RubyRed

So I have a lot of thoughts on this. It's always difficult to say exactly what causes a game to survive or not unless you have very precise first-hand data.* And every game, even when looking at a specific slice like MMOs, is very different and the audiences for them want different things. This being a private server that is not marketed to the general public further puts Homecoming into outlier territory which hasn't been studied very well. On the first point, power leveling... it's more of a curve. There is a portion of the player base that only ever is interested in the endgame challenges, and they see leveling as "filler." It's just a speed bump to get to what they want to play. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just a different way of playing the game. I do a mix of both... sometimes I want to take my time and play through story arcs, and sometimes I go farm a character in AE. It just depends on what I'm in the mood for. Saying that one of those styles somehow hurts the game isn't really true. As I mentioned it's more of a curve... there's a sweet spot in there somewhere. If you make it too tedious to level and provide no shortcuts, the people who don't like leveling will leave. If you make far it too easy and you can basically just autocreate a max level, max spec'd character for free, then the people like the achievement and journey part will leave. You need something that appeals to both. The second point, on fluctuating population based on content updates... unfortunately I have news for you. Live services games live or die on content. That influx of players when new content drops is usually what keeps your game alive, which is why most healthy games feature things like regular content patches every few months, to keep people engaged. The same is true of this server. You'll see the biggest population spikes when new content is available. People like things that are fresh and new. Now, there will be a steady population between content drops that helps sustain as well, but the longer between new content, the smaller that cohort becomes. The part of the population that will play a game no matter what, whether there's new things to play or not, is very very small compared to those who will come back for new content. Again, there's nothing particularly "wrong" with either set of players... they're just people who want different things out of the game and the time they spend playing it. And that I think will be the biggest barrier to creating a population on Homecoming much larger than it is now. Content is expensive. New story arcs, new zones, new enemies, new power sets would be cool but are all very costly in terms of developer time. Small tweaks and revamps just doesn't invigorate most players and get them to return on a regular basis. (*Sauce: I have over 10 years of AAA game development experience, some it even MMOs, and I've looked at the data first hand. Though I will not claim to be an expert in the business/analytics side of it.)

Oh cool! I had no idea this was a thing. Doesn't change the angle thing @Solarversewas talking about, but it's nice to know there's some customization.

I think this is going to be something that's entirely subjective... there's nothing particularly "wrong" about the animation, but it looks like the animator decided that the source of propulsion for flight comes somewhere from the character's center of mass, allowing them to angle their body in flight and move forward. It definitely works with how the wing animations look. If the propulsion is more parallel with the body, like from a jet pack or the feet, then yeah it makes less sense. Flying prone would work better in those situations and be more aerodynamic. Options for different animations would be cool, so you could choose which one you think looks best for your character/flight method.

Gonna agree with some of the other folks here... I saw the changes affecting Shinobi-iri and Gymanstics, and was just like ... why? Maybe from a pure design standpoint it makes sense, but it seems pointless. Are they really hurting anything?

Easy, I just pick the Scrapper looks at character screen and sees that 80% of them are Scrappers Uh hmm.

Ok! I just finished this arc this morning. Get ready for wall of text... For reference, again I'm trying this at what feels like an "appropriate level" for the story arc. I created a level 38 EM/Shield Scrapper, kitted with basic IOs, ATOs, and the Atlas Medallion. First, Doc Buzzsaw doesn't show up in "Find Contact" at the appropriate level. Would be nice to have her there. (Now that I think about it, Watkins had the same problem and I think I forgot to mention it in the other thread.) Also, this arc I think should've been called "Oops! All ambushes" ... more on that throughout my feedback ... Give Cortex an Invasive Procedures-- the NPC freaks tended to kill the named guys before I even got to them. I was a bit on auto pilot and didn't notice the barrels healing mobs at first.. very clever 🙂 This one was a bit of a cake walk, so I decided to crank it up to +0x4 just for fun. Boy would I regret that soon! Retrieve Dr. Pierce -- And here I immediately realize the gravity of my mistake! The mob density in this mission is pretty high, lots of double spawns next to each other, all with psionic damage... yikes. Still, I decide to give it a try. I chose my bed, now I have to lie in it! The snipers Bouvier's room were an interesting surprise, but they also didn't follow me out of the room. So I just pulled the boss into the hallway and dealt with him while his snipers stood around. The building interior map overall was really fun to explore. End of mission... lol oodles of ambushes, I think 3 of them came in the front door simultaneously. Good thing I had a lot of purples. I might've had to come back from the hospital once... 🤫 Once I got outside with Dr. Pierce, the objective for the escort was somewhere way outside the bounds of the map (.67 mi to the West of the building). Luckily just taking her to the mission exit worked. Anyways, I learned my lesson and turned the diff back down. 🙂 Buzzsaw's dialog throughout these missions is delightful, btw. Find the lab -- pretty straighforward. Thanks for making the escorts bosses, I was worried I would have to babysit them. I still almost lost Cortex when I entered a big room and he went right and Buzzsaw & Pierce went left. That was a fun mess! Then Cortex went and got himself stuck in a pillar ... I swear this guy has it out for me. I have no idea what caused this, nobody here had knockback or anything, and it's a big open room and he went and picked the one pillar and stood inside it. Sadly Teleport Target didn't work on him so I had to reset the mission. 😞 The Kraken room is a really cool set piece.. I love everything about this encounter even if it's a bit tough solo. One thing I noticed, the mutant Rikti would spawn right on top of the canisters and sometimes get stuck in them for a few seconds. The bottom of the hydra pylon was missing geometry, just floating up in the air. It looked fine after I destroyed it. Loot the Unsuspecting Council -- Standard smash n' grab, a nice break after the last two missions (or so I thought). I like that it starts with a warehouse instead of the usual drop into a council base. Then Injured Vandal happened though, ugh Elude... no fun waiting for the idiot to drop his T9. It's really just not fun gameplay waiting three minutes for a mob to be able to be hit again. Also spawning multiple ambushes (that noticeably didn't not respect the team size setting, they were huge) during the fight felt a bit unfair. Debris from the generators caused them to lift off the ground... amusing, but probably not intended. Steal from Crey -- Ugh, paragon protectors... see my previous rant about T9 defensive powers. At least they were all minions and lieutenants for me, so they died before they could use them. It seems like all the mission objectives are in the very last room, making the first couple of floors feel like filler. Maybe spread out the objectives a bit? Found out the hard way that Fold Space can pull Hopkins, that was entertaining. Omg ambushes. More ambushes. This whole story arc loves the ambushes way too much. Especially since they didn't seem to respect team size -- I was getting groups of 6-8 as solo, while I was trying to deal with Hopkins who's already hard to fight. Also so many of them... I think I cleared about ambush 8 before I got tired of it. I finally got fed up with this mission and auto-completed it. I literally was experiencing fatigue from it and logged off for the night. Invite Bile to the Party -- Okay started this mission this morning after a good sleep. Good reuse of this map. I'd love to see some of the unique maps get used a bit more. More ambushes 😞 😞 😞 This was especially annoying when I was three pages into TechDeck's dialog and an ambush arrived... though I guess that's my fault for not assuming that would happen at that point. Although I admit I do like the Sneaky Swipers, they're fun. Free Bile from the Zig -- The PPD Operatives on the tower might be a little unfair... I could see some characters not having any way of getting to them (I'm pretty sure the building they're standing on has no unassisted way to get to the top), but that's probably a small percent. Dillo, Grym, and Twinshot all as bosses in one group on +0x1 seems a bit much... I had to triple-stack insps to have a chance. Still, I'd rather fight them than Vandal. "Find the Key to MAX-Holding" for some reason put the objective on Dr. Pierce which was confusing. "Unlock Super MAX-Holding" created a duplicate marker at the same spot, and was also confusing for a second... I thought it broke because I had to click the elevator a second time before it went to the next floor. This objective seems to just point somewhere random. Does talking to Vandal spawn Agent Indigo as an ambush? I thought the room was clear but then suddenly I was getting my face punched in. Doesn't seem very fair to ambush people while also presenting a long dialog that isn't repeatable. Maybe I just didn't see her, it was kinda dark in the room. Bile disappearing into the arms locker confused me ... he just disappeared and I didn't know why, and I missed the captions because I was looking around from him lol. I'll put this one down as me not understanding a new mechanic. I like that different sets of enemies respawned for the breakout... kept things fresh. Though the response was kind of anemic... in this case, maybe a couple more spawns on the way back wouldn't hurt? "Where is Cortex?" I found Cortex (screenshot below) but he didn't seem to need anything. I swear this guy hates me! There were also two markers for this objective and I wasn't sure what the second one was wanting. Lastly, Bile needs some eyeglasses... I wasn't even using stealth on this character and it seemed really easy for him to lose sight of me even though I was only 20 ft away from him. "It's like a TED talk from hell!" - snrk. 🙂 Overall: Despite it's difficulty, I mostly had fun with this one. It was a good story with great characters and some genuinely fun objectives that felt fresh. Unlike the new blueside arc, I didn't feel the dialog overstayed its welcome. Just the right amount of text for a story arc I think. That said... ambuuuuushes. Oh my gosh this arc rivals some of the worst FW/NW arcs for being in love with ambushes. I'm not opposed to ambushes as a way to spice things up and make things a bit more precarious, but when they're in almost every mission, relentless without pause, spawning in the middle of already super difficult fights, it ceases being fun. Honestly, this is a good arc for a full team based on the difficulty (or maybe one exemplar'd incarnate 😛 ). I wouldn't recommend it for solo/small teams, especially if you don't have anybody to soak up the massive damage from AVs or control large ambushes. With that in mind, I actually think this whole thing, with its linear nature and tough gameplay might actually be better suited as a Strike Force than a story arc, if for no other reason than to emphasize that you should really team your way through this one.

Actually I just got back to testing again and figured it out. Despite the whole computer being glowie, only the very bottom of it was clickable, which I didn't realize until I just randomly started moving my mouse all over it to get it to work. So picking up from where I left off, Investigate Pathogen's warehouse -- as mentioned, first glowie is only clickable on the very bottom. One of the first captions' text is half black in the chat window, making it illegible, screenshot: Even after completing the first objective, the objective marker stays on the front door. Pathogen Ascended has no ranged attacks, so I was able to cheese him with hover. At the end of the mission, this is probably another one that needs rebalancing... when I went back down the elevator, there was a massive ambush of Vahz waiting for me, making it impossible for me to finish the last objective in the time allotted (and almost killed me the moment I came out of the elevator). Also because the objective marker didn't update, I had no idea what I was looking for. I only found the computer for the hacking part by accident, and couldn't activate it because 10 vahz were following me. I never did see the sprinkler controls. Unfortunately couldn't kill Cortex, way too strong for this character, so I'm not sure how the arc ends. 😛 I'll try it again on a more soloable char another time.

I'm guessing it was a bug then. It didn't change to the hand icon and I couldn't interact with it in any way. I also tried the new /interact command and it didn't do anything. I'll try it again later today and see if restarting the mission makes it work, but just be aware it looks like it can bug out.

I made a level 28 psi/sonic blaster to test this out so I could try it at the appropriate level for the story arc. Only using SOs. First off ... the writing in this is very good but needs some serious editing for length. I appreciate that the writer enjoys what they're doing, but this is an MMO and not a visual novel. Right off, Agent Watkins has I think twelve pages of initial dialog before you can take his first mission (maybe, I wasn't counting too closely, but somewhere in that realm). I would compare to the length of text present in other missions and try to hit somewhere in the same ball park. Overall the old school design with going to multiple city maps, street sweeping missions, etc. isn't my cup of tea but that's entirely subjective. The zoombies as they're being called are annoying but manageable. It actually makes them a bit of a threat compared to the other embalmed, which are easy to deal with. I think they're fine. Crash the Unholy Masquerave was my first wall. Keep in mind I'm level 28, +0x1. The enemy groups all consisted of 2 lieutenants + 4 embalmed cadavers... this is really rough for someone at the lower level range. Also because of the tight map I frequently had to deal with two or three groups right next to each other. I was able to cheese it a bit by hovering to the ceiling but it was still taking quite a while to kill everything, and I ended up auto-completing because it would've taken me over an hour to clear my way to the objective. This mission needs some rebalancing. Dr. Katelyn Pierce -- I really really like the idea of this NPC that you ask questions to get some clues, and that your choices can effect the mission path. Please more of this! I like choices that matter. But again needs some editing. Like 3 or 4 options would've been fine, not 8. Investigate the Rusty Rivet bar -- the two named guys I was supposed to defeat in the beginning were killed by NPCs as I watched. It didn't even take that long, not sure I could've gotten to them before they were defeated. Not sure if that was intended? Either way kinda funny and made finishing the mission easy. Then I got to Investigate Pathogen's warehouse and got stuck. No idea what I was supposed to do. The front door requires a key to enter, there was a glowie next to it that I couldn't interact with, and no mobs to kill. Re-read my clues to see if I missed anything, but didn't see any relevant info. Unfortunately I had used my one auto-complete earlier so I got stuck here and couldn't go any further. Overall: Despite the critiques above, this is really good work. It feels just like one of the missions I'd expect from the original devs (sans the dialog length issues I pointed out). It fits nicely into the lore of the city. Very good work! I could see repeating this mission on alts for the fun of it. (Not something I can say about every story arc in the game...)

I would love to see this too, especially the first suggestion (the Gull option to turn off buff fx is also a neat idea). It really bugs me when I spend hours making the perfect costume and then 98% of the time I'm playing neither I nor anyone teaming with me can actually see my character 😛

Updated today with the Issue 27 data from the beta server! You can check out the beta API here: https://coh.tips/powers/beta/ Please let me know if you see anything really weird, yet again a LOT has changed from i26 so there's all sorts of new weirdness to contend with. In addition to i27 data, I've also added: New fields with detailed chain data for chain powers Disallowed enhancements and global enhancements to particular attributes on powers Activation effects (always activated even if the power misses) The actual mode is now available for Set Mode / Unset Mode effects! I'm developing these changes in a separate branch until i27 hits live: https://gitlab.com/rubidium-dev/powers/-/commits/i27-beta/ Shout out and many thanks to @UberGuy, @Bopper, and @Felis Noctuwho kept peppering me with info and diffs that saved me a huge chunk of time putting this together.

I use Pop_OS 20.04 and Lutris, which I configured myself rather than using the public scripts. The Wine option I'm using is specifically lutris-5.7-x86_64.

It's definitely not capped.. I've managed to get it up to 400 fps before, but mind you that is running under Linux which has decent OpenGL implementations. OpenGL drivers on Windows tend to be neglected since games almost universally use DirectX there, and I could never get it to run more than about 90-100 fps under Windows 10, and it fluctuates wildly depending on what's going on in the game. Personally, there are definitely noticeable improvements going from 30 to 60 to about 100 fps... past that point I've never been able to tell, so I'm not sure pushing it to 200 fps or more really does much. That may be entirely subjective though.

Pretty easy to install other than both Firefox and Windows thinking it was a virus 😛 Looks nice too, great job team!

When you activate a power it takes a certain amount of time to cast, a delay between you activate it and when the effect goes off on the target, as well as a certain amount of time to animate in the vfx system, which is the animation time. Most of the time these two are identical, but in some cases they're not. A lot of the visual animations also root you in place, so that animation time is the amount of time you won't be able to move your character.

The API has continued to evolve since June, thanks to feedback from multiple people. I really appreciate the help on making this better. Here's some highlights since the last time I posted a summary on June 20: Data includes power redirects present in EntCreate mod params Powers include which enhancement set categories they accept Animation times added alongside the cast times Suppress/cancel events included MainTargetOnly/SecondaryTargetsOnly flags on effect groups (I apparently missed these new flags in the p5 data set) Can create raw output of .bins That last one takes a bit of explanation. Because of the size of the data, I'm not publishing it on my web site, but enough people have asked for info that can only be seen in the raw .bin files that I added this new output mode. You can download the source and set the "output_format" to "raw" in the config. This still writes a bunch of JSON files but they're a lot closer to the source DEFs than the API.

Oooh nice, I'm gonna have to give this one a try. Your blue side guide was really good.

It could be adapted, yes. You'd have to basically rewrite the bin_parse module but the structs are mostly the same (although that highly depends on what server you're adjusting it to) and the output formats would still make sense.

Reading this thread inspired me to go back and work on my hero name generator some more. I mined some of the words people shared here as well as a few other places to add dozens of new entries to the generator. To be honest, it makes a lot of silly stuff but there's enough good suggestions peppered in that maybe it'll spark your imagination. 😎 Hope this is helpful for people looking to name their character! City Suggests Name Generator

I doubt anyone from this community is going to generate enough traffic for me to notice. If that does happen, I'll post a notice. That said, I would appreciate anyone using it to be reasonable and cache responses rather than slamming the site as fast possible.

Thanks to the continuous prodding of @Bopper, there's now a v2 of the API available at the usual place. It was sooner than expected, but I needed to redo the structure to accommodate a richer data set that includes the full data for referenced powers rather than summarizing them. In other words, you can now fully inspect the powers used by pets/pseudopets as well as powers granted and powers executed by other powers. Also he pointed out that redirects were completely borked in the v1 data ... totally my fault, I made a note to try and understand them better on my first pass through the data and then completely forgot. They're now properly separated so that you can figure out what to redirect to. Page where you can get all the fun stuff: https://coh.tips/powers/ Release notes: https://gitlab.com/rubidium-dev/powers/-/releases/2.0.1

It doesn't. The i25 codebase modified the bins to use a completely different format, and the actual data contained in them has changed structure over the past few years as well. Unfortunately means any bin-parsing code from the beforetimes is completely useless on Homecoming.

Released a slightly updated data set today, fixing/adding a few things. Scrapper criticals should have correct pvp/pve tagging now. New "stacking" field added to effects to describe how the effect stacks with itself. Times represented in display fields should no longer incorrectly round (they were always accurate in the data fields). "ticks" added to effects that tick multiple times. This is a convenience field derived from duration_seconds and continuous_apply_seconds. Effects that have a percent chance of 0 to apply should no longer stop the display_info of child scaled effects from being populated. Shout out to @Bopper, @Dismiss, and @modest for helping me identify these issues and providing suggestions. 😎

Looks like the intention is -10%, with an additional -10% each if you have Boxing and Brawl. Unfortunately the code that renders all the power effects is kind of a buggy mess so these problems aren't all that uncommon. It's also got a "Special to hit" line that I'm not sure where it's coming from, possibly a duplicate of the previous entry on recharge reduction (it typically says "Special" if there's a scaling modifier).

v1 is now "complete," meaning this is the structure going forward and shouldn't change, so totally safe to use for production applications. Of particular note, there is now a complete data dictionary describing the output format so you don't have to guess what things are. Now for the hard part, I need to remember what I was doing back in January that prompted me to create this...