Techwright

Using Ouro to actually do what the Menders keep talking about. Cool concept.

Don't you have to do that 3 times?

Somewhere in there is a character.

Where is this in the game please? I'll be the first to say I've not experienced every corner of the game, but I've never even seen other people's shots of this before.

I can only speak from my perspective, though judging from other comments, it overlaps. My personal preference is to team through content, rather than solo or duo. This is polar opposite to any other MMO I've regularly played, probably because Pick Up Groups here are usually polite. Unfortunately, that means almost always sacrificing storyline missions. If you watch the LFG channel (in my case on Excelsior), PUG storyline teaming is almost never brought up, though radio/newspaper teams reasonably often are. I suspect this happens for a few reasons: 1. zone containment. Original content was written to send a player often outside a zone. Why? Probably because its a time sync: keep the player occupied in the game, but not pushing for a volume of content not currently developed. When storyline PUGs are run, I usually see calls for ones contained entirely (or nearly so) in one zone, such as the Hollows missions. Bottom line is players are willing to go to a zone, but not all over the place. Why else is Numina TF so reviled? So a hard look at storyline pathing might make it more appealing. 2. No investment by the team in story content. That is, the team has been conditioned to "go there, kill/arrest/rescue/find that", and that's about it. As a result, it's the rare PUG team that's willing for a lead to read through the storyline content on each mission. There needs to found a better way to invest the full team in the storyline. The Summer Blockbuster might serve as one template towards this end. 3. XP. Why run missions for an hour for half a level's gain when I can plow through a task force/strike force in the same amount of time and level twice? I mean, I do this, but even I'm aware that it gets dull after a while running repeatedly even something fun like Moonfire TF, I'm not sure what the answer is: bump up the story mission XP? provide an increased chance for rare drops? Give diminishing returns for running a TF after getting the badge for repeating a Weekly? Other? While I'm mentioning this, I feel street sweeping could use some love as well. Back in 2005, there was a lot of it going on. Today, it feels like an afterthought, and about the only time I see it is when a TF requires it. One thing I've felt it could benefit from is the street boss. This is the "Hogger" types, for those of you who've played WOW. Being able to beard the lion in his den, and hopefully get a nice drop with it. The closest thing I've seen to this is the prison break event in Brickstown. I actually enjoy the event. It's one of the few things on the street that makes me nervous to solo as I climb the ranks, rather than feel like I'm the alpha predator. Changes to these, especially where it feels like a challenge even to a 50, might reinvigorate this content, and consequently add to retention.

Welcome home! If you've not figured it out yet, the game is not static, and we recently had Issue 27 drop. Might take some time to read the notes, as there were some notable changes to transportation, among a host of other new and revised material.

Perhaps change to War Mace/Rad brute? WM has a very satisfying hit rotation, and the backpack has a bat, which is available as a war mace. Plus, you can tune the radiation to more or less match that sickly yellow bioluminescent color of your character. Alternatively, maybe give TW a try again, as Issue 27 smoothed some of the gameplay.

Ascendant? THE Ascendant? The one that rode a dino and used a laser sword? Wow, for a guy talking on the phone all day, he really managed to crank out creativity.

Not only that, but it's advancing. New content, and revisions/improvements to some older content drop periodically, including the new Issue 27. Europe is that way --> Reunion server Excelsior server <-- most populated server is that way Roleplay is that way --> Everlasting server Indomitable & Torchbearer --> earn some lovely participation trophies. (J/K...put down those rocks.)

"Normal" being the operating word (see below). And yeah, AzureAngel, Little Lost Boy looks fantastic! Hat's off to you. It's not easy to make youth look natural in the game. (Just ask Baby New Year.) I rebooted my character Vincent Poe. You may have seen, earlier in this thread, the original character's look like an attempt to mimic Vincent Price. Rebooted, Vincent Poe's starting look was as a child just on the edge of his teenage years. With his name and dark/dark powerset, I went for "creepy kid" look, not normal. Now at security level 50, he's aged to his late teens, and has a refreshed look.

I've a staff brute, built more like a scrapper. I'd recommend just defusing any potential issues right up front by explaining immediately to the team as to how he functions. Usually, you'll have courteous responses.

Hear, hear! 👍 If there's anyway possible to unleash these people into designing new instanced mission environments, please give them the tools and unleash them!

Then there should be a counterpart: Not It: Be the first to click "Accept" for your queued event 10 times.

"Seraphim" sounds like it would be a supernatural/magic organization. I suppose it could have been the prototype for Knives of Artemis as well. I wonder if the name was dumped due to its similarity to S.E.R.A.P.H.? Personal opinion, but I'd love to see Homecoming take these unused names and create new groups and new content around them.

You've reminded me of the OG game where there used to be cattle supergroups, and one would occasionally see the herd running through the city. Kind of miss that.

Although I've always liked Sid Meiers' Civilization, and played countless hours on various iterations, I LOVED the Avalon Hill game, just could never seem to coordinate a game with friends, probably due to the time factor. You've brought to mind, however, that there was a fan's online effort years ago to port the board game over to digital. I need to see if there was any success. I'd love to have a version that let the computer speed things up a bit. EDIT: and almost immediately, I discovered it: http://civ.rol-play.com/ahciv/login.php?horde_logout_token=O0kPoR2fK703JnAhdhztbOkFlxQ&app=horde While on the topic of Avalon Hill, they had another great board game, not well-known apparently: Source of the Nile. It's another I wish had been ported over to a digital game. It's essentially a "Lost World" genre, like the works of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, just without the supernatural elements. Set in late 1800s Africa, it lets players assume the role of explorers, with only the coastlines of Africa known and set. Each move inland renders a different tile revealing a map unique to that game (no real-world African interiors), with rewards or disaster resulting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_of_the_Nile_(board_game)

If we ever get the permission to post game videos, I can see a comedy one of foe defeats with an added squeegee sound as ragdoll physics slowly drags their bodies down that slope.

I was just re-reading it and suddenly realized what it reminded me of: comedian Bob Newhart's famous phone call routines.

Okay, that is a remarkably good costume! I'd never seen that pic before.

We'd still need a visibly unique identifier, both for team selection purposes ("Which of you 20 Spidermen wanted to join the TF?"), and for avoiding griefing from players deliberately disguising themselves in name and costume as others to give others a bad name via bad behavior.

*looks both ways, quietly opens game* *hits rename on xXxSol@rvers3xXx* *renames to Energy Blast*

Just speculating...Are these on high level characters? I'm wondering if they're low-level characters, in which case, knowing that changing names is free, perhaps they're placeholder names until the player can figure out a concept and name? Alternatively, might they be the result of having a named generic'ed by the GMs, either selected by the GMs, rather than assigning a number, or chose by the players who lost a name?

Would that mean the Eden zone was named for Eden Studios? I just found out that swimming south in the Peregrine Island zone will eventually transfer you to the northern waters of the Talos Island zone. (which all lines up on the city map) Unfortunately, I cannot find a way to work that in reverse.

ah, yeah, I misunderstood.