Cipher

This outage was likely caused by intermittent network issues between the shards and one of our database servers. The shards have been brought back online.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Homecoming operates in a non-profit capacity* and accepts donations from the community each month to cover its operating expenses. These donation windows typically open on the last Saturday of each month, around 13:00 EST, and are automatically closed once the goal for the month has been reached. Any funds remaining at the end of each month are put towards our expenses for the following month. In the event that our expenses exceed our estimated costs for the month, the difference will be included in the donation goal for the following month. If you wish to donate, you may do so here. The donation window for next month is open as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal is met. Thank you for your continued support! * Homecoming is a Delaware registered Limited Liability Company, not a non-profit organization, and donations made to Homecoming are not tax deductible. Last Month: February 2024 Income Total: $5,133.98 Amount Source $5,133.41 Donations $0.57 Rebates & Rewards (PayPal) Recurring Expenses Total: $5,156.66 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $228.79 Google Workspace Voice (x1), Business (15 seats) $31.00 Databasemart GPU Server $29.60 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $13.90 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $0.00 Our annual UPS mailbox renewal for $240 was collected in January but has not billed us yet. This money remains held and allocated for that payment. Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes This Month: March 2025 The donation target for March 2025 is $5,314.75. Recurring Expenses Total: $5,147.09 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $229.57 Google Workspace Voice, Business (15 seats) $31.00 Databasemart GPU Server $19.25 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $13.90 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $0.00 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes Donations will be open at https://cohhc.gg/donate as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal has been met. As always, thank you for your continued support. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Homecoming operates in a non-profit capacity* and accepts donations from the community each month to cover its operating expenses. These donation windows typically open on the last Saturday of each month, around 13:00 EST, and are automatically closed once the goal for the month has been reached. Any funds remaining at the end of each month are put towards our expenses for the following month. In the event that our expenses exceed our estimated costs for the month, the difference will be included in the donation goal for the following month. If you wish to donate, you may do so here. The donation window for next month is open as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal is met. Thank you for your continued support! * Homecoming is a Delaware registered Limited Liability Company, not a non-profit organization, and donations made to Homecoming are not tax deductible. Last Month: January 2024 Income Total: $5,367.60 Amount Source $5,367.04 Donations $0.56 Rebates & Rewards (PayPal) Recurring Expenses Total: $5,156.46 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $228.71 Google Workspace Voice (x1), Business (15 seats) $31.00 Databasemart GPU Server $29.13 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $14.25 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $12.00 Our annual UPS mailbox renewal for $240 was collected last month but has not billed us yet. This money remains held and allocated for that payment. Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $12.00 CleanTalk Spam protection (1-yr) This Month: February 2025 The donation target for February 2025 is $5,130.09 Recurring Expenses Total: $5,147.09 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $229.57 Google Workspace Voice, Business (15 seats) $31.00 Databasemart GPU Server $19.25 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $13.90 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $10.00 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $10.00 IPSFocus Website asset support renewal Donations will be open at https://cohhc.gg/donate as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal has been met. As always, thank you for your continued support. - The Homecoming Team

Thank you! This was missed during the migrations and will be addressed soon.

This closure is in effect from the time of this post to Dec. 29th. Happy Holidays everyone!

I've reopened this thread for the purpose of discussing alternative options as long as the discussion remains civil. We'll be closely monitoring this thread and handing out warnings and bans to offenders. For the sake of discussion, as I mentioned in this post, our team has been throwing ideas around internally for what options we might have for players to be able to create their own memorials, but we aren't able to commit to anything right now, and any solution that we can come up with would not likely happen in the immediate term. We really like the idea of being able to create costumed / named entities in bases like the holograms that appear in some missions, but we need to assess the viability of this idea from a technical perspective as it would involve creating new systems and embedding the costume data inside of the base container.

Firstly, I'm sorry for your loss. I didn't know Eildath personally, but I've heard only good things. I'm not going to speak on our policy w.r.t. memorial NPCs as Widower has already spoken about it here other than to state that the reasons for this policy are not just what was stated by Widower. The reason for this policy is not because we are simply unwilling or because we don't care, it is in place because we have already seen how this can go wrong, it is a much more involved process than you'd expect, and we'd rather find another solution - ideally one that also reduces the burden on our volunteer team and puts the power in the community's hands. We have started discussions internally about what we can do here, such as providing the ability for players to create a named and costumed entity in bases (sort of like the holograms you see in some missions), but we can't commit to anything right now, and any solution that we could come up with would not likely happen in the immediate term. With that said, I do want to provide some clarification on this situation with your support request and the two threads from our perspective. Our team is trained to always direct players submitting requests or suggestions for the game to the forums because it puts it in reach of our wider team and other players to discuss; our development team doesn't have access to support requests, and it's not feasible for the leadership team to keep up with the volume of support requests that we see in order to filter them to the right people (for context, our team has resolved over 75,000 support requests to date). As your support request appeared as a request for the game rather than for support, the responding GM acted within our policies / training and directed you here. In this particular situation, it may have been better to raise the issue with the team internally before responding given the nature of the request, and that's something that we can reflect and improve on moving forward. With regard to how the policy thread was handled and where the clarification of our policy on memorial NPCs was given - I believe these decisions were made to address that thread and its specific point of discussion as it grew quickly and became very hostile, so our staff started getting reports and alerts about it. I do agree that we should have replied stating our policy in the original request thread as well once it had come to our attention, though - we'll do better; just know that the intent was not to ignore the original thread, but rather to address the growing issue before it got any worse. I understand how locking the thread would come across as dismissive, and I want to make it clear that we're open to the community discussing options as long as it remains civil. I've reopened the thread for that purpose, and we will be keeping a close eye on the discussion and handing out warnings if people can't be respectful and constructive. With all of that said, please treat both our volunteer staff and other community members with respect and civility. People are free to criticize and provide feedback on what our team does and our policies as long it remains constructive and respectful, and it's a shame that we've lost so many valuable opportunities to discuss and learn because people can't behave. To those intent on consistently derailing conversations and disrespecting your fellow community members, enough is enough. If hiding posts with personal attacks and issuing warnings hasn't gotten the point across then we'll start issuing bans.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Holiday Support Closure Homecoming will be pausing support for non-urgent issues from Dec. 22 to Dec. 29th so our volunteers can focus on spending time with their loved ones for the holidays. During this time, response times for support requests will be longer than usual, and those available will be heavily prioritizing time-sensitive issues. When submitting a support request during this time, you will receive the option to mark it as urgent; please use this for truly urgent or time-sensitive issues. Thank you for your understanding and Happy Holidays! Homecoming operates in a non-profit capacity* and accepts donations from the community each month to cover its operating expenses. These donation windows typically open on the last Saturday of each month, around 13:00 EST, and are automatically closed once the goal for the month has been reached. Any funds remaining at the end of each month are put towards our expenses for the following month. In the event that our expenses exceed our estimated costs for the month, the difference will be included in the donation goal for the following month. If you wish to donate, you may do so here. The donation window for next month is open as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal is met. Thank you for your continued support! * Homecoming is a Delaware registered Limited Liability Company, not a non-profit organization, and donations made to Homecoming are not tax deductible. Last Month: December 2024 Income Total: $6,144.49 Amount Source $6,144.08 Donations $0.41 Rebates & Rewards (PayPal) Recurring Expenses Total: $5,122.21 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $228.71 Google Workspace Voice (x1), Business (15 seats) $28.26 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $174.00 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $105.00 Invision Forum software 6m renewal $69.00 GlobalSign Difference of cost in cert change This Month: January 2025 The donation target for January 2025 is $5,367.04. Recurring Expenses Total: $5,113.31 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $229.57 Google Workspace Voice, Business (15 seats) $19.25 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $240.00 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $240.00 UPS UPS mailbox (1-year renewal) Donations will be open at https://cohhc.gg/donate as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal has been met. As always, thank you for your continued support. - The Homecoming Team

This is intentional - you need to be signed in as your account ID is recorded alongside your donation in case we require it to assist with cases of fraud and similar situations.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Homecoming operates in a non-profit capacity* and accepts donations from the community each month to cover its operating expenses. These donation windows typically open on the last Saturday of each month, around 13:00 EST, and are automatically closed once the goal for the month has been reached. Any funds remaining at the end of each month are put towards our expenses for the following month. In the event that our expenses exceed our estimated costs for the month, the difference will be included in the donation goal for the following month. If you wish to donate, you may do so here. The donation window for next month is open as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal is met. Thank you for your continued support! * Homecoming is a Delaware registered Limited Liability Company, not a non-profit organization, and donations made to Homecoming are not tax deductible. Last Month: November 2024 Income Total: $5,946.21 Amount Source $5,942.15 Donations $4.06 Rebates & Rewards (PayPal) Recurring Expenses Total: $5,122.21 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $228.71 Google Workspace Voice (x1), Business (15 seats) $29.01 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $740.00 Our GL insurance through Hiscox was supposed to renew next month but billed us on Nov. 6th, so we’re including it here for documentation purposes and will include it in December’s donation goal to cover the costs. Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $390.00 GlobalSign Code signing cert renewal $350.00 Hiscox GL insurance This Month: December 2024 The donation target for December 2024 is $6,140.47. Recurring Expenses Total: $5,113.31 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $229.57 Google Workspace Voice, Business (15 seats) $19.25 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $1,055.00 As mentioned in the breakdown for December, we’re including the cost of our GL insurance here to cover the cost of the renewal even though we were invoiced early in November. We’re also including our DocuSign renewal in this donation target as it billed us back in October but was not included in the donation goal at the time due to interruptions from Helene: Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $600.00 DocuSign Annual, 2 seats, 200 envelopes $350.00 Hiscox GL insurance $105.00 Invision Community Forum software renewal Donations will be open at https://cohhc.gg/donate as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal has been met. As always, thank you for your continued support. - The Homecoming Team

Unfortunately Bing is still blocking our main website from appearing in search results per the screenshot below. Their tooling is unable to identify any issues when testing against the live site and states that it is able to be indexed again, so we've requested it to be indexed. Given that their support team was unable to disclose the reasons we were pulled out of search results in the first place though, and that we could not identify any violations of their webmaster guidelines at the time, I'm not holding my breath. Index result: Live result:

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Homecoming operates in a non-profit capacity* and accepts donations from the community each month to cover its operating expenses. These donation windows typically open on the last Saturday of each month, around 13:00 EST, and are automatically closed once the goal for the month has been reached. Any funds remaining at the end of each month are put towards our expenses for the following month. In the event that our expenses exceed our estimated costs for the month, the difference will be included in the donation goal for the following month. If you wish to donate, you may do so here. The donation window for next month is open as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal is met. Thank you for your continued support! * Homecoming is a Delaware registered Limited Liability Company, not a non-profit organization, and donations made to Homecoming are not tax deductible. Last Month: October 2024 Income Total: $5120.45 Amount Source $5,119.73 Donations $0.72 Rebates & Rewards (PayPal) Recurring Expenses Total: $5,122.18 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $228.66 Google Workspace Voice (x1), Business (15 seats) $28.29 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $3.00 We had $137.76 in domain renewals bill in October which were not included in the donation goal for the month. As such, they will be included in November’s donation target instead. Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $3.00 Paperspace (Digitalocean) Static IP assignment (1 mo) This Month: November 2024 The donation target for November 2024 is $5,906.76. Recurring Expenses Total: $5,113.31 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $229.57 Google Workspace Voice, Business (15 seats) $19.25 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $527.76 As mentioned in the breakdown for October, we had a set of domain renewals which were not originally included in the October goal but were billed in October. As such, they are included in this month’s donation target instead. Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $390.00 GlobalSign Code Signing Certificate Renewal $137.76 NameCheap Domain renewals Donations will be open at https://cohhc.gg/donate as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal has been met. As always, thank you for your continued support. - The Homecoming Team

Badge collecting speedrun category when?

I'm going to have to go with this one:

We've just updated the wording in the CoC to make this a little clearer, but the intent of this addition is to allow GMs to use their judgement and take action if necessary on a case-by-case basis. To put it simply, you're probably fine as long as you're not causing some sort of disruption or using the functionality for some kind of exploitative gain.

It should be assumed that is the case for any offences or repeated disregard for a GM's instruction.

Your forum account and game account are linked, but separate. Make sure you've created a game account here or via Game Account in the navbar.

If you have access to the forum account but not the game account, then LKN-351's instructions will help you to resolve this. If you've lost access to one of your root/forum accounts then please create a support request here so that we can look into this for you. Thanks!

This is usually due to typos in the registered email address. Could you create a support ticket here with your original account name and email address included so that we can investigate this? Thanks!

These are search engine crawlers indexing the site, only a fraction of those are real users.

Please excuse the weird formatting on this one. A word update broke the formatting and added a bunch of weird margins and colors all over the place. 🙂

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Homecoming operates in a non-profit capacity* and accepts donations from the community each month to cover its operating expenses. These donation windows typically open on the last Saturday of each month, around 13:00 EST, and are automatically closed once the goal for the month has been reached. Any funds remaining at the end of each month are put towards our expenses for the following month. In the event that our expenses exceed our estimated costs for the month, the difference will be included in the donation goal for the following month. If you wish to donate, you may do so here. The donation window for next month is open as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal is met. Thank you for your continued support! * Homecoming is a Delaware registered Limited Liability Company, not a non-profit organization, and donations made to Homecoming are not tax deductible. Last Month: August 2024 Income Total: $5,134.34 Amount Source $5,133.78 Donations $0.56 Rebates & Rewards (PayPal) Recurring Expenses Total: $5,122.18 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $228.66 Google Workspace Voice (x1), Business (15 seats) $29.03 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $13.00 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $10.00 IPSFocus Website assets renewal $3.00 DigitalOcean (Paperspace) Rendering node final payment This Month: September 2024 The donation target for August 2024 is $5,128.02. Recurring Expenses Total: $5,096.31 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,836.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $229.57 Google Workspace Voice, Business (15 seats) $19.25 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $17.00 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $17.00 IONOS 1-year domain renewal Donations will be open at https://cohhc.gg/donate as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal has been met. As always, thank you for your continued support. - The Homecoming Team

This one is out of our hands unfortunately. Bing Webmaster support gave us the typical "Thank you for your patience during our investigation. After further review, it appears that your site had issues with meeting the standards set by Bing to remain indexed the last time it was crawled. To ensure that this was not a false flag, I also escalated the issue to the next level, and they manually reviewed your site and confirmed that it is in violation of our webmaster guidelines detailed here: Bing Webmaster Guidelines. We are not able to provide specifics for these types of issues because the relevant teams do not share reports with us. We recommend that you review our Webmaster Guidelines, especially the section Things to Avoid, and thoroughly check your site for any deliberately or accidentally employed SEO techniques that may have adversely affected your standing in Bing and Bing-powered search results. We will not be able to add your site to the index while Bingbot is finding it in violation of Webmaster Guidelines. We have no control over this process, and you will need to make quality changes to your site and wait for the Bingbot's automated crawling process to agree that the site passes the webmaster standards before it can be served." When looking over the site in the webmaster tools, it shows that our sites are indexed and that there are no errors detected by Bingbot which would prevent indexing and appearing in search results. Unfortunately that means that the cause of this "ban" is likely external to our sites - things like having backlinks from sketchy websites, a surge in social media presence, etc. can all cause these sorts of bans. The only theory I have at the moment is that there is an AI assistant website showing with over 10,000 backlinks to our website in the webmaster tools which far exceeds anything else, and that may be tripping some flag.

Hey, Thanks for bringing this up for us. I've confirmed that Bing still has our websites indexed, but they are no longer showing in search results. I've reached out to Bing Webmaster Support to look into this issue and will provide an update when one is available.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Homecoming operates in a non-profit capacity* and accepts donations from the community each month to cover its operating expenses. These donation windows typically open on the last Saturday of each month, around 13:00 EST, and are automatically closed once the goal for the month has been reached. Any funds remaining at the end of each month are put towards our expenses for the following month. In the event that our expenses exceed our estimated costs for the month, the difference will be included in the donation goal for the following month. If you wish to donate, you may do so here. The donation window for next month is open as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal is met. Thank you for your continued support! * Homecoming is a Delaware registered Limited Liability Company, not a non-profit organization, and donations made to Homecoming are not tax deductible. Last Month: July 2024 Income Total: $5,245.62 Amount Source $5,244.85 Donations $0.77 Rebates & Rewards (PayPal) Recurring Expenses Total: $5,145.99 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,853.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $228.58 Google Workspace Voice (x1), Business (15 seats) $27.92 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $25.00 GPU Server (Paperspace) Used for tooling $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $0.00 We went ahead and paid our upcoming Namecheap invoice (due in August) today, but the balance for that will be included in the donation target for August. Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes - - - This Month: August 2024 The donation target for August 2024 is $5,120.18. Recurring Expenses Total: $5,096.31 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $4,836.37 Server Infrastructure (OVH) $229.57 Google Workspace Voice, Business (15 seats) $19.25 Email (AWS EC2 + SES) 2x EC2 micro instances $11.12 Admin Software Additional Expenses Total: $111.00 Amount Service / “to” Addt’l Notes $101.00 Namecheap, Inc. 3x 1-year domain renewals $10.00 IPSFocus Website assets renewal Donations will be open at https://cohhc.gg/donate as of the time of this post and will automatically close once the goal has been met. As always, thank you for your continued support. - The Homecoming Team