RikOz

Pro Tip for Windows 10 users: The "Photos" app makes it very simple to crop your screenshots down so that you don't have to upload the entire screen.

It's also an issue because with so many contacts you pretty much have to do these street-sweeping missions before they'll offer anything else. I'm usually hoping to find an actual storyline in there, but I go talk to a contact and they give me an initial choice between "Go defeat 10 of such-and-such specific group for vague reason" or "Go talk to the Perez Park security chief", who is just going to give me a different street-sweeping mission. And from what I've seen, the Security Chiefs don't start storylines, they just hand out one-shot street sweeps. So I manage to find enough mobs to fulfill the street-sweeping mission, return to the contact, and they just give me another street-sweep for the same number of the same mobs for a slightly different vague reason.

I don't know if there's really any easy way to fix this, but there is one frustration I have that goes back to when I was playing before the shutdown: Council street-sweeping missions. Nearly every time I get sent to defeat Council in the streets, I look around and think, "Why? It looks to me like the 5th Column has the situation well in hand!" What I mean is that more often than not, the only Council I can find are involved in firefights with the 5th Column, and the 5th Column are invariably getting the better of those fights. If I'm on a melee character, it's hopeless trying to join in these fights because the 5th Column soldiers end up doing more damage, more quickly than I can (mainly because they've already shot up the Council guys a bit before I can even get in there), particularly if my character in question doesn't have much in the way of AoE and I have no choice but to fight one enemy at a time, and I end up not getting mission credit for the Council guys I do manage to defeat before the 5th Column kills them. Other times, I find one, lonesome Council soldier lying on the ground, unconscious, at the feet of a group of four 5th Columnists, so I beat up the 5th Column guys and then ... it just doesn't feel very heroic clobbering the unconscious guy on the pavement just for mission credit. Every once in a while I'll find a single Council guy standing on a soapbox in Steel Canyon, apparently trying to do some recruiting, and I can smack him up, but I can fly around forever trying to find those guys. We need some Council spawns that aren't being harassed by the 5th Column. Or some skirmishes where the Council has the advantage, so that I can attack them without the 5th Column stealing my "kills".

I first discovered this game in 2011, at 45 years old, having played video games since Asteroids. CoX was the game I had been waiting for my whole life. It convinced me to cancel my WoW subscription after about six months of paying for both games. And then the whole thing got yanked out from under me after I'd only gotten to play for a bit more than a year. I was heartbroken, and went sadly back to WoW. When it came back this time, it only took me three days to cancel my WoW sub. I'm where I belong again, and I couldn't be happier.

I've finally remembered how to tweak everything to minimize that enormous, nearly bow-legged thigh gap female characters have when they run. Legs shortened to minimum Hips shrunk to minimum Waist increased to reduce the "A" shape from waist to feet Physique slider increased to thicken the thighs a bit and bring the butt back up to where I like it This works for me. I also tend to drag the bust slider all the way down.

A-ha, it appears that the comma after the name is what I have been missing. Every time I've tried using /t or /tell followed by a name, it has failed, and the error message that appears in yellow is rather unhelpful because it just keeps saying to use /t or /tell (or one of a couple other variations), and does not make it at all clear that I should have been putting a comma after the name. Thanks! In hindsight, I can see why it's needed, given that we are allowed to use multiple words for character names. In WoW, when you sent a whisper (/w <playername>) the chat system just automatically assumed that the first word was the name and the second word was the beginning of the message, because in WoW your character name has to be one word. So there was no possibility of confusion over where the name ended.

I forgot this one too... at the bottom of the chat box, there are a bunch of little bubbles that signify which channel you want to talk in. Clicking on one of them (I think it's "A" for auto) will make you always talk in the channel that is the default for the text box you're in. That's what's getting frustrating - that is not working for me. Aside from the fact that those bubbles/buttons are completely indistinguishable/illegible to me because they're so tiny, despite playing on a 32-inch screen with the UI bumped up to 120% size, so I have to just click them in sequence until I get the channel I want, my words still go to "Local" instead of whatever I selected. I'll keep fooling with it to see if I can get it to work. I can type in Help, but I have to precede everything with "/hc".

That kind of thing drove me absolutely bonkers in WoW. Some players in that game, particularly tank specs and DPS specs that have great AoE, are always in a big ol' hurry, so when they have a quest to kill X mobs, they run into the area, purposely aggro everything in sight, and AoE them down as a group. I, on the other hand, am an old guy who prefers a more leisurely approach to "kill X mobs" quests, tracking them down and killing them one at a time. I enjoy that. So I would just hate it when I was busy fighting the very last mob I needed to finish the quest, and here comes somebody who thinks they're "helping" me by dragging their whole crowd of mobs over to where I am. Whether I wanted to be or not, I am now officially "in combat" with all these other mobs (even if they're all focusing on the other guy, if I somehow did even a single point of damage to them, they're mine now too), so I'm pretty much stuck having to fight the rest of them even after I've gotten that last kill I needed, because the game will not allow me to mount up and ride away until I am "out of combat". Of course, I can simply run away on foot. Unfortunately, I still remain "in combat" until those mobs die. And if those mobs instead manage to kill the guy who rounded them all up, they are now all going to come after me. So it ends up being faster and easier to simply help kill ten more mobs that I didn't ask for, just to get out of combat sooner. If I found myself in the same situation in CoX, I could at least simply activate my Flight and just fly away.

This happened to me today. I finished chatting with another player, and when the conversation was over I logged out. Just before it took me back to Character Select, I glanced at the chat window and saw that I had somehow ignored the person I was just talking to.

Is there some place, IN GAME that clearly shows the proper syntax and/or keystrokes for having a private conversation with another player? I've discovered, completely accidentally, by missing the M key to pull up my Map and hitting the comma key next to it that the comma key will format my chat line to send a tell to the other person I have targeted (whether I have another player targeted or not). When somebody sends me a tell, the only way I can find to reply to them is to click on their name in the chat window and select the "Send [character] Message" option from the popup menu. And I have to do that each and every time I reply to them, which is extremely awkward and inconvenient. I can't figure out how to send a tell to a character who is not in range for me to actually target them, because the syntax is not readily apparent. I had a conversation with another player today, and was only able to send a tell using the "Target them and hit comma" method to start the conversation, and then using the "Click on their name and select from the popup" method to continue conversing with them. And then, once the conversation was over and I logged out, just before the actual logout I looked at the chat window and saw it informing me that I had somehow inadvertently ignored this other player. Once I was back to the character select screen I logged my character back in, found my ignore list, and removed them from it. Then I tried to send a new tell to them, and typed, /t Charactername Oops, I accidentally blah blah blah ... Which didn't go through, and returned the error message, "There is no Charactername Oops currently online ..." I also apparently cannot send a message to somebody's Global handle without first adding them as a Global Friend? All of this is on top of the continuing problem of everything I type in the chat line gets dumped into "Local" instead of whatever it says at the beginning of the chat line (except for Super Group, that works properly). GAH!

Awesome! I'll fiddle with these. I only wish there was an easy way to change text size without changing the window size.

I am curious to know if there is any way to "customize" the UI. Specifically, I would like to universally increase text size. Since returning to the game, I'm experiencing eyestrain after playing for a while. Since this never happened when I was playing WoW, I'm pretty sure it isn't just a matter of my staring at a screen for hours. It occurred to me that, in WoW, I was able to use an addon to increase the size of text everywhere in the game. I am, as is everybody else, nearly seven years older than I was the last time I played CoX, and in my case I'm over 50, so diminishing eyesight is a given. And since I didn't get eyestrain playing WoW, but I am while playing CoX, I suspect that text size has something to do with it. Not to mention that most text in-game is white on a black background, which is objectively harder to read than black-on-white. It also seems that the bold-by-default game text lends itself to blurring together and being harder to read. So I'm looking for a way to 1) Universally adjust text size, 2) Adjust text/background color, and/or 3) Change the default typeface/font. Any one of those, by itself, would be a big help, and being able to change all three would be stellar. I have found the setting to change the size of chat font, but that doesn't affect the rest of the UI as I'd like.

I agree with Philotic Knight Olsen!

I've got, like 35 characters rolled up so far, and most of them are recreations of my old characters. In a number of cases, though, I've redesigned their costumes. I had a VIP sub back in the day, so I thought I pretty much had access to nearly every costume piece, but Homecoming has a bunch of new things that I was able to use to tweak some of the older costumes and make them look better and more "modern", and in some cases allowed me to finally achieve what I was going for originally but didn't have exactly the right pieces for. And a few costumes have gotten complete overhauls. I have, however, made a few "mistakes" with powersets. Before the shutdown I made sure to take screenshots of all of my characters, from many angles, so that I could accurately recreate their costumes in the event that the game came back, but I didn't make a detailed list of all their powersets and so had to rely on what it looked like in the screenshots. I already had some of these characters leveled past 10 before I managed to get back into my old City Info Tracker account, and that's when I discovered the mistakes. For example, one character appeared to be using Martial Arts in my screenshots, so that's what I gave them, but then CIT revealed that she should have been using Street Justice. But I didn't want to start her all over again, so I just said "meh" and kept Martial Arts.

I'm quoting this because my story is exactly the opposite. WoW was my first MMO - I had played the WarCraft RTS games and so it was natural for me to move on to WoW when I finally got a computer that could run it, in 2008. And then City of Heroes was the game that succeeded in making me quit WoW. It was mid-2011, in the middle of WoW's "Cataclysm" expansion. I was not a raider (aside from not interesting me, my job had extremely irregular hours and so there was no way I could commit to a raiding schedule), and I was not a PvPer (I just suck at PvP. Because I'm old.) By mid-2011 I had grown bored with Cataclysm. I had gotten seven characters to max level ... and since I didn't raid or PvP, there was nothing for them to do except make the rounds of the exact same daily quests each day. I also played on an iMac. I was wishing there was another MMO that would run on a Mac, but as far as I knew they were all Windows-only. I mentioned this on a forum website, and somebody said, "City of Heroes runs on Macs." So I tried it out because it was my only alternative to WoW. Holy crap, why didn't anybody tell me about this game sooner? It took me almost no time at all to realize that I was "home". In 2011 I was 45 years old, and had been playing video games since I was 13. And City of Heroes was the game I had been waiting for all that time, I just hadn't known it. Why did it feel that way? Hell if I know! It just did. I went ahead and paid the monthly fee for a VIP subscription, and also continued to pay for my WoW subscription. That lasted for six months, when I realized I was almost never logging into WoW any more, and so I canceled my WoW sub. And then I only got to play CoH for a year, before it all came crashing down in 2012 and I had to say goodbye to the 89 completely unique characters I had already created. Thankfully, this coincided with WoW releasing the "Mists of Pandaria" expansion, which I ended up thoroughly enjoying. Loved that expansion. I had also bought an inexpensive Windows laptop earlier in 2012 so that I could try out other MMOs. I tried a bunch of them, and didn't like any of them. Homecoming brought CoH back, just in time for my 53rd birthday, and I think it only took me three days to cancel my WoW subscription again. And this time, CoH is even better because, even with a 2008 iMac, I still had to adjust the graphics settings way down. In 2018 I finally had to buy a Windows gaming machine if I wanted to keep playing WoW, as they finally had to drop OpenGL, which my iMac used. As a 2008 model, my iMac couldn't upgrade to Apple's new graphics API, "Metal", and the current expansion ("Battle for Azeroth") wasn't even going to launch on OpenGL. So now I can play CoH with everything on maximum settings. One of the other MMOs I tried out was Champions Online, and yeah ... no. Unfortunately, I last played it in 2013 and I can't honestly remember exactly what I didn't like about it. I know I didn't like the graphics. I wasn't happy with the costume creator - I think there were too many limitations. I do recall that I didn't like the way flight worked at all - what with the starting out slow and then speeding up a few seconds later. I think the whole game just felt "clunky" when compared to WoW or CoH. On an amusing side note, my return to WoW after CoH shut down was difficult in a number of ways. I found myself standing in front of instance portals, clicking on them and wondering why nothing was happening, and then remembering that I could just walk through them. And in CoH, I had grown accustomed to a level 1 character being able to make a standing leap over a 10-foot wall, so it was incredibly frustrating in WoW when I kept forgetting my characters couldn't hop over a 3-foot picket fence.

As I said, I did radio missions/safeguards twice, and Detective Martins had nothing afterward. However, I had forgotten about / hadn't noticed the "Find Contact" button. I will look for that. Also, I know that former contacts will often introduce a new contact, but alas, known contacts don't appear on the map unless they have a mission for you or you are currently on a mission for them and need to return to them afterward. And given the number of contacts who hang out in alleys or on street corners, it's really difficult to remember exactly where they are if I want to go find them.

After completing the main storylines in Atlas Park and Kings Row, I headed off to Steel Canyon where I did the University invention program stuff and finished up the last bits of the Shining Stars story arc. Somebody, perhaps Detective Martins, sent me to speak with Montague Castanella and I did the Midnighter's storyline regarding The Lost. Then ... nothing. Martins and Castanella were the only contacts I had in Steel Canyon, and I had none in Skyway, and nobody had introduced me to new contacts in either of those zones. I cycled through radio missions and safeguards, twice, and Martins had no new contacts to introduce me to. There I was at level 18, with nobody pointing me to the next mission. In desperation, I finally went back to City Hall in Atlas Park and talked to the "origin" contacts at G.I.F.T., M.A.G.I., etc., and they introduced me to new contacts in those zones, so that I could get moving again. But I can't figure out if I missed something somewhere along the way that caused me to completely run out of contacts. I'd like to avoid this situation on up-and-coming alts. I don't recall running into this situation back before the shutdown, so I'm sure I inadvertently missed talking to somebody.

The Extracurriculars are former students at the Galaxy City International School for Superpowered Girls. They had to flee during the Shivan attack, and unfortunately had to do so with only the clothes on their backs. Their current "costumes" are mostly whatever they happened to be wearing at the time, as their actual costumes were in the laundry and had to be left behind. (RP-wise, they will eventually design replacement costumes, but for now they're wearing what they've got.) From Mexico, Dorotea Dagger (Dual Blades/Super Reflexes stalker): From France, Flavie Faker (Illusion Control/Force Field controller): From the UK, Betty Beatdown (War Mace/Invulnerability brute): From USA, Energy Ellie (Energy Blast/Mental Manipulation blaster): From USA, Kinetic Keisha (Kinetic Melee/Regeneration scrapper): From Japan, Mental Miyuki (Psychic Blast/Kinetics/Catgirl corruptor): From Ukraine, Raisa Razor (Claws/Willpower brute): From Scotland, Tabitha Target (Archery/Darkness Manipulation blaster): From Canada, Tonya Toronto (Ice Blast/Ice Armor sentinel): But ... what happened to their teacher? Unknown to the girls, their teacher was actually an undercover Arachnos agent whose ultimate goal was to turn her students into new recruits for Arachnos. The Shivan attack disrupted those plans, and Arachnos evacuated her back to the Rogue Isles. Dahlia Danger (Dual Pistols/Traps corruptor):

Well, my idea was mainly (I guess this wasn't clear) that the special mode would facilitate RPing in locations where it would not normally be "safe" to do so due to the mechanics of the mere presence of a "hero" triggering attacks from villain mobs. For example, when I'm out and about, and I see Hellions or Skulls or whomever standing around in little groups, my personal RP is that I don't attack them if they're not committing a crime. I'll actively intervene in purse-snatchings or muggings or attempted kidnappings, where a crime is clearly in progress. But if they're just sitting or standing around? Leave 'em alone. Unless ... they spot me and attack me first. "Get the cape!" So I was thinking that it might be neat to be able to walk across a parking lot, past a group of gangsters who are currently minding their own business, without automatically being accosted. In any case, this is mostly a thought experiment.

I've really had to do a lot of fiddling with the sliders to mitigate one "feature" that I don't care for. The female "run" animation was designed to provide a "sexy" hip-sway by having the animation place the feet one in front of the other while in motion. Unfortunately, on a slimmer female model, this produces an exaggerated "thigh gap" that, to me, makes them look almost bow-legged while running, particularly if you want the hips to be wide enough for an "average" woman. The best solution I've found is to drag the Hips slider all the way down, and then increase the Physique slider to make the model a bit "thick". That simultaneously widens the hips/butt and beefs up the thighs proportionally and results in a more pleasing (to me) run animation.

In defense of non-responders, (assuming you're talking about sending tells to see if a player wants to join up, and they don't answer) I find the constantly-scrolling chat window distracting and so I frequently collapse it while I'm on a mission. So I don't see tells and, depending on how much combat I'm in the middle of and how much noise it's making, I might not hear the beep.

I've always thought that one of the more annoying traits of the costume designer is the way it changes back to "Face 1" when you switch between headgear types. Like, you choose "Hats" to begin with, and then choose a face. Then for an alternate costume you decide to use "Helmets", and the face switches back to "Face 1" and you have to go hunting through the Faces list again to find the correct one. I have to always remember to look and see which specific face my character has before switching so that I don't have to hunt through the whole list again.

Some of mine ... Back in the day I made a black male character with one of those flat-top fade hairstyles that was popular with rappers in the 1990s. Then I dressed him in khaki pants, a button-up dress shirt, a sweater vest, and loafers. His name? LL Bean J Made a Ninja Blade female character wearing practically nothing. I had to name her "Triple-N" because the name filters wouldn't let me call her "Nearly Naked Ninja". (I think it wouldn't allow the word "naked".) I made a joke character who did nothing but sit in the chat channels correcting other people's grammar and spelling. I named him, "Grammar 5th Columnist" (again, the filters wouldn't let me use "Nazi", and I don't blame them). Patriotic, red white and blue female character named "Missy In Action". Female electricity blaster wearing neon pink and shooting pink lightning: "Shocking Pink" The representative of Pluto in my team of solar system-based heroines is named "Notta Planet". Martial artist named "Tae Kwon Dori" Energy/Energy blaster named "Jouleiana"

Speaking of The Hollows, I swear I remember somebody in AP regularly directing my characters there back in the day. So far with Homecoming, I haven't been directed there at all, except during the Midnighter's chain when I got sent to use the wand to cure Lost, and Hollows was mentioned as one place I could find them. By that time, the character in question had already outleveled Hollows by a good bit.

The same way your example characters do: Hold back, and use just basic fighting skills. It may be surprising to a mugger when their victim fights back with trained fighting skills, but it's not unreasonable to the point that they would instantly identify you as your superhero persona. Take them down with one or two punches, and the mugger can chalk it up to "they got in a lucky shot". Even the weapon-using heroes are still capable fighters when unarmed. That's why I included granting access to the Fighting pool "powers". Those "powers" represent any character, regardless of actual powers, "holding back". Well, like I said, this "mode" would be mainly intended as a roleplaying tool, not so much as a gameplay tool, and the player could RP any explanation they like for how, or if, their character passes as a "normal" human. They could be a shapeshifter, like J'onn J'onnz/Martian Manhunter, easily able to assume a human form. The Earth of Paragon City has highly advanced technology, so perhaps they are able to convincingly disguise themselves as human. My suggestion to disallow robotic parts in the secret ID wardrobe could still allow for a cyborg, or even a human-sized/-shaped robot using a realistic, synthetic "skin", or simply hiding a robotic arm under long sleeves and gloves. A non-shapeshifter whose body shape and/or features preclude a physical disguise could utilize technology in the form of a device that clouds the perception of anybody who looks at them, fooling them into seeing a normal human. I have a green-skinned Martian character who is not a shapeshifter, but could, if she chose (she doesn't) disguise her green skin with makeup or synthetic coverings. On the other hand, another character of mine is an 8-foot-tall, huge, advanced A.I. robotic fighting machine whose only programmed purpose is to "protect humanity", and it doesn't see any reason at all to maintain a secret identity, even if it were possible for him. Another character is an ordinary, middle-aged, brilliant scientist who has no powers at all until she drinks the formula she invented. Then she changes into a 7-foot-tall warrior who wields the power of the sun. With RP, the possible explanations are endless!