Marstead

A list of some other mechanics-modifying QOL IOs I could envision fitting into this power. Some of these could be balanced by adding a downside to each of them, so they are not just instant-takes by everyone. If datamining suggests most of the playerbase is slotting a particular IO, it might be correct to go ahead and implement that mechanic as a global change. This would let them do an extended beta test on QOL features in Production. "Instant Enrage": Automatically consume any Enrage inspirations received as drops from enemies. The effectiveness of Enrage inspirations increases by 10%. (And variations for other inspirations, including one to auto-consume all inspirations received as drops) "Bodyguard": Your mastermind pets automatically switch to Defensive/Follow stance whenever you are below 50% hit points, but are always in Aggressive status otherwise. "Fast Minions": Your mastermind pets no longer use their tier 1 abilities, but now benefit from recharge and endurance reduction bonuses. "Rapid Deployment": Your mastermind pets are summoned with the Equip & Upgrade effects already in place, if you've taken those powers. Summoning powers cost double endurance. Does not function in PVP areas. "Replace Minions": If you cast a pet summoning ability while you already have pets of that type active, your active pets are healed to full and gain a brief 3-second invulnerability buff. Your pet summoning abilities have double recharge time. "Aggro": Your global aggro cap is increased by X enemies, but your resistance cap is reduced by X%. "Wallclimb": If you are moving at max run speed into a surface, you begin to rise upward until you stop moving or are blocked by a ceiling. "Improved Reveal": When using the Reveal power, you also reveal the locations of clickable objectives and enemies, as normally happens when only a few objectives/enemies remain. "Group Buff": Your single target buff powers now affect all allies within X yards of the target, but have double recharge time. "Group Debuff": Your single target debuff powers now affect all enemies within X yards of the target, but have double recharge time. "Wider Auras": The effect radius of your toggle powers is doubled, but so is their upkeep/endurance cost. "Bounce Back": When consuming resurrection inspirations, you are affected as if by the Phase Shift power for 30 seconds (You can only use abilities that target yourself). Disabled in PVP. "Retoggle:" Your toggles which do not put you in "Only Affecting Self" status automatically activate if you have >50% endurance and activating them will not cause your Endurance Consumption to exceed your Endurance Recovery. Disabled in PVP.

I think if you have one power to modify, that works fine, but the issue crops up when you need to use these unique procs for multiple powers. I cite Robotics/Sonic as an example, where if I want to get rid of knockback I need to slot Sudden Acceleration into 4 separate powers, losing the 6-set bonus on all of those powers. The main thing here is that this looks to be an area of design space that the Homecoming devs are hoping to exploit to make QOL/balance changes in the future, but if they go too far with that we'll be sacrificing too many main power slots for these sort of QOL IOs. So I think getting in front of that (and making it easier for the devs to add more IOs like this in the future) seems like a good idea. Not really a problem, if you really want to keep a couple of powers with their original formatting there is still the option of slotting the relevant IOs into individual powers instead. This could be an interesting idea and would potentially allow a great deal of customisation to characters. There might be some balance concerns that would need to be ironed out (slotting all of the -Res or the +Build Up procs to this power could potentially be rather unbalanced for example) but I think it might be a nice way to allow people to spec out their characters in interesting ways (e.g. if my Claws/ Scrapper has the background fluff of being a victim of an experiment to combine human and lizard DNA it might make sense for him to have 'poisonous claws', slotting the Sting of the Manticore +Toxic proc into this proposed slot would allow him to have a mechanical benefit that matches his backstory). Of course all of this would need to be balanced against how difficult it would be to make such a change to the character 'template', and vet the various procs that are available. Right, exactly -- in this model the existing slotting method for these IOs would still work (So you could just slot it to one power if you wanted). To your point about balance concerns, I think you could restrict which procs would work in this new inherent power. I was thinking pretty much just these brand new mechanics procs the devs are coming up with would work in the power, but I suppose some other QOL powers could go in there (like Performance Shifter, Numina, etc -- powers with a guaranteed proc chance)

In this Beta, the Homecoming devs have landed on a clever solution to address some balance and mechanics issues. They utilize the design space of Set IOs with unique procs. Players who don't like Knockback can slot Sudden Acceleration to convert it to Knockdown on some powers and on the Beta there's an Experienced Marksman IO for making snipes instant cast. This solution is very clever, but the design space for power slots & sets is stretched pretty thin already. Some classes like Mastermind/Robotics have knockback on multiple powers, so if you want to convert it to Knockdown, you need to "waste" a slot on all of them. I think an elegant solution here would be to add a new Inherent power called something like Innovation. This is an Auto power that does nothing by itself, but it starts with 1 slot and can be expanded up to 6 slots like any other power. The purpose of this power is for slotting these special mechanics-altering IOs like Sudden Acceleration; those changes are then applied to all of that character's powers. So if you put Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown into this power, *all* of your Knockback powers now deal Knockdown. If you slot the new Beta Expert Marksman IO in Innovation, then all of your powers are Instant-Snipe. This would open up the Homecoming devs to continue to explore this "QOL IO" design space without worrying about intruding on the IO Set ecosystem. And requiring players to invest slots in the power would still create some (small) cost for players choosing to change a bunch of mechanics. ***** Since this concept of an Auto power that does nothing until slotted with special IOs would add a lot of unnecessary complexity for newer players, it might be smart to gate this power behind the P2W Vendor. Even if the unlock is free, that would make sure new players don't get confused by this power until they understand enough about the game to know how to use the P2W vendor.

I agree the Badge is icky. Maybe a unique title? *shrug* Making individual toggles could work, but I think it's really important for this to be an irreversible character creation change. The fact that Null the Gull exists makes it really hard for some players (like me, anyway) to unlock alignments "normally", when it's so easy to just pop over to Pocket D. I'd rather opt out of it permanently and not have the temptation at all!

Hey folks! I love I25 and so do most of the players on Homecoming. I'm really glad the devs are continuing to support the game with patches and new content; this is definitely the place I'd like to be. I think the existing servers have some sandbox philosophy applied to their rules. I think that's totally cool for most of the playerbase, but it feels like a bit of a bummer that things like SG prestige simply don't exist. I know a lot of folks will say "If you don't like that stuff, play on an I24 server" but I think these are small enough differences that you could make a permanent character flag set at creation that limits what that character will be able to interact with in-game. Games like oldschoolrunescape use a system like this called "Ironman Mode" (although we probably shouldn't call it that in a superhero game). I'll call these "Ironman Characters" and "Ironman Mode" here for convenience, but something like "Prestige Mode" or "Pristine Mode" could work. I think this will assuage a lot of the concerns of players who enjoy the new content of I25 but aren't as fond of the sandbox changes. It'd also open up the Homecoming devs to be a lot more aggressive with sandboxy changes in the future, as the players who won't like them will already be opting out of them. Here's a non-exhaustive list of things that could fit into an Ironman Mode, through character flags that don't need to fundamentally change the way how the game works for everyone else. SG Prestige Restored; Ironman characters can only invite other Ironman characters to their SGs, and must purchase SG objects with prestige normally Ironman characters must unlock capes, auras, and costume parts normally and start with the Live costume parts. Ironman characters do not earn respecs & costume tokens automatically at levels 10, 20, 30, 40, & 50 Ironman characters cannot interact with Null the Gull to change alignment. Ironman characters can only receive mail from other Ironman characters. Ironman characters have the same salvage & AH slots as live. Ironman characters cannot use the normal P2W vendor, but can access a new Ironman P2W vendor that sells the same resources, but for a significant cost in Reward Merits instead of influence Ironman characters cannot sell/purchase enhancements directly on the AH, but can purchase Recipes & Salvage (to prevent the current Attuned enhancement cheese) I could see this option being available on all servers, but one of the servers becoming the preferred place for Ironman players. I don't feel like there's much need to call out Ironman Characters, except for maybe a single unique badge that would show up on the bio. This should probably be a character creation restriction; non-Ironman characters should not be able to convert to Ironman (but maybe Ironman characters should be able to irreversibly "give up" and convert to regular characters, losing their Ironman badge in the process).

The problem with making even vague statements like that is, in the minds of gamers, everything you mention is a promise. Say the HC team make just such a statement and 6 months down the line someone comes up with something that purports to do what you're talking about. If HC doesn't immediately jump on the bandwagon you'll have another big hue and cry how they "broke their promise" and how this "proves they're out to get the other servers" and so on and so forth. If you've spent anytime on game forums you see that, one of the main reasons devs don't talk about future content until its nearly ready, doing so always bites them on the ass if they have to change or abandon the concept. I can guarantee you, after a statement like that, a year from now people will be angrily asking why the backup client isn't done and why hasn't the HC team gotten it out to us. Their minds can't most of that sentence, they will just read "We'll make one for you" instead. Further, this kind of inter-server software is a fantasy. You have I24-based servers that seem to want to freeze that moment in time. I24 servers that want to expand in their own direction from that starting point. And this I25 server which intends to further expand and develop the game from there. As time goes on, the characters will become more and more difficult to integrate. You already have the problem of what happens to a character that is a Sentinel AT here, not to mention that I25 has more power proliferation than I24. Its really not in their best interests to agree to even consider this. All questions, no answers, except from people who would have no clue how to build it, but just think they do. I know how you feel, I'd hate to lose my characters again. However, there's no point worrying about what I can't fix. You can set up your own private server and, effectively, export your characters to it through costume saves and just setting the characters levels/gear with the admin tools. Yeah, you raise a good point. I remember this being an issue back in the early days of Guild Wars 2. Josh Foreman, the Environment Dev, was really great because he spoke pretty freely on the forums about things they were considering. But the playerbase started interpreting his transparency as promises of things to come, and ArenaNet had to muzzle him, forcing him to filter posts through a community manager. It's one of those things where I wish it weren't true, and I was hoping that the Homecoming community might be small/mature enough to *not* take things this way--but as the popularity of the game is exploding, I don't think we or the HC devs will have the luxury of discussing this as a small project. In any case, I'm sure this thread has crossed some of their desks, which is all that really matters. If they can come up with something -- anything -- ever, that'd be great. If not, it's not a big deal.

If I could go back in time to edit my posts to ask that question alone, I would! I've already chosen Homecoming and I won't be going back on that decision. I don't think it's possible to discuss this idea/proposal without anyone thinking about character permanence; it's central to the post. I guess we can all try really hard not to mention it, though.

Don't assume then. :) No character in any MMO on the planet has the level of 'permenance' you are describing, it is vaporware, and to assume that 'all' players and developers want the same things is ... not reality. There is no software development team on the planet that can create 'something in the works to make everybody happy.' What you propagated was mis-information that is yet another 'dig' at the HC team for not loudly saying they are 'in the cliche' with the rest of the CoX server runners, that are generally trying to _compete_ for players right now, with HC and some of whom are outright spreading FUD. So yeah, right now, with the temperature of the situation where it is, these constant 'dings' toward HC to make snap decisions to assuade frighted players that are only frightned because people spread FUD is really, really getting old fast. My job is UAT/QA, so I totally get that there's no way to make everybody happy. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but gamers are very likely to ask "Why don't they just?" about everything. Why don't they just fix all the bugs? Why don't they just balance everything perfectly? You can do your best, but it can never be perfect. But I guess the thrust of my original post is this: the basic idea (not the tone) in the linked thread sounds to me, as a layperson around these servers, to be an all-upside solution. If a layperson think something is all-upside, there's a good chance they're not understanding something about it and there's a reason it hasn't happened yet. I'm mostly curious what the reason is. I'm not sure my post would have been perceived in such a negative light if there wasn't such a "high temperature" on the issue, as you put it (that's a great way to describe it). I'm worried we've got two minority crowds of very squeaky wheels fighting each other loudly and creating the high temperature, and in the middle you have the majority of the playerbase that just wants to enjoy the game. I think a portion of that majority would like to have a reasoned discussion about the issue without contributing to the temperature, and another chunk would like everyone to just shut up about it (on the reasonable assumption that even talking about it, even at a reasonable volume, is keeping temperatures high). It feels socially unfixable. Is it better to let the reddit post happen and then not discuss it at all over here? In other words, I read that post which asks Why don't they just? and wanted to know, yeah, why don't they just? I expect the reddit thread is oversimplifying the issue. To your thing about not assuming; I totally get it, I know we're asking for a lot. I guess I'll rephrase my assumption: I assume that if you told most of the very-happy-to-be-playing-COH-again HC players that their characters would be wiped irrevocably tomorrow, over 90 or even 95% of them would be bummed by that, and that none of the developers would be happy to do it. I'm sure there are some pretty woke players who are in-tune with the impermanence of life and resurrected legal-adjacent fan servers and are able to just enjoy themselves in the moment, and I'm sure they're having the most fun out of everyone right now!

And I think bringing these things uo the way you did, leaning HARD on the 'fear' about 'character safety', does nothing but stir up ore angst and create more misinformation, all the while under the guise of 'trying to to help'. In the us-vs-them ANY sort of question like this, about VAPORWARE no less, does nnothing but sow angst. Frankly, I think your purpose is to sow FUD. That bums me out that you think that :-(. I'm really just interested in holding onto my character, no matter what happens on which population server. I read this reddit thread and thought the idea was intriguing (create a way to prevent permanent data loss). I was frustrated with the sort of "us vs. them" attitude in it, and was hoping there was something in the works to make everybody happy. I assume character permanence is a real concern for everybody involved in this project on both the player and dev sides. I've really been enjoying I25 and the Homecoming community so far. It sounds like everyone just wants to have fun in their own way.

Yes I think that is very fair. The reddit post I linked to and the general attitude outside Homecoming seems to be that because HC doesn't want to devote resources to doing this, that they won't cooperate when it's done. I think a "Hey, if you get it working, we'll think about it" would set a lot of minds at ease.

I think the way you handle this is individual servers have different rules for import. Perhaps Server A won't allow enhancements from other servers because they are much easier to craft, or influence because it's easier to gain, etc. Honestly I wouldn't really mind if I was only allowed to import the character itself with its security level + costume, some key badges that don't upset balance or which aren't significantly easier or more difficult to farm for across servers, and nothing else. As far as importing things like ATs that don't exist on the target server, these could convert on transfer according to a data table. For example, Sentinels become Blasters, and their secondaries convert to a legal secondary on the list. The way I see it happening, Homecoming becomes the laissez-faire sandbox server, and therefore has virtually nonexistent import requirements. Every other server has stricter import requirements about what it will and won't accept for import. In cases of fundamental database clashes (nonexistest ATs, badges, etc) that data is either deleted entirely or converted to legal data.

You raise a good point -- I like to talk about how gamers love their "Why don't they just?" questions, and usually there's a good reason why they don't just. I guess my fear is that players are taking up a very aggressive attitude with the Homecoming devs, and I worried that the bad blood directed against the HC team is going to make them reasonably hesitant to participate in stuff like this. Even just hearing "It's possible, but we don't have time to focus on it right now" would help a lot, since there's already momentum on this particular issue. I think people are interpreting HC's lack of comment in this area as an unwillingness to participate, which is those folks' fault for reading too much into a non-answer, but it can also be resolved pretty quickly with a "Maybe, but not yet".

Hey there, I think the reddit thread I linked is more confrontational than I'd like it to be, and I certainly don't want to stir up anything -- I really just want to know if this is never going to happen, and if it's not, I assume the HC folks have a good reason for that. Because to my layperson reading, I can't see any risk in it? Looks like all upside for everybody.

TL;DR: Is there any reason to hope that the HC team will eventually participate in this federated server/centralized character database project? If not, why? Hey everyone, there's a reddit thread today about the community initiative to created federated servers and a centralized character database to protect players against shutdowns, mass migration of the community, etc. https://old.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/budmms/why_i_chose_the_rebirth_server_and_also_some/ I am enjoying Homecoming and I25, but these these sound like really good ideas. If there's one thing I care about more than anything else, it's the integrity of the characters I've created (on any of the existing fan servers) and confidence that those characters will never be permanently lost again. Have the Homecoming developers commented about participating in these two initiatives in particular? I'm really hopeful for a future where the HC folks can keep doing their own thing with I25 and beyond, but that everyone including HC still participates in this initiative. For example, I'd like to be able to transfer characters out of and back onto Homecoming, if that becomes possible through this initiative. I know a lot of that process will be difficult -- some things will be impossible to transfer, like archetypes found only in I25, and servers would be right to reject things like enhancements and salvage crossing servers. I hope if the HC team intend to *never* participate in this initiative, that there is a very good reason for it. Thanks! EDIT: subbacultchas pointed out that above closing sentence is a little harsh; I'm not out to stir up trouble here! It seems like the Homecoming team is very rational and just interested in bringing back a game we all love. So by that I just mean, if they don't plan to participate in this, I assume they have a good reason for it (and it'd be good to know what it is!)

City of Heroes is the ultimate alt-itis MMO, but many other alt-focused games (World of Warcraft, for example) have moved toward making most or all unlocks Account Bound. This encourages playing multiple characters rather than having a main. There are a ton of cool things in City of Heroes that require an enormous amount of effort to unlock -- accolades, badge titles, and so on. It would be nice if we could work toward these across all characters instead of needing to unlock them on every character. I could see some players having RP concerns with things like badges being account unlocks. As a compromise, making this an opt-in feature would help a lot. I think the way to do this is to let players speak to an NPC to enable account bound unlocks (badge progress, Ouroboros flashback flags, etc). When players do that, all characters on the account who have opted into the system will merge progress on those badges, flashback missions, etc. I think it'd be reasonable to make this process irrevocable once triggered. WoW currently distinguishes between achievements unlocked by an account vs. individually unlocked again on a player. I imagine that's possible in City of Heroes too, but would require revision to the UI and I could understand if we don't see that for some time.