the concept as it applies to City should really be re-evaluated at this point. I acknowledge that there are players who like a sense of progression, and value it above everything else that City actually has to offer. Spoiler warning, but the series of threads I had planned that started with https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/29494-part-1-how-do-you-define-playing-the-game-specific-to-city-of-heroes/ were going to try to boil stuff like this down in a way that would hopefully give the community the tools to better discuss the issues different forms of "playing" present, and ergo the Devs more actionable feedback. The planning for the Pride event took priority, so the research post series became another project that I put on a backburner . . . and I'll admit, it's once I put something on a backburner, I have a terrible tendency not to come back to it. It's quite crowded back there . . . probably a bit of a fire hazard at this point . . . *coughs nervously* I've really got to do better. Sorry, to everyone. But circling back to this topic . . . The structure with which progress is measured and doled out is, like many aspects of the game'y part of the game, at odds with the fundamentally essential nature of City being a deeply personal experience in an MMO environment. My personal reason for being so passionate about City is how much potential it has. Other aged MMOs are much more rigid in the space which they can explore radical departures from the preconceived notions of what a game "has to be." City is primed and ready! We just need to seize on the opportunities it presents us. Naturally, with a volunteer group of Devs who have limited time to invest in City, we're faced with a bit of a challenge. But in being volunteers, we do not have the fiscal responsibilities to constrain creativity! There is also the added hurdle that many of the most adamant players seem to be chasing at rainbows and obsessed with a sense of nostalgia which City had moved away from even before it shut down. I don't believe those players are in the wrong for -wanting- to reclaim the sense of their lost youth, but I also don't think it's particularly helpful to the sustainability and future development of City to pursue. That path only has one inevitable end: Everyone finally burns out, because nothing really changed. More of the same content, even on an endless treadmill of grind like the Legacy Devs admitted to in the A.M.A. isn't a healthy way to develop a game. The wider industry is chalk full of examples demonstrating this. All that said, though . . . I don't think it's a bad idea to try and engage in a discussion about the differences between Challenge, Difficulty, and Progression . . . I just think your initial post framed the topic in a way that could easily be interpreted as an attack on the preference of players who are comfortable with the game's current state in regard to those concepts. Not an attack on the players themselves, of course . . . but something else I hoped to eventually touch upon in that series of research pieces: Many players have linked their sense of personal identity to City or an aspect of the game/content. Treading carefully is important while that remains true.

"Welcome Home."

I would totally support a revamp for all Archetypes which is a Primary Set, a Secondary Set, and a Tertiary Set. Then you could have "Mastermind Henchpets/Support/Blast" for example. Alas, -that- particular dream may be beyond our reach for a long, long time. But . . . yeah. I may never want to take a Blast on any of my Masterminds personally, but I wholly support the opportunity for other players to do so.

Boop! https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/1433-the-big-question-of-continuity/ My personal head-canon these days is that time travel has totally fubar'd the concept of temporal continuity in the City of Heroes universe, and people simultaneously exist in disparate timelines while maintaining relative physical consistency. It's the sort of situation that would cause someone like Einstein to rip his hair out in frustration trying to establish a General Relativity around, but it's the world we've got.

I think there is perhaps another way to examine this question: Are there players who have effectively "Beat the Game" confused and upset that they've beat the game after years of previously imagining that they would get an endless grind marathon? I personally feel that it's time for widespread recognition that the game has changed, and that if we want to create a sense of "Challenge" or "Difficulty" that players once perceived the game as possessing, then we need to do so in entirely new ways. Not just "hard content," although I'm not against more of Piecemeal's work when it comes to new enemy types (and I think that if we could even upscale the turnaround on how frequently stuff like that gets pushed through, it would go a long way to alleviating the boredom and burnout that seem to be causing people so much concern). But also entirely new types of content. I've said it since the beginning; we are in a unique position to get experimental here! We can radically redefine what it is to "play City of Heroes," while simultaneously preserving what came before and what exists presently. I want to encourage everyone to stop trying to recapture something that was already fleeting by the time Sunset occurred, and try to explore the new horizons of "What IF?" That's at least my perspective here.

"Short on melee sets ..." WHAT?! @Tyrannical, what? Since -when!?-

Frankly, @TwoDee, I don't think any of that is head-canon. I think it's just straight-up solid canon. At the very least, it was all implicit from the subtext of the lore. Kudos.