Techwright

Yes, some of us are unfortunately effected by the eternal night, even a virtual kind. Kind of like anti-vampires I guess.

I don't like them or hate them. The ones that figure out they should be porting behind the hero lines harrying any who are trying to heal: those have a modicum of my grudging respect.

When did you started playing CoX? Was it before or after the game shut down? Tell me a little about how you met the game. I started playing either right before or during the first Winter Event. January 2005, I think it was. I was introduced to the game by my best friend who had played console and coin-op games with me since we were at least 10 years old. (That would have been around 25 years by then.) Have you played the game before the shut down in 2012? If the answer is yes, tell me about how you feel about the game’s “Death”. What was that experience like? Yes, as mentioned I started around January 2005. I'd left the game twice during the original run, each time to transfer monthly payments to other MMO games. I last left in 2011, I think it was, and was playing the long-standing beta of Firefall. That game had been bought and the new owners were deliberately spiraling it into the ground. I was thinking of returning to the City of Heroes when I learned it had just shut down. I was shocked, and remorseful that I'd left. At the time, I was observing that games that managed to survive their first two years seemed to be running for a very long time and I'd assumed CoX would have as well. Naturally, with that conclusion, I'd always assumed I could rejoin the game. And when the game returned in 2019? What did you felt? Was it like a “Homecoming”? A coworker who played other games heard the news and shared it with my in May 2019. I remember shouting at him "NO WAY!" in raw excitement, startling my other coworkers. I wasn't really focused on my work the rest of the day, and raced home afterwards to find Homecoming and figure out how to install it. Hearing those dulcet notes of first the login screen and then the Atlas Park theme just about had me in tears. Seeing so many running around Atlas Park, knowing I wouldn't have trouble finding teams just added to the excitement. It was indeed like a Homecoming. What was the first thing you did after playing the game for the first time in years? The first thing I did was create reserve characters with all my favorite old characters' names. I then went back and replaced each placeholder character with the final character recreating name, powers, and costume. What are your thoughts on the return of the servers? Did you brought something with you from the original server? (Avatars, builds, things like that) As I mentioned, I brought back my favorite characters, of which there were several. As to the "return of the servers", one of the things that surprised me was how smooth everything was. The advancements in server technology, network technology, and personal computers resulted in a much better performance rate, far closer to what I think the original development team had intended. I knew immediately that the best test for that would be a Rikti invasion, which in the old days reduced the video to more of a slide show than a smooth game. I went through my first Rikti invasion without any noticeable slowdown and was greatly impressed. Do you like to play with a specific character? (can be more than one) If yes, what makes it so special to you? I have 5 or 6 favorite characters that I play more than others. I think what makes them special is that they feel more powerful than the others, and I feel more connected to their functions: using their powers becomes second nature to me. Additionally, I feel more connected to them if their concept, both costume and story feels fully developed, like something that might end up in a published comic book. Usually, these also receive several compliments from other players, which tends to make me work harder to enrich those characters in even better design.

I'm hoping for the change promised last year to be back this year:

Solo for the stories, in my case. If it was just to run up XP, I'd be doing radio missions. Though I prefer to PUG everything (the only game I prefer pugging), the team format generally just does not leave times to read the story.

thanks

Had issues this Saturday morning with the Brickstown Prison Break event. The opening sequence would count up to 12 prisoners apprehended, then freeze and no more prisoners would be present. With a deficit of 8 on the counter, the event didn't advance to the next stage. @GM Impervium kindly assisted, resetting the event, and even shutting down Brickstown 1 in favor of Brickstown 2, but the scenario played out again each time. I should have counted, and didn't, but I got the impression that there were enough prisoners initially, but that perhaps the counter was not counting each one that was apprehended.

Message: Pre-built Windows 11 computers will be mandated to have a security feature, VBS, active. This has been tested and shown to reduce gaming performance by 25%, some up to 28%. Source (and greater description): https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-11-pcs-can-hobble-gaming-performance/ I'm curious to see how this will affect, if at all, Homecoming. "Curious" being the equivalent, of course, to "can't tear my gaze from the train wreck as it happens."

So the Praetorian counterpart of the P2W vendor has different text? If so, curious. Because the P2W covers mutual exclusivity, calling it a "shared cooldown". EDIT: Oh, and since I brought it up, some of the other P2W stuff could use a brief description. One example would be the vanity travel powers like Void Skiff and Rocket Board. It just gives their name. It doesn't say their maximum speed, and more importantly, it says nothing about being unable to combat while riding them.

Robotech_Master in 2019's P2W guide wrote: "Renewal of Light includes a flashy animation effect and a PBAoE blast that knocks back and disorients enemies around you. Return to Battle just lets you get back up, but applies five max-size Inspirations to you, the same as leveling up does." (emphasis mine) I'm probably not the only one who has stood in front of the P2W vendor trying to figure out which of these is the best fit for my character and failing because P2W doesn't include a function description for each. Would it be possible to add a very brief function description on each please?

Oh, my...it's Rabbit-foot Ralphie the Pink Pooka!

comic book lore-wise there might be reasons for the snug fit, besides showing off your gym results. Skin-smooth fabric means less loose folds of cloth for a melee opponent to grab (of course, wearing it while wearing a pony tail kind of defeats the effect). It also probably reduces friction/drag for flyers and superjumpers, and leaves no open neck lines or pockets of fabric for acid and corrosives to get into. Any onesies I'm given better not come with those pajama footies. Hated those when I was a little scrapper. They were hot!

And the turf is coastal in a state that hurricanes do hit. There's just no winning with that insurance.

Do you recall if either discussed the history of Talos and the island, something that might clarify the dates?

Wait, wait, wait.... let me finish making popcorn first. This ought to be good.

Always thought anti-grav grapples would have made an excellent travel power. Think Spider-Man web shooters, but instead of webbing, a thin, high tensile wire shoots out with a cylindrical anti-grav piece on the end that shoots out to a point then holds position mid-air (no need for walls), allowing swinging below, and turns off the anti-grav and retracts the wire when the other wrist-borne wire is extended. Perfect for "web slinging" over Talos Harbor, or anywhere else there are no buildings to web to. Also a flying segway, drawing inspiration from the travel device used by DC comics Orion:

Just how many Spider-Man opponents do they intend to stuff into this movie? This is starting to look like Infinity War in the size of its character cast.

I've been wondering why I've not seen any Praetorian zone event recruitings in LFG recently. Now I'm really interested to do those again, and see this and anything else hidden.

It is my goal to read them, though I would politely question if you're actually looking at the shipping price. The mass market paperback of "Freedom Phalanx" is going for about $43 used currently, and that looks to be the best price. Some, even "acceptible" are over $400. Yowsah! I like the game, but not that much!

And that's exactly the problem: the game, to provide targets for the heroes, overstocks the streets and warehouses with villains. The "reality" would be more like 20% of the population are villains, 10% are heroes (I seem to recall reading somewhere that it was believed the heroes numbered less than 10, 000), and 70% are citizens. That still makes for a very lethal city to live in. There's a reason kids are almost never seen. You don't live in Paragon unless you need to live in Paragon. And that brings up another point. A lot of these citizens have to work here because their companies require it and in some cases because their companies provide protection. Take Crey, for instance. Sure we know they're rotten to the core, but on the surface they provide "heroes" which would probably act as a deterrent to crime against their workers, maybe even escort duty to/from work. But in exchange, their workers are tightly bound to the will of the company. So you want to work with Crey? You come to the big city, despite the danger. On another note. it's Rhode Island. It's about 55 miles top to bottom. There's an international airport half that distance from Paragon City in Province. Not sure we have to have another (though I'm sure I'd love it if such a zone were developed.)

Yeah, this has nothing to do with my opinion on the subject. I always thought that "mutant" should be constant in the timeline of the game, just like all four other powers. However, and I forget where to point you for the reference, even back in the original game it was stated that mutants were not seen (in modern era?) until right after the splitting of the atom. I think it was Sister Psyche that pointed out the conclusion was that something unknown (Marvel would say "quantum" here) shifted in the universe, and super powered mutants came to be. I'm digging way back to my memories of the original game here, and something I've not yet re-encountered in Homecoming, but I was given to understand that powers largely came and went in, well, eras as you've used the word, and that suggests why the game writers pegged the splitting of the atom as the "start" of the mutants of the modern era. Meaning that they had the idea of mutant powers resurfacing with each era or epoc. Perhaps a dev with greater access to the lore might clarify for us, or someone with a more encyclopedic knowledge of the game quotes. Exactly. You summarized my confusion nicely.

SPOILERS AHEAD for any who still want to learn the lore at their own pace. I think it's been out there long enough that we won't need to used the spoiler windows. The hero Talos: when was he in action? The unofficial wiki says the 50's and 60's, which matches with what I used to assume which was mid-century, but then I was passing by that marker of Mayor Spanky's birth street on Talos Island the other day, and suddenly realized that Spanky was born in 1878. Which would be in direct conflict with Talos Island being created in the 60's. Plus Spanky was heavily tied to Talos Island in the 1920s. What was Talos origin? Again, when I thought he was mid-century, "mutant" seemed reasonable. The wiki hints that Talos has been around for centuries, so that couldn't be mutant, since the splitting of the atom was the starting point for mutants. I'm guessing "magic" since that tends to be a catch-all. Was it ever stated that there were plans to bring the Talos story back to the forefront? Again, the info on the wiki suggests in the 60s that Talos was mysteriously tied to a young boy (the implication being that the boy either summoned Talos or transformed into Talos, ala Shazam.) But if he's summonable, over centuries, then perhaps he wasn't killed, and the kid, now an adult, might summon him again at some point.

Episode 8 dropped and it is a doozie! (and yes, hero vs villain) Give it time. Marvel-Disney is playing the long game, and doesn't want to rush those characters into the MCU. They are moving that way, however. Eternals next, and strong evidence that the Fantastic Four will arrive in the next year or two. X-men unfortunately will be later than that. Deadpool, that one I'm not certain about. But What If...? has the potential to run for years, dropping a new season after every major shift in the MCU.