Cipher

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. Last Month: August 2022 Last month we accepted $4,298.49 in donations, $0.16 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses for August: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $120.52 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 for our website assets license renewal $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: September 2022 The donation target for September 2022 is $4,222.10. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $15.00 for a 1-year domain renewal $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,222.10 and will automatically close once that target is met. - 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. Last Month: July 2022 Last month we accepted $4,355.90 in donations, $15.02 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our operating expenses for July: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $120.97 for our Google G-Suite services $97.20 for domain renewals from NameCheap Will be included as an expense for August as it was not included in our original target for July $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: August 2022 The donation target for August 2022 is $4,298.33. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $97.20 for domain renewals from NameCheap $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 for forum assets license renewal $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,298.33 and will automatically close once that target is met. - 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. Last Month: June 2022 Last month we accepted $4,392.37 in donations, $87.73 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month. We paid for a 1-year domain renewal ($10) during June which was not listed in our original breakdown. Additionally, Homecoming’s legal address was changed, costing $240.00 for setup fees and the first year of mail service at the new location. Here is the breakdown of our operating expenses for June: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $240.00 for our new mailing address / service Incl. setup & 1 year of service $120.97 for our Google G-Suite services $105.00 for our 6-month Invision Community (forums) renewal $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.82 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 for a 1-year domain renewal $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: July 2022 The donation target for July 2022 is $4,340.88. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $133.46 to cover the remaining cost of our new mailing address which billed in June $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,340.88 and will automatically close once that target is met. - 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. Last Month: May 2022 Last month we accepted $4,309.56 in donations, $5.98 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our donation goal for the following month. Here is the breakdown of our operating expenses for May: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.97 for our Google G-Suite services $70.17 for 3 one-year domain renewals $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: June 2022 The only addition to our donation target this month is our 6-month Invision Community license renewal, totaling $105. The donation target for June 2022 is $4,304.64. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $105.00 for our 6-month Invision Community renewal $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,304.64 and will automatically close once that target is met. - 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. Last Month: April 2022 Last month we accepted $4,777.99 in donations, including the $100 donation that cleared later in the month for which the name has been redacted in the screenshot below. The extra funds received this month covered our annual registered agent fee, so we will not be including that in the expenses for May. Our annual taxes and filing fees (totaling $460) have been paid from our bank account, but not withdrawn from PayPal yet, so they are not shown in the PayPal screenshot below. Here is the breakdown of our operating expenses for April: $4,031.87 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $125.00 for our annual registered agent fee (CORPORATE FILINGS LLC) $121.06 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: May 2022 The only change to our operating costs for this month is the annual renewal for 3 domains totaling $70. The donation target for May 2022 is $4,303.58. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $70.00 for 3 annual domain renewals $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,303.58 and will automatically close once that target is met. Our monthly goal has been met and donations have been closed. Thank you for your support! - The Homecoming Team

Donation window is live.

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. Last Month: March 2022 Last month we accepted $3,355.26 in donations and ended the month with a surplus of $8.27. As always, this amount will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month. Here is the breakdown of our operating expenses for March: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.06 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $18.08 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: April 2022 The only change to our operating costs for this month is the inclusion of our annual tax and filing fees, totaling $460. Our Registered Agent fee will be included in next month’s window as it is due for payment on May 7th. The donation target for April 2022 is $4,684.75. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $460 for our annual tax and filing fees $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,684.75 and will automatically close once that target is met. - 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. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was not available to post donations at our normal time last month. As a result, the donation window was opened with a target of $5,000 rather than our normal target. The difference between the two will be applied to March’s operating expenses, lowering the target for this month. Last Month: February 2021 Last month we accepted $5,065.10 in donations, $893.08 over our operating expenses for the month. As always, all remaining funds will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month. Here is the breakdown of what February’s funds went towards: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.06 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 to renew support for our website and forum assets $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: March 2022 We do not have any changes or updates for this month. The donation target for March 2022 is $3,349.33. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $3,349.33 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Barring any unanticipated delays, the Valentine's Day event will be going live with the maintenance next Tuesday (Feb. 8th).

I've updated the reserved post with our report. Thank you all so much for your support!

The anti-spam service that Invision provides is very good, but unfortunately a bot does make it through every so often. Went ahead and flagged them as such, removing all of their content on the site. Thanks for reporting the thread as spam!

This post is now in effect for this year. Happy Holidays everyone!

Hello everyone! We’re opening donations a week early this month as the donation window would have been on December 25th otherwise. So you’re aware - we’ll be suspending non-critical support from December 23rd through December 27th to give our volunteer GM team a much deserved break for the Holiday. During this time, we will be focused on critical and time-sensitive issues and you should expect longer-than-usual response times. We appreciate your patience and understanding. Happy Holidays! 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. Last Month: December 2021 Last month we accepted $4.722.26 in donations, $0.47 over our target for the month. As always, all remaining funds will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month. Here is the breakdown of what December’s funds went towards: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.30 for our Google G-Suite services $105.00 to renew our Invision Community (forums) license $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: January 2022 We do not have any changes or updates for this month. The donation target for January 2022 is $4,242.30. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,242.30 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve been enjoying Issue 27, Page 3 and had a great Thanksgiving! 🦃 So you’re aware - we’ll be moving the next donation window to Saturday, December 18th, and suspending non-critical support from December 23rd through December 27th to give our volunteer GM team a much deserved break for the Holiday. During this time, we will be focused on critical and time-sensitive issues and you should expect longer-than-usual response times. We appreciate your patience and understanding. 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. Last Month: November 2021 Last month we accepted $5,740.46 in donations, $9.91 over our target for the month. As always, all remaining funds will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month. As expected, OVH billed us pro-rata for the new SCALE-3 servers. This totalled $394.06 and aligns the billing of these new servers with the rest of our services. Here is the breakdown of what November’s funds went towards: $4,094.46 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH + $394.06 billed pro-rata for the two newer servers, covered in December $300.00 to renew our annual DocuSign subscription Early renewal, included in November’s target Billed last month, see previous post $137.76 for two domain renewals from Namecheap Early renewal, included in November’s target Billed last month, see previous post $121.28 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.84 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: December 2021 We brought the new SCALE-3 servers online and have cancelled the older servers that they are replacing. As such, starting this month, we will no longer be billed for them. For more information about these changes, please see this thread. The donation target for December 2021 is $4,721.79. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,057.47 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $394.06 to cover the pro-rata invoice from November $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $105.00 for our 6-month Invision Community renewal $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $9.73 for security / administration software $8.56 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,721.79 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

The reputation stat on posts was actually removed in Invision 4.6.x which we upgraded to last week. The reputation view that you see on posts now, in the desktop client anyways, is actually re-introduced through our custom forum theme, and was not re-added to the mobile theme because of other changes made there and lack of space in the current design.

The policy of not disclosing actions taken against other players is to protect the privacy of our player base and to avoid introducing or worsening patterns of harassment that you often see within online games, including things like 'report brigading'. You should also understand that many times, our GMs have to do further investigation and take a wider perspective into consideration when making their judgement; and often times, this will include factors that you may not have been aware of when making the report. Things are seldom as simple as dealing with a name like "xXxRacistNamexXx". Yes, this policy is not without downsides - one of which being that players can sometimes feel like their reports are being unheard or ignored, but we ask that the community have faith that our team is reading through every report we receive and taking appropriate action where necessary. Please utilize the report / petition feature, and do not assume that your reports are unread or that other players have reported something that you've seen. When everyone views the system this way, it quickly leads to situations where things simply aren't reported, and then everyone assumes that we must have ignored the reports about it because nothing happened. In reality, in these situations, it was simply a matter of us having not received a report to begin with. As of the time of this post, our GM team has closed over 40,000 tickets -- over 40 tickets per day since Homecoming started in April 2019. These are a mix of various forms of support, and reports against other players, and in every case a GM manually reviewed the ticket, replied, and took any necessary actions.

I'm still interested in bringing it back in some capacity using badges from in-game, but no promises.

Thank you, I'll look into this as soon as I can 🙂

The Achievement systems (Ranks & Badges) were introduced by Invision in update 4.6.x which was included in a set of updates I applied to the forums overnight. I wasn't anticipating this system would be as divisive as it appears to be -- if someone wanted to attribute a form of 'status' based on forum metrics and use that as a basis for judgement, they could have done so through the existing Post Count and Reputation metrics available and displayed on each post already. That said - I understand where you're coming from with your feedback and it's clear that it's something we need to address. Perhaps the discussion we need to have is whether disabling the systems altogether is the right approach or if we can adapt the system to be something that more people are comfortable with. There has been a lot of positive feedback around the new systems as well, so finding a middle-ground that everyone (or at least the majority) are happy with is something we should work towards, if possible. Some of the changes I had already planned included swapping the names and art for the ranks and badges out for badges from the game itself, for example. For right now though, and until we figure out what we're going to do with it, I've gone ahead and disabled the systems. Let's try to keep this thread civil please 🙂 The ranking system is started from the day that the update is applied. Because of the way that the point system works, I do not believe it is viable to try and calculate these values retroactively -- and it seems that Invision came to the same conclusion. Badges, however, have a set of rules and triggers associated with them and will automatically be granted next time you interact with the feature related to that badge -- things like responding to threads, posting a new thread, etc. We will not be rolling back the updates. These updates included a number of other feature releases, bug fixes, and security patches. Additionally, pinning the forum software version would mean that we are unable to upgrade in the future and receive security patches for new vulnerabilities that are discovered. See above -- the badge system works on a set of rules and triggers, and badges that you qualify for will be automagically granted the next time that your interact with the system related to that badge. (Note that this no longer applies as the systems have been disabled; however if they are enabled again in the future, this will still apply). The All and None options there only apply if there are multiple options that can be applied to the thread. If you had moderator status, this would include things like pinning the topic, featuring it, etc. Since you only have one list option here, those links don't really do much.

What device are you experiencing this on? Feel free to DM me if that's preferable.

/title

Unfortunately it's not. We can specify a period of time where editing is allowed, after which it will be disabled; but adding a period of time where edits do not display the message will require additional custom application work in IPS and is a low priority for us at the moment.

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. We’re always in need of more people to help test upcoming updates on our public beta server; the bug reports and feedback that we receive from testers helps us immensely. For more information on how to get started on the beta server, check out our Read This to Get Started thread and the rest of the Beta Forums. Last Month: October 2021 Last month we accepted $5,856.15 in donations, $4.43 over our target for the month. As always, all remaining funds will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month. We went forward with two renewals (DocuSign & Namecheap) that were originally planned for November this month. The invoice totals for these renewals is included below for clarity when reviewing the PayPal screencap below, but will be included in November’s donation target still as they were not covered by the donation target for October. Here is the breakdown of what October’s funds went towards: $4,094.46 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH + $1,196.00 in setup fees for the two new SCALE-3 servers + $1,027.98 for the first month of service on the two new SCALE-3 servers This was higher than anticipated due to a billing change, and the difference will be included in November’s donation target for clarity $300.00 to renew our annual DocuSign subscription Early renewal, included in November’s target $137.76 for two domain renewals from Namecheap Early renewal, included in November’s target $121.45 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.24 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: November 2021 We received both of the additional SCALE-3 servers that we ordered this month as part of our ongoing mapserver host hardware changes. Unfortunately, though, delivery was late in the month and they were delivered with troublesome network adapters. As such, we were unable to migrate to them in time to cancel the older ADVANCE-5 servers, which we will be billed for again in November. Additionally, OVH charged us for a full month of service on these new servers up-front rather than billing pro-rata as they have in the past, leaving a difference of $641.55 to recover in November. The only other changes this month are that we have cancelled our Atlassian Jira account that was billing us $10/mo as we were not utilizing it, and we have identified the cause of the recent price increase on our Amazon AWS account and have made changes to reduce our AWS costs going forward. All of that said, the donation target for November 2021 is $5,730.55. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,094.46 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH + $641.55 to cover the remaining cost of the first month of service on the new SCALE-3 servers $300.00 for our annual DocuSign renewal $137.76 for two one-year domain renewals $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $9.73 for security / administration software $8.56 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $5,730.55 and will automatically close once that target is met. As always, thank you for all of the support, and have a Happy Halloween! 👻 - 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. We’re always in need of more people to help test upcoming updates on our public beta server; the bug reports and feedback that we receive from testers helps us immensely. For more information on how to get started on the beta server, check out our Read This to Get Started thread and the rest of the Beta Forums. Additionally, if you have Discord Nitro then please consider using a Nitro server boost on our public Discord server. Maintaining over 30 Nitro boosts gives all of our members new and enhanced features on the server including additional emojis, a higher upload limit, better voice chat quality, and our vanity URL. Click here to read more about Server Boosting. We greatly appreciate everyone who has put their Nitro boosts towards our Discord server! September 2021 Breakdown Last month we accepted $4,528.35 in donations, $49.83 over our target for the month. As always, all remaining funds will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month. Here is the breakdown of what September’s funds went towards: $4,290.45 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH + $428.33 charged separately for the SCALE-3 server that was delivered (this will be included in October’s target) $121.46 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $15.00 to pay a 1-year domain renewal $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service $9.73 for security / administration software October 2021 We received the first of three SCALE-3 servers last month and have been happy with the performance since bringing it into our live cluster. As such, we will be moving forward with our mapserver host hardware changes this month. Overall, here are the changes we’re going to be making this month: Two of our Advance-5 servers will be cancelled This will save us $710/mo going forward The remaining Advance-5 servers will be cancelled after the additional SCALE-3 servers are delivered Two additional SCALE-3 servers will be ordered These have a setup fee of $598 each, totalling $1,196 for this month The current delivery estimate for these is 30 days, but we’re anticipating it taking longer, based on the time it took to deliver the last SCALE-3 We will not be billed monthly for these until they are delivered and online The donation target for October 2021 is $5,851.75. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,094.46 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH + $1,196 to cover setup fees for the two additional SCALE-3 servers + $386.43 to cover the pro rata billing in September for the first SCALE-3 This was partially covered by the $49.83 in donations over our target last month $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service $9.73 for security / administration software $8.56 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $5,851.75 and will automatically close once that target is met. As always, thank you for all of the 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. We’re always in need of more people to help test upcoming updates on our public beta server; the bug reports and feedback that we receive from testers helps us immensely. For more information on how to get started on the beta server, check out our Read This to Get Started thread and the rest of the Beta Forums. Additionally, if you have Discord Nitro then please consider using a Nitro server boost on our public Discord server. Maintaining over 30 Nitro boosts gives all of our members new and enhanced features on the server including additional emojis, a higher upload limit, better voice chat quality, and our vanity URL. Click here to read more about Server Boosting. We greatly appreciate everyone who has put their Nitro boosts towards our Discord server! August 2021 Breakdown Last month we accepted $4,576.78 in donations, $16.27 over our target for the month. As always, all remaining funds will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month. Here is the breakdown of what August's funds went towards: $4,290.45 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH + $9.00 for 3 additional IPv4 addresses $121.46 for our Google G-Suite services $95.20 to renew a few of our domains for 1 year (Namecheap) $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $15.00 to renew another domain for 1 year (1&1 IONOS) $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service $10.00 to renew some of our web assets from IPSFocus $9.73 for security / administration software $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email September 2021 The donation target for the upcoming month may shift slightly as the SCALE-3 server we ordered a few months ago has finally been delivered by OVH and billing for this service will begin soon. The additional charge for this server, if any, will likely be included in next month’s target. The donation target for September 2021 is $4,478.52. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,290.45 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service $9.73 for security / administration software $8.56 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,478.52 and will automatically close once that target is met. As always, thank you for all of the support! - The Homecoming Team