GraspingVileTerror

Right. Found another one: Looks very similar to a Set I wrote a ways back for Battle Armour . . . lemme see if that's still kicking around . . . https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11311-concept-battle-armour-survivaldefense-set/

Thanks for that, @oedipus_tex. Also, um . . . I found something (source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uHUi6BWFTYj4wbfGBs3LjZL88Fym6B-8EwDr18YZcY8/edit#gid=0 ): These all appear to exist as assets in-game, on the Live version no less. I hadn't heard about this unfinished Set before. I wonder if there are others still kicking around to dig up . . .

Who hurt you, @Hew? Who made you do this?

Hey now! (You're a roc- no. Stop. Bad me!) Herpes Chronicles is just a spin-off of Herpes of Might and Magic III. So, really, you just put Herpes on there twice.

So, just now I almost sent a message talking about "the best kinds of heroes" in response to someone talking about a mission they were doing. Thing is . . . I hit the P key instead of the O key. Now, I don't think I've ever made that particular typo before, but it made me wonder . . . it's gotta be at least marginally common, right? I mean, I constantly typo "Pride" as "Prude" How about the rest of you folks? Any particularly embaressing, amsuing, or slily typos happen to you?

Thank you so much for bringing this up, @Luminara! It's one of the arcs that irks me most profoundly. There are a few more which have similar issues, either from a narrative disjoint or just a totally "uh, that ain't kosher!" moment in the story. (Speaking of . . . did anyone notice Piecemeal's new Hero arc establishes Paragon City as a Police State? Whoops! Whoopsie!) Also, @Coyotedancer . . . that website makes me feeling incredibly seen! Creepy! Doesn't help that it was a big green HAL eye-ball while loading that image . . .

Someone call @Jimmy! We need a surgical strike, ASAP!

I was mucking about in netstat to try and track down a little network problem, but I noticed something odd while there. Neither the Homecoming Launcher nor the Homecoming client seem to be showing up in my PID or EXE scans for active connections. This was with netstat run on admin privileges on my local machine. Would anyone be able to weigh in on this particular oddity, please?

Hmm. Thanks for the heads-up. Doing a little more digging does raise some questions about the website's legitimacy. Where did you get details as far back as 2015, @Apparition? I can only get it to go back as far as Q3 2016, where it seems to suggest that the peak in SCoRE was around 5,000 users. I have no idea how many people were actually on SCoRE, but the numbers are actually looking a bit suspect. Still, that one chart does seem to match what my memory suggests were major Homecoming patches. Let's take a closer look! April through June 2019 being when things started. October being Page 3 of I26 and @holymittens' arcs were released. January 2020 being Page 4. March 31st for Page 5. . . . the June/July peak doesn't really translate to anything I can think of in Homecoming specifically, but perhaps a "Summer break" surge, or maybe one of the other servers related something then? Hmm, and Issue 27 in November doesn't really map to the chart, actually . . . since that suggests it was a valley, and not a peak. And then February's peak makes no sense from what I can see . . . Yeah. Ok. Unless the other servers are bringing in greater numbers than what I've been told, this chart is actually quite a ways off from what I suspect the reality is.

No ideas, sorry @Techwright. BUT! I do like the looks of this particular chart. @Cipher? @Jimmy? Can you let us know if this matches Homecoming's data?

Thank you to both @Zephyr Star and to @Pouncy (and a special thanks for being there to help others! Just want to express my personal appreciation for that)! I received a point-of-view from someone in-game that I would like to share for the sake of completeness and more accurate representation of the variety of perspectives that players have. I will not post the person's Chat Handle, though, for respect of their privacy. "personally, I never and I mean never read the forums "I couldn't care less [...] I play games to play, not read about perspectives. "I think this game is broken honestly but again, shrugs... fine enough. I mostly play solo though I have close personal friends who also play" "I honestly don't feel there is a social aspect of this game anymore "the meta essentially made the various character types non-essential for most of it's gameplay"

@KauaiJim, your answer is absolutely appreciated and certainly taps in to what I'm looking to get from this thread. Thank you! This goes for everyone, but remember that you can post in this thread more than once! If new ideas or ways to express those ideas pop in to your head related to this subject, please keep 'em coming! The purpose here is to do as much pointed information gathering as possible. Sometimes we'll colour outside the lines (so to speak), but that gives more context and a stronger framework to analyze the information provided. @Darmian, always good to hear from you! Your post kind of gives me a good segue to post something I pruned from my first reply, since it kind of went on a tangent that I didn't want to bog this thread down with. The asterisks from "themes" and "tone" lead to: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/profile/42940-graspingvileterror/?status=79&type=status @The man who laughs, well now . . . who could you possibly be? Joking aside, thank you very much for sharing your perspective too!

Thank you for sharing that, @The_Warpact! Although it kind of hits in to what I was going to ask in Part 2: Why Do You Play? I suppose that the "Why" is easier to answer than the "What," but I absolutely welcome and appreciate seeing your post as well. But what is it that you do with your VG-Mates when you all play together? What are the activities you do which you feel define the word "play" in this context?

As some of you know, I can get a little verbose at times. It's something I've been criticized for, and rather recently someone levelled the criticism in a fair and meaningful way. Sadly, I can't quite find the words to state my view here simply. So, in advance, I apologize for the potential lack of accessibility in what I'm expressing here. If anyone has some ideas on how to express my ideas using language that would be easier to follow, I welcome their input. I play City of Heroes in the capacity of exploring the various forms of interactivity that exist between the game mechanics, the software itself, the social and cultural patterns that manifest as a result of the intersection of game mechanics, narrative elements (setting, themes*, tone*), and the audience's varied perspective, and the examination of all of that through the lenses of a game player, a roleplayer, and a game developer. I know a lot of people don't want or see depth in this game, but my point of view is that this game is already profound, and there exists the potential to go much, much deeper, and with relative ease (compared to some settings and games where adding further depth would be an exercise in frustration). The methods by which I play are: Following the game rules, examining and critically analyzing the game rules, pushing against the game rules, fostering emergent gameplay, developing relations with other players, exploring the narrative with other players (roleplay), and engaging in discourse related to development and metagame structures. All of that (and potentially more) is my form of play here.

I've got a little research project in mind, but I don't want to start off by asking a question which is immediately faulty by being based on an assumed premise and my own biases. So, to that end, I would like to encourage everyone to take a moment (or longer) to just give their personal definition of what it means to "Play the Game" for them, specific to City of Heroes/Villains/Going Rogue. If your point of view has evolved from when you first started playing to now, please share your entire perspective, and what factors you believe contributed to that change. I also look forward to hearing from folks months or years down the line to see if further changes in perspective occur. There is no wrong answer here. If you would like to post on someone else's behalf as an advocate, I certainly take no issue! I just ask that you specify at which points you are speculating and at which points you are giving what you believe to reasonably be the exact opinion of someone else. And seriously: Please do -NOT- argue against someone else's personal experience or the definition they come up with. By all means offer ideas to enrich and expand on others' thoughts, and build on one another's ideas, even if you own points of view run contrary to others'. But don't tell anyone they're wrong when all they're doing is sharing a personal point of view. Similarly, and in the other direction . . . please try to avoid expressing an opinion and then claiming it to be irrefutable fact. This thread is specifically about collecting opinions. Future threads in this project will give people opportunities to provide factual data for analyses and deconstruction. There will be time for critique and debate with the eventual dissertation this project is leading toward. Additionally, if members of the Homecoming Team are willing to give their own points of view here, I think that would be quite excellent! Feel free to share it from an unassociated forum account, though, if you are concerned that your point of view may be unfairly weighed due to the position of power you have here. With the disclaimers out of the way . . . I'll break the ice by sharing my own point of view!

That look on his face when he says "Yes" . . . oof. Classic.

Glad to see so many reasonable and justified points of view getting shared here. Really is quite nice. Shame the initial framework of the poll is so loaded, though. Probably would have been better to do it as a non-exclusive voting system, with options like: "I love playing as a X." "I like playing as a X." "I dislike playing as a X." "I hate playing as a X." "I never play as a X." Where each option is repeated with X as Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, Villain, Unaligned (yes, it's a thing), Power, Responsibility, Warden, Crusader. That would have given people a better way to accurately reflect their feelings, I think.

I look forward to a Redside version. Granted, the level-gating of the PvP zones does complicate it a bit.

Oh, yes, excellent points @Coyotedancer! Player-access to costume content is essential to City, so of course the redesign had definite perks. I just wish that the original aesthetic could have been retained too. The redesign feels over-the-top in the most bizarre way.

I think I would still recommend people use the Base Portal from Perez to Steel Canyon. That's a LONG walk. Although . . . even without Base'ing, wouldn't it have been faster to head to the South Tram and pop out at the North Tram for Steel?

Just please be sure to make it accessible to all characters. Gotta have my Huge cyclopic villain his holiday attire, and no sense excluding fem-bod'd characters from a little tropical print.

1: Talk to Null 2: Ask Null who they are. 3: Ask Null to make you more Powerful. 4: Confirm that you want to be more Powerful. 5: Don't back down! ??? 7: PROFIT!

Random door. Been sewers, warehouses, caves, and office buildings. This latest one was the apartment/office east of the Arena, on the hill.

This happens fairly often to me, actually. Maybe about 1 in 4 times I run the arc.