Ruin Mage

They're not really staff, but I get the meaning behind the idea.

Look, I've scratched my head at your posts claiming that GMs were mass-spawning Kronos Titan before - even as it was shut down by a GM. But implying that there's some secret "SCORE Codes." that spawn GMs is just as silly. It's not some giant conspiracy of 'If you're hidden you don't get Kronos spawns' or whatever.

This reads like a tinfoil hat conspiracy post.

Just give your excess cash to me.

I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner after P4/P5.

Yes

My character is The Moon itself. Real.

Debuffs help due to the fact that Hard Modes (especially 3-4 star) grant insane stat bonuses to the mobs - including AVs. You need a good mix of team buffs and mob debuff to be able to effectively get through the higher stars. You could, in theory, get away with minimal debuff and maximal team buffs but you won't be completing a 3-4 star in under 2 hours. But for example, relying on proc'd / minimal debuffs from attacks (i.e katana, broadsword, masterminds) versus having something like cold or dark? You won't see an easy time on ASF or ITF. Especially since the ITF HM makes the Surgeons REALLY annoying. You can get away with not-optimal team comps on 1-2 star. 3-4, you need to think about what sets you bring. I had an almost entirely buff based ASF and ITF. It was not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

There's no real proof that someone set this up. The most likely answer is just random super bot invasion. The reason I half-assedly run with the theory that someone is behind this is simply for the funny.

50+ in total

This is my running theory right now. My leading theory rather.

SoonTM.

Why are you defending a guy who sends two people, who did not interact with him at all since October, the following style of PMs: Not to mention screenshotting a PM and posting it publicly PLUS dragging someone's name out when they've moved on. It's a far more appropriate reaction than my original PM where I called him Extremely Divorced.

Cataphracts (Longbowe and the Ravagers (Banished Pantheon) have a lot of debuff power to them. If I remember right, they have -def/-res or -regen. It's been a minute. EDIT: Its the -regen from Longbow, -res from BP

THE FAIR: 2023 So, it's about time I talk about the usual antics surrounding a semi-regular event known/called the Recruitment Fair. Over the years it has been a means for groups to recruit, for me to give back to the community (through community donations towards trivia and costume contests), and more. It has changed and warped over the years to what it has been so far. Going forward, however, the Fair will be a bit more malleable in some details and it will be focusing on the Recruitment Fair aspect more so than anything else. So what does that mean exactly? • The Costume Contests will not be a thing for 2023 One thing I wish to try is the idea of focusing on the Recruitment Fair aspect. This event has primarily tried to serve as a way for Roleplay Groups to meet up, recruit, and otherwise make connections. Part of the event, through this, also allows characters to meet in a non-club environment. While the Recruitment aim will always be groups that fit Superpowered Universes (JLA, Avengers, League/Legion of Doom, etc) - this year we may explore expanding with the groups we aim for. Costume Contests will become their own thing unrelated to the Recruitment Fair for 2023. If that lessens the show-up or makes things feel weird? We'll re-evaluate and go back to the way things have been before. This also allows us to keep the split across two days firmly rather than toying with three days like we have in the past. • The Recruitment Fair will likely happen twice this year Given the shift towards focusing on the meat of the event? Well, it is easier for me to run a 2-night event based around Recruitment for Roleplay Groups. The idea behind this is that groups come and go. Some close recruitment for a long while, others are always open, and so on. Things can change over the course of a year. New groups can rise and old groups can disappear. Moving towards twice a year for one year is not impossible, but things will be gauged and weighed. If once a year works better after the first one this year? We will simply wait until next year. However, if everything looks to be better off in doing twice this year? We will schedule a second Fair this year. The goal is Winter/Spring for the first one and, if all is well, Fall/Winter for the second one. This gives a decent enough gap for things to potentially change. Who knows what can happen within a span of months? It also means that new faces can hear about the event if they only start (or return) within the gap between Fairs. • Both nights will remain firmly in my control. The past year saw a weird time with the Redside version of this event. I wasn't as attentive and basically handed it off to another group. The feeling I got from that night was not the best. There was a certain lack of care towards the second night, and that isn't my usual style. This time (and all times forward) will remain firmly under my control. Leadership. Something like that. Both events will, at least in attempt, receive my full attention and focus equally. I don't intend for one event to feel slower or weirder simply because I handed it off. I have no set or projected date yet, but I will keep everyone updated.

I see Harassment as continued and repetitive (When not sexual harassment, etc), and he was engaging with me in a back and forth. Doesn't excuse me being so harsh, so not my proudest moment. He is leaving out much by not giving full context or explaining that there's more from him before I sent that.

A fair wish. I don't think, and this is where we disagree I believe, that the Devs want to entirely shut out one way of playing the game. Yes, some of the changes attack one particular way (Farming), but others happen to affect farming (Fire Sword changes) - but I don't think the end goal is to eliminate or gut one way. I can see that Farming is not as strong as it once was, but it is still a dominant force within Homecoming. I'm using that since it seems to be the Go To for "Changes Bad", but perhaps there is other changes that fit discouraging other forms of gameplay. Forums.

Don't say that out loud, now it'll get worse!

I'll just come out and say hi, that DM was me. Was it crass and over the top? Sure. Uncalled for? Eh, debatable given what was going on. We were all heated, and you did triple down on some very weird word choices. Also the dig at Veracor after all this time is just strange. Very very strange. Though I'll consider you sending me a PM out of the blue to be quite odd as well. You're a weird old man, Ukase. This would be more viable if more people weren't Forum Armchair Reactionaries*, I feel. However, leaving it on a public test server for months isn't usually how it goes. Mind you, this opens the floor for Game Standards today and so forth but whatever. By the time it reaches Brainstorm it has already had several patches on Closed Beta and is now in its stages of nearing Release Candidate. Page 5 aside (which had a time limit due to circumstances surrounding Faultline) - generally the Open Beta side is meant to be quick, any-bugs-we-didn't-catch, and otherwise just patching tiny holes. Now, HC is the uncommon path (Maybe?) where even if it reaches Open Beta/Test Server? It can be re-iterated or walked back on. Example being the AE Changes or certain changes to Dark Melee & I believe Martial Arts some odd pages back. A few months isn't really viable when you, ideally, want to ship something out wholely. You don't strip a feature or three from a Issue or Page and then release it some weeks later. There's very few games to my knowledge that stagger features for one reason or another. Hell, I don't know if there is any that have done it in the current era of games for the sole fact of 'needs more time cooking'. * = Forum Armchair Reactionaries are the type of people who simply look at the patch notes and go "This is Shit." rather than "Okay, so comparing Live to Test this what I've got." or "This feels weird and here's why." - Which has been common place for Page 4 and Page 5. Feedback threads became mind-boggling muddied by people mis-reading, not understanding, or refusing to even entertain logging on to Brainstorm to get their hands on the changes. Ideal on paper, not so much on execution - though I believe there's been a thing said somewhere once or twice that Issues/Pages have gotten bloated and its acknowledged. Who knows what Page 6 onto the next Issue will look like - but from my understanding, they're aware that Page 4 was HEAVY. Page 5 less so. Sure, not every Page needs to have 20 Milestone/Keystone changes, but it shows the amount of work they're doing the dedication to the craft they have. Too much caution and they'll be dancing with "Okay but two people dislike this change and that means we should work it till it pleases everyone." You can't please everyone and City of Heroes will never have Double Digit Thousands in population or higher. It was nowhere near as popular as other games with Rogue/Private servers (WoW, Lineage 2 - though it is unfair to mention these given that Lineage 2 has been always a huge thing in Eastern Markets and WoW has been a dominant force since its creation) The game as it was by i24 was not the Best Game in The World. The game pre-Paragon Studios was rife with horrible ideas (Jack Emmert famously wanted 3 minions to be able to wreck 1 player), and even post-Cryptic there were changes that backfired in various ways. i13 famously put PVP to the grinder and there's been other changes like that. Travel Suppression, which has gone under the radar I feel, was just slapped onto PVE and stayed because...reasons. Games change and no server has said "We're going to launch the server and make no changes." Rebirth is revamping the entirety of the Travel Power sets recently, they're re-vamping Synapse, they've made sweeping changes to Kheldians, and they even have the Guardian Archetype. Thunderspy made sweeping changes to various powers and ATs that probably veered into territory of "Spin that Wheel, Bob!". Cake goes "Hmn, what sort of powerset can I design this day while high as a kite?" (No hate to Nomadaeon/Neptune, I'm trying to be funny), and Purrgatory created the Nephilim. Not sure what else they've done, but yeah. Other servers have done minor or major tweaks. Change keeps things from feeling stagnant in an MMO that died right as it was shifting into Popular Trends from the 2010s and now into the 2020s. I do not doubt that not every change will be good. I do not doubt that every change will be received well - see Page 4 and Page 5 for evidence - but that should not and cannot stop a change from happening. If it promotes growth in powerset health? Great. If it allows the developers to add more content, to do more across the board? Absolutely perfect. Will everyone agree with those changes? Fuck no. I don't agree with changes that hard axe people's favorite power sets, but they might still happen! Change happens and keeping to a certain way is just Rose Tinted Goggles winning in my opinion, but people also hate change on the other hand so... Yeah. Ok, Boomer. It's not walking on eggshells if you're afraid of getting called out for weird or backwards references/jokes/statements - whatever you want to call what got you into 'hot water' as it were. You could just, you know, be normal and not use outdated weird analogies/comparisons/whatever in reference to people and their desire for change. Or how people want to change a game that they can...and have changed. It's your own consequences for saying things that make people look at you a certain way because of those things you said. It's not that hard to grasp that words are powerful. Words have power and meaning. You happened to say things that weren't taken well. Even with clarification and tripling down, you didn't help yourself at all. You did this all by yourself to create the "Walking on Eggshells" feeling - that's not anyone's fault but your own. I hope you can one day realize that, Ukase. Especially when you try to shift the blame onto others instead of reflecting like a genuine honest person would.

I'd rather play Homecoming, not some hypothetical Vanilla Server. Vanilla/Live CoH was a tragic mess by the end and it was only going to be messier.

Homecoming has never advertised as sticking "true" to Live, and none of the servers have stuck true to their original calling except maybe Cake. It is a server in which you can have fun, yes, but it is not a "fun" server as you describe. It is a server that respects your time far better than Live did by its sunset days. It is a server that is progressing with new content rather than remaining stagnant in the past. That doesn't mean its a few steps removed from insta-50s. That is a bad argument/slope to slide down just because it has made things easier to obtain. 50s were always easy to obtain on live if that's your argument. That's no different to what HC has given the predominance of AE farming. Power Creep is going to happen with balancing power sets and adding new ones - it's the nature of progress. We're also playing a super hero game so getting stronger and FEELING strong should be inherent to the game. Otherwise, why even bother? There's been an additional creation of a challenge through Hard Modes - which do slightly promote actual teamwork and aren't an autopilot experience (in comparison to PI Radios against Council for the hundredth time in a week) - which is something, to some, was lacking after a while. But here's the thing too; Rebirth and Thunderspy have power creep too. They've introduced new sets, new ATs (Rebirth only I think), and have made modifications to power sets that make them stronger. So that just feels moot to bring up when you'll experience that no matter what server you go to. Hell, Rebirth is about to revamp Force Field and probably make it a much stronger set. It looks dope as hell. This isn't the age of MMOs being a Second Job, which I feel is what you want. The original game was a Subscription-based game where some powersets were far more powerful because they were Buy-to-Play sets. It was a horrible mess of a game that was transitioning based on the times. Paragon Store/Rewards, The Incarnate System (which was a horrid grind back on live, I much prefer the ease of access we have now), and more - these things are not what you should hold up on a pedestal. If the live game had continued, we would have likely seen more post-2000s MMO trends get further adapted. It takes a lot of balls to post this sort of stuff on the forums, so kudos.

I've freed Slipgate and Hexstone.

You'd be better served making your own server and doing this. The idea of HC adapting any smidgen of this is...not what I see happening.

STOP REVIVING THIS THREAD. LET IT DIE.

It is a great set for it.