GraspingVileTerror

The idea has come up a few times, although usually in threads with different suggestions, such as: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/29297-stop-respec-from-reshuffling-tray-icons/ I wonder if a new Macro Command would work. /macro_timer <time> <name> <command> (and /macro_timer_image <image> <time> <name> <command>) Time would be set in Seconds, and ideally be automatically effected by Global Recharge. I haven't seen a lick of the code for the Power Timers we have right now, so I'm not yet sure what magic is being worked for that feature. And thus have no other ideas on how to co-opt it to this intended function. Anyone else with more insight have some ideas?

Manticore and Captain Mako were secret lovers, but busy-body duo Statesman and Sister Psyche didn't approve. Psyche being not too different from her Praetorian counterpart believes she is helping people by "curing" them of their true identities (Malaise says "hi," by the way). In subverting Manticore's true identity, she imprints herself as "ideal" to him, which carries us down through those years of their marriage. But something is always gnawing away at the back of Manticore's mind. It drives him to more and more severe anger, as his true self rages to be set free from the psychic prison ("hi again," says Malaise). Likewise, Captain Mako is already a blood-thirsty psycho, but without the one shining beacon in the form of Manticore's love, he goes off the deep end and we see him at his most savage through the majority of the narrative which takes place during the game years. Then we come around to Who Will Die, and Manticore offs Psyche, when other options were available. It doesn't free him from the psychic prison, but now the warden is gone, and over time he can break free. Likewise, hearing that Psyche is dead helps mellow Mako out, which is why he's so much more agreeable in that arc released shortly before Sunset.

So. I've seen quite a few people with Bob Ross pastiche characters back when Homecoming first started up. Some of them were pretty inspired! Today my spouse showed me this: A script written by an "AI" after purportedly being fed 1,000 hours worth of descriptive scripts from Joy of Painting episodes. I would like to see what your interpretation of this would look like in-game (bearing in mind the limitation of not creating the likeness of real people, per the Code of Conduct, so get creative!).

Oh, yes. I didn't explicitly say it, but I tried to imply it at the end of my post. I absolutely adore what everyone is doing in this thread! I want to see people delving in to other aspects of the game's lore with equal aplomb (ie: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/29962-flying-v-industries/ )! I also want to encourage everyone to bear in mind that the fuzziness of City's lore is also a good thing. It gives players more room to branch out and explore the narrative through their own unique points of view. I like it when the story here leaves enough space for players to squeeze in their own original creations. I want there to be a solid framework for all players to build their wonderful stories upon. I want it to be a strong framework, but also flexible. Multiple foundations, interconnected to one another, but with plenty of space to build upward or outward from each. I believe that's the ideal path forward for the game's sustainable longevity, as opposed to canon storylines which constrict creativity.

I say "over there, and maybe no further, for now" while pointing past the point of P2W Challenge/Affront.

I just want to say that there's a very, VERY good chance that none of the original Devs spent nearly as much time as the folks in this thread trying to ensure continuity and consistency in the Praetorian narrative. That is not a criticism of any of you. However, I just want to remind everyone that there's a good chance that things may not align completely due to the writers' original work being incomplete or even incompatible with itself. On top of that, Unreliable Narration is a literary tool. Any "facts" expressed by a character within the game can be subject to additional scrutiny as potentially false. Characters are allowed to lie in a story. Public service announcement over. Please carry on!

For consideration: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Presence#Challenge

A @Lines! Haven't seen the likes of you around these parts for many a moon. This loops back in to a project I have on a backburner of a backstove: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/21630-chris-jenkins-and-capn-kraken/?tab=comments#comment-249499 (And to a lesser degree: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/13797-the-great-gazebo-hunt-2020/ ) The real challenging part of a project like this will be to trawl through all the mission dialogue for each reference of these companies, and establish which ones are umbrella'd under which other corporations, and which are fronts for which villain groups or Manticore, et cetera. At the very least, it's the kind of information that would help future developers maintain lore consistency.

But @America's Angel! You can't scream. You can only emit a speech bubble above your head with a string of As in it, followed by an exclamation point. That thing on your face? It's not a mouth. It's a crude simulation of a mouth. And then there's the fact that your cloths are now a part of you . . .

I can't recall exactly, but I believe if you have Sgt. Suzanne Bernhard, Karen Parker, or Warren Trudeau, then you can't get Cho Ge. I believe they're all mutually exclusive, since they offer the same Natural storylines. I think.

Some handy tidbits: There are five Shards: Torchbearer is the original Homecoming Shard, but it saw a large exodus when the other Shards became available and Free Character Transfers were made available (which still exist, up to 3 per 5 days, or something like that). Excelsior is the most populous Shard. Some call it the "New Freedom." Some people use a more colourful name when referring to it. Everlasting is the officially unofficial Roleplaying Shard, but there are plenty of non-roleplayers there too. It boasts the highest ratio of Villains, at almost 25%! Indomitable is the officially unofficial PvP Shard. There's nothing mechanically different about it; it's just that most PvPers congregate here. Reunion is the official European Shard, based out of Germany (last I heard). All the other Shards are in Montreal (last I heard), so it exists as a low-latency option for folks in the Old World. The server is operated by unpaid volunteers, and all money collected during the monthly donation window is strictly put toward server operation and incidental costs. No one makes any bank here. Development of new content, updates, patches, and the like are also all handled by volunteers, and can sometimes be several months in the works. Patience is helpful, but if you have the skills and meet the Homecoming Teams expectations, you can also throw your own hat in the ring to try and help out too. Details on the recruitment process are clandestine. Welcome Home, @Cakey77.

If you did not receive anything through the in-game email @June (or any of the other participants), please let me know (either privately on the forums, or in-game to my @VileTerror account). I'll scrounge up the amount you're owed and mail it to you in-game.

Is this thread a bunch of people skirting around the subject of "Cancel Culture?" Or is it just a huge misunderstanding between people who think someone is complaining about a "poopy" character name, when that person is more likely expressing frustration at something which has the potential to cause harm? People have been offended about things for millennia, not just the last five years. If someone finds that the things they personally enjoy are now considered offensive, that probably has more to do with the opportunity to be exposed to a greater level of cultural and historic understanding that the internet affords everyone. People are entitled to being offended. In this forum, people are permitted to express themselves, up to a (sometimes arbitrary) point. People can also complain about other people being offended . . . but . . . uh, what's the point of that? I mean . . . what if that advice about rolling your eyes and just walking away was also applied to the people offended by other people being offended? What would -that- look like? We may never know.

I think you may need to do some convincing of @Naomi, @Sunsette, as I'm not sure Mass Effect is enough positive proof to quell all those concerns up there.

Alternatively, I'd like to see Hunts done in instanced versions of the neighbourhoods they're meant to take place in. Fulfil on delivering the Difficulty Settings which a player has opted to set themself for. And that's not to discourage Street Sweeping, mind you. I think Street Sweeping has a lot of wonderful potential that hasn't been tapped in to yet. I just think that Hunt missions are such a bloody painful disconnect from the typical mission structure that it would be more consistent to the Contact-based mission structure. This would also open the door for more creative implementations to the narrative for Hunts. The "multiple of 5" quota always felt especially unimmersive to me. Implementing Hunts in missions could result in a narrative scenario such as: "Beat this guy who tells you about that guy, who knows this tidbit that leads you to this other guy, who ultimately knows where they hid the bodies." Granted, there are undoubtedly some potential issues that would need to be worked out, so this isn't a suggestion for a quick fix. Rather, as something to work toward over time.

I've seen it slightly more than five times, Legacy and Homecoming combined . . . but I still wouldn't want to remove that functionality from anyone's play experience. Long story short: Yes to the point that the chat system is not ideally implemented for the variety of roleplay which players engage in. More options to help flesh things out are good in my book! The specifics of how any new tools get used by players can be something which organically emerges over time within the communities. One alternative I wouldn't mind seeing are emote text in other chat channels. If I could send my emotes in Team, for example, it would fit my roleplay style -and- my OCD quite nicely. Maybe a new command like "/emt" and change ";" so that it sends in either Local or Team depending on which is the currently active Channel.

Indeed. This might even be a project to ask someone like @The Philotic Knight or @RubyRed to consider exploring. It doesn't need to be done by the Homecoming Devs at all, as such a program could effectively work as third-party thanks to the plain text nature of Architect.

There seems to be a misconception about mechanics and gameplay abstractions. Plenty of gameplay abstractions can be represented with a wide variety of different mechanics. Just because one particular mechanism doesn't work, it doesn't mean that the intent behind its function can't be simulated in another way. Skill checks, for example. Those represent knowledge or talents which a player-character has developed over time, and allow them to achieve success in areas where normally they would not. Even without introducing a traditional skills system to City, we could approach a similar tool in the form of Badge checks. We already see such checks appearing in various missions from the last couple of years of Legacy, as well as the changes to the Lockhart mission in Steel Canyon when played through Ouroboros. Suffice it to say, we should never, ever allow ourselves to be limited in imagination because one form of a gameplay mechanic can't deliver on something which a different mechanic could.

The "harm no other" bit is . . . tricky, to say the least. Not to get things too mired in to "Real Talk" here, but alcohol consumption by other people -has- had a serious harmful impact in my life. Two members of my family drank to the point of liver failure. Other harmful actions have been taken while under the influence of alcohol as well, which I won't go in to the details of. Of course, harm has been done with all manner of different substances, actions, and behaviours. But putting things in to a perspective of "help versus harm," my perspective strongly skews toward harm when it comes to alcohol. I'm not going to tell anyone not to imbibe alcohol, but I would at least like to encourage those folks who drink to the point of being drunk to consider alternative forms of personal pleasure. Chocolate and ice cream do wonders for me, personally. As well as some other activities which we're not supposed to talk about here. Maybe there are some new forms of pleasure some of you may consider exploring. You might find something to replace alcohol which is cheaper, safer, healthier, and/or even more pleasurable!

I see "Focused Accuracy" in there. That thing is a MONSTER on Endurance Consumption. And now that Athletic Run (and Ninja Run, and Beast Run) all ignore Global Endurance Discount, they're pretty End-hungry too. Try running without either of those turned on for a while and see if you still suffer your same fate.

Important context to anyone who is wondering "wtf, mate?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongle

@Vanden, emote text is the white-colours, local-distance, italicized messages that drop the colon dividing character name and message text. Which is used by players for writing description actions for their characters in roleplay.

For this, and the other thread, I'll just say that whatever ideas get shared, OPTIONAL should be the word of the day. I'm absolutely alright with all of the suggestions, except for tying it to the "Roleplaying" tag. I run with that tag up all the time, but I personally would not want to have to deal with the suggestions you've provided here. I'm happy for other players to have them at their disposal, though. My dream would be to toggle a flag on other player-characters as "Priority Chat," which would still allow other Local messages to filter in, but highlight the players who I want to focus on personally. I'd disable the chat bubbles entirely and rely solely on the Chat Window.

I almost wonder if the problem isn't actually Corruptors, but it's that damned patchy implementation of Vigilance on Defenders. Ship has sailed, and all that, but Vigilance has always had the shakiest implementation of any of the Blueside Inherents, as far as I'm concerned. Even more-so than Desperation, when that was a thing. But I absolutely acknowledge the difficulty in changing what was meant to be a team-only Archetype in to one which could effectively solo even for new or casual players. Maybe the ATOs could also use some work. None of the four ATO Procs for Defenders or Corruptors really scream "this is my identity" to me. I mean, Scourging Blast and is a Defender's Bastion with some of the Heal swapped for Endurance, and the PPM dropped down. Vigilant Assault is just that, but with Absorb instead of Heal. And Malice of the Corruptor is just a super basic Negative Energy Damage Proc. Maybe that's the place to refine things a little. Malice of the Corruptor especially. What interesting things could we supplement that NegDam Proc with?

Thanks to all the streamers, too! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1068503600?t=0h24m20s https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1068489685?t=0h41m45s https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1068480253?t=0h52m18s