agentx5

Thank you @Cipher for the transparency as always! Thank you all (Devs, GMs, and donors) for everything done to keep this community alive and healthy! Rock on!

I can't disagree overall, what you said is true. However, Super Reflexes seems to stand ahead of other defensive/resistive sets on a Stalker or Scrapper more so than on a Tanker or Brute. This may be due to the stupid streak-breaker mechanic, where in if you've avoided being hit too many times in a row the "streak breaker" combat code will essentially force you to take auto-hits. It can be infuriating and fatal when it happens, which it does without warning. Then again with the extra hitpoints you might survive a streak breaker better too so... meh?

Of what I consider the top 5 tanky players on HomeComing, they either use Bio Armor, Invulnerability, Stone, or Shield Bio Armor in particular is arguably OP in the right hands, just like how a skilled tri-form Warshade is insanely powerful -- the key lies in the versatility, in knowing when to switch mode. I would agree with @twozerofoxtrot in that you should give BioArmor serious consideration, and if that's not enough consider that he highest Veteran Level in the entire HomeComing server group uses Bio Armor (with Titan Weapons). As far as the attack powers, honestly it's whatever you like. Sure the -toHit of Dark is excellent, but so is the knockdown/knockup of War Mace or Titan Weapon or Staff. Or the -DEF of Rad. Or the DoT of Stone. Also speaking of Stone Armor, that's very viable in HomeComing because of changes to the teleport pool (especially [Fold Space] which brings them to you) Shield also gets a lunging charge (teleport with PBAoE damage) and what is essentially a taunt aura

Good grief... I know there's inflation to consider, but that coverall pricing seems to be grossly overcharging our community. I have donated to help, but I strongly recommend taking time between now and early 2023, or maybe even merging some of the least populated shards if necessary (poor Torchbearer, I started there in 2019 but it's been looking pretty empty) Some possible alternatives to maybe consider and get customized price quote on? 24 racks of m5a.xlarge Ohio-based servers costs about $2354 per month from Amazon AWS, but that's only if all of those are used which to be fair they won't be and the pricing is charged based on actual usage needs updated every 5 minutes. So it it's a low server population, it then you don't pay for it -- which could be a game changer in cost savings while not compromising on a low latency experience. https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/pricing/ HostHavoc has been one I've been keeping an eye on as they have some of the best reviews on the 3rd party TrustPilot website with people frequently saying their price was fair and the customer support was above and beyond (especially for complicated game server setups). One review that caught my eye was a that one of the HostHavoc admins communicated with a customer via Discord to basically re-code and fix them up with a working VPN remote access JSON, like at no additional charge. There's multiple servers, especially on the East and West Coast US. They do have scalable dedicated servers. https://hosthavoc.com/dedicated-servers The Atlanta location Fragnet server location has a whooping 7 ISPs (means many of the players would actually have less hops), comparable hardware to what your are using, VPN remote access for SQL databases, and has been used by Bohemia Interactive (for Day-Z and Altis Life) and the ESL for competition servers. They do custom requests from what I have read on other 3rd party review sites, as well as in-person LAN setups for eSports (seems to be what they are known for). https://fragnet.net/page/about# Other popular hosts like https://scalacube.com/ are very Minecraft focused and don't seem to have the VPN feature we would want and need for CoH HomeComing. In fact that seemed to be the majority of ones I looked into which I personally would NOT recommend for our community. Reliability is super important, obviously. And changing providers is like moving houses -- It can be a hassle, but could be worth it in the long-term. And just like real estate, sometimes it's just good to shop around even if you decide not to move, because it's good to know what's out there options wise. Regardless, I'm happy to donate my part to continue that bar past the 88.2% it's currently at as of writing this. And I appreciate all the HC team and GMs do to keep the show rolling on for all of us! Thank y'all!

I don't think you're trolling at all, because if you were you wouldn't write all that out. Would an agreeable & simple solution be just a means of turning off the patrol XP like how one can currently turn off "regular" XP of they want? That wait it changes nothing for the majority of people and it can stay the default, but for those wanting to turn it off all they have to do is essentially flip the switch to off in the settings. That sound good?

Honestly, I wish more games did things like that... Day jobs are a very cool thing in this game, and I'd love to see it expanded in some way in the future (like additional badges, updating the temp power functionality, etc)

Interesting... and logging out the the character selection and coming back clears it, as you said.

1) Be specific. The price of what enhancement, exactly? 2) I'm not seeing anything wrong my end, collected my sold items and posted something just to see. Do you have a screenshot of this bug?

OMH yes! Especially imagine if you could load bases on other servers, that way you can share your architecture artwork with the other shards/servers! It wouldn't duplicate your storage items of course (because that'd exploitable), just the physical base object position architecture. But that alone would be amazing. Imagine your favorite base, and you could save it on Everlasting and load the save to import it on Indomitable so people could have fun using it for PvP or something. Or like you said, if you made some design mistakes and want to revert back to a previous save.

How is this poll topic not stickied/pinned? Really great information and thought-out suggestions @Dacy, as usual 😃

And by saying this, your essentially mildly harassing and making @Sneakers' point for him. *sigh* FAIL There's a humorous saying that's opinions are like A-holes, everyone has them, but they typically stink. In large respect you are correct, but I'll point out that even private companies have to be mindful of harassment, especially discrimination. More to the point, it shouldn't ever get that far. This whole situation shouldn't have gotten this far! Early on (Page3 and/or before) we were promised a dev blog to explain why they felt making changes that clearly changed how AE farming was done were necessary. In truth, the changes were not that major (they sky is not falling), but on the flip side, to deny several changes were specifically aimed at reducing farming (passive/AFK farming in particular) is naive and detrimental to us all. It's also a fools errand to try to eliminate all farming and power leveling from an MMO. Not gonna happen. Something will always be the "best way to power level", even if it means Go Hunt Kill Skulls. Why waste precious time and effort when there's better things that same development could be spent on?! This is where I personally get frustrated, the priorities seems messed up and we're not getting transparent communication from the community leadership, or at least not nearly enough (this topic's existence being proof as to where there's not enough) The primary focus needs to be on having fun, especially with teamplay since this is a multiplayer game And another post that's nothing more than mild harassment, adding credibility to the claim that farmers are being harassed and targeted by those in the clique that is on good terms with the devs. This does the exact opposite of what you intended. FAIL This. WIN Also to be clear, this whole situation with harassment could have been largely avoided early on the lack of a community spokesperson on the development team, but to be clear, it is not on the programmers on the development team to explain the reason for the direction of development, they need to focus their time and effort on coding and bug hunting. There should be someone dedicated to explaining things to the public and building hype to get people excited about changes. This is a rather depressing thread, and while I like many of the things in Page5 and other recent updates, we collectively need a plan to come together on this. Most of us are adults, and should be able to figure this out together without thrown insults like hormonal teenagers. Yes I know this is the internet forum environment, but I know we can all do better. It'll probably get locked too, which while necessary to prevent a flame war won't resolve things. I feel bad for the GMs, Forum-Mods and the programmers; and would like to see some cooler heads prevail on this fiasco

Eww... Cell shading... 🤢 To each their own, I know some people like it, even if I can't truly understand why...

Does the crash handler let you upload your game info? It's supposed to do that, and the HC Devs have found it to be really helpful Does this happen with any other applications (don't think it does or doesn't, you need to try to stress test it with anything else) Graphics card driver version, make, and model? From what your wrote, I'm guessing it's and AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and a Radeon RX 6900 XT?

Also unplug the fans before airblasting or vacuuming. I would've thought unplugging the battery was common sense... But thanks for making a point about that Also know that many laptop Li-Ion battery packs include a CMOS battery as part of the pack, and so when you unplug the battery pack you're also unplugging the CMOS. Not an issue, but just be aware you may have to update the BIOS as soon as you boot it up or it'll BEEP at you. Lenovo Thinkpad's are an example, they love to scream beep codes at you. Also while we're on the subject, ChromeOS is either easy or really hard, depending on whether or not your manufacturer used indexed MAC addresses for core components. If you replace a motherboard on a Chromebook, expect to run some low-level Linux sudo command lines, or get stuck forever in a loop waiting for an FTP connection to the China factory local intranet. It won't let you proceed until the UUID is associated with the various MACs, and while the ChromeOS Factory interface is cool for functionality validation, getting stuck because it can't connect to a particular server is aweful. In short, there is such a thing as over-engineering something, and that's what ChromeOS can be. Just FYI since tablet gaming and TikTok are hot things these days... Thank you, 100% agree. Yes, it's definitely gimmicky "sexy tech" to use liquid metal on any mobile device. It just makes for marketing hype to corporate executives, but in reality it doesn't do much to help cool, for the heat exchanger reasons I said above in more detail (basically limited surface area and limited mass flow rate on a laptop heatsink). Also I will add this advice of yours that when you go to airblast a fan, please make sure to unplug it first -- otherwise it may have potentially damaging backfeed voltage (because unless it has a diode to ground protection, it will act like a tiny wind-power generator when you spin the motor from the air flow)

I've seen silicone caulk used by the China-based factories, but it usually doesn't last or seal well enough. *accidentally bumps on edge* *Zap!* Dead MB. And no, most do motherboards not have a coating, at least not enough of one, that would protect again short circuit protection for the same reason most motherboards are not waterproof. Unfortunately, it's simply not worth the cost that people would have to pay to have it standard-issue. This applies to pretty much all brands, just to be clear. And as I said earlier, I suspect it will trend toward worsening in coming years, as wattages continue to increase on CPUs and GPUs as they currently are. What I do wish is that manufacturers would disclose on the specs whether it uses liquid metal or not... The customer should be informed when making the purchase. Samsung is the only one I've personally seen so far with a good design to prevent that, and I suspect Sony does too but I can't confirm that personally. Come to think of it, Samsung actually seems to always design their electronics with repairability in mind, even their large appliances are easier to tear down and re-assemble. I think they're on the more expensive side, especially compared to a HP. Just FYI, in case it helps someone: BBY's GS has factory-new OS images (like restore points, but better) of just about every SKU for every model # they've sold in the past 5 years. If it's older than 5 y.o. they can't do it, but if it's a laptop model# that's (or was in the past less than 5 years) also carried at a BestBuy store anywhere (even if you bought the hardware off Amazon or eBay), then they should be able to re-image a badly corrupted or missing OS back onto the primary drive. It's basically loaded from their network PXE, which is a function all major brands have in their BIOS (to boot via a network adapter). I think MicroCenter has that same service too, but most people don't have one of those anywhere nearby -- whereas there's usually a BestBuy nearby in your town or elsewhere here in the US, thus why I mention it here. I have no idea about Canada, sorry. And yes, once you've tasted how much faster and physically durable an SSD is over a mechanical 5400 RPM HDD you'll never want to go back. I know I can't stand the long load times. Even better if going to a M.2 SSD. I have no idea how we tolerated IDE back in mid-90's to early 2000's... I guess we just dealt with it because it was the best there was at the time, eh? (Also don't miss those heavy CRT monitors, although it was fun to mess with a magnet on the glass) Haha! Yeah well, you know how many gamers don't? (especially when it's smoker's tar + dust) Just saying... You'd think it's common sense... And it's not that easy to get gooey cigarette tar off the fan blades. I also personally know a gamer buddy (yes they're on HomeComing) who put toothpaste on instead of thermal paste because they saw it on Facebook. (Yes, he killed his CPU and couldn't afford to buy a new one for about a year). Again, common sense regarding computer tech isn't as common as you might think, especially if they're an older generation that doesn't easily identify what's just somebody trolling with intentional misinformation online.

QFT. Excellent point.

This would be the newer model that are largely still under manufacturer warranty (i.e. 2021& 2022), and some from 2020. Given that yours is a 5 year-old 2017 model #, it won't apply to you then. Liquid metal has three major drawbacks: 1. It's corrosive. Especially to Aluminum, Copper, and soldered components; but since it absorbs/diffuses a small amount of ambient humidity over time, it will also etch the silicon die itself if brought near 100 C at any point in time. (the microscopic bubbles of steam and the gallium form a temporary super acid) 2. It's not just thermally conductive, but also electrically conductive as well. Everyone knows conductive liquids like ordinary water (not 100% pure) and delicate circuits don't mix, but this is even more conductive than water and has very high surface tension (so we're talking tiny beads/droplets that can roll and drip right between to critical capacitors or resistors. Pop! Dead motherboard (which in latops the CPU and GPU are almost always integrated and soldered right into the PCB, so that's a very expensive whoopsie) 3. It's not really necessary... The two biggest factors for cooling are mass flow rate of the fluid (in most cases, that air) through the heat exchanger (aka. heatsink) and the usable contact surface area of the heatsink. The limiting factor on mass flow rate is the form factor, laptops can't have 140mm or 200mm fans and nobody wants to listen to a noisy +3000 RPM fan. Same issue with the heatsink, you can have one with heatpipe and solid copper fins, but size really does matter here: with enough surface area passive flow from buoyancy changes are enough that you don't even need a fan. But in reality the newer generation GPUs eat a lot of watts, and all that waste heat has to be removed. What the limiting factor is NOT is the rate at which you transfer heat into the heatsink. Liquid metal on a laptop therefore is a huge risk for a mere 1 to 2 C drop in temps just from it transferring to the heatsink a little faster. The easiest and cheapest method to boost your laptop or graphics card is to use a fresh premium thermal paste (yes all thermal compounds age and dry out over time and overclocking makes this go faster), and also to make sure air is not escaping from the gap between the fan and the heatsink fins (just a little bit of thermal tape or even electrical tape will do, but electrical tape gets gooey over time so only do that if you can't get the translucent metallic orange thermal tape) It did that to refresh a RTX 1070Ti recently, removing all the dried-out thermal pads and thermal paste and putting new stuff on from Thermal Grizzly, cleaning out the fine dust by separating the heatsink and rinsing it (isopropyl and distilled water, never hard water from the tap), and I could hardly believe it but I dropped the temps when cranking out rendering (100% GPU usage for sustained period) by a shocking 10 to 15 C less. Seriously it was a <$10 and $30min project, and it make it perform like brand new again. To be clear, or rather clearer than my initial reply... PLEASE READ ME: Asus seems to stand by their products better than most, and their TUF series line-up that isn't using the liquid metal are not having any such issues, it's only the new liquid metal ROG series. This always depending on the specific model # to be fair, but Asus tends to be better designed for durability and easy of repairs than an HP or Lenovo, and close to a Samsung or Sony (they do the best modular designs currently). So just be be clear, I'm not bad mouthing the brand -- just the usage of liquid metal being an unwise choice, and manufacturers trying it out is costing them a lot of money (which will have to be passed on as higher prices). Proportionally it may not be that much money to them % wise, I honestly wouldn't know that (they won't share that % for logically obvious business reasons) I don't work for Asus or any competitor of theirs. This is an unbiased observation of fact: liquid metal thermal compound is "sexy tech" to corporate executives and marketing teams; but in reality it's not really necessary from an engineering point of view, and has a lot of risk of catastrophic failure. The same kind of corporate behaviors can be observed in renewable energy currently, it's not even just PC tech. And the new generation GPU's and CPU's continue to eat more and more watts, and so will continue to get hotter and hotter. Other PC part manufacturer companies playing with liquid metal on their new models (newest Lenovo Legion ones for an example) are experiencing the same rate of failures from electrical shorts. Some of it could be chalked to bad workmanship at the Chinese factories, but honestly even if automated there needs to be a better system than just squirting some silicone caulk around the die and hoping the seal holds until the warranty expires. We all probably need a new standard (like have a robot attack Intel, AMD, nVidia, ATi doing the application of the liquid metal and then sealing it permanently inside a nickel plated lid, with a removable socket, just like how desktop CPUs typically are made (if you've de-lidded a CPU recently you'll know what I mean).

Asus TUF series, are made better than Acer units, typically, yes. However avoid any computer that uses liquid metal in a freakin' mobile device (i.e.: Asus ROG series) Asus has spent millions of $$$ this year alone on bad design choices on their ROG gaming laptops warranty costs, and it's almost always failures related to the liquid metal (which is not just thermally conductive, but also electrically conductive) leaking out and ruining things. By the same toke, their TUF series that are using just a premium thermal paste rarely ever fail. Acer is ok though, and frankly far better than HP or Lenovo (especially the new Lenovo's that use liquid metal, again for the same reasons as the Asus ROG issues, liquid metal likes to leak and it's fatal to the computer if a single droplet escapes and shorts out something on the motherboard).

Why not reduce it globally for any AT? It'd be a win-win that way

There's an idea!

So here's my thoughts on these after testing across a week. I'm going to be brutally honest here Phoenix Rising --> Phoenix 1. Just name it "Phoenix", simpler is better. Everyone knows a Hallmark of a phoenix is "rising from the ashes". If you're going to say Rising, then you need a Falling as well, which would be dumb. Just remove the unnecessary word 2. It's still a very underwhelming power that people are going to skip. It needs at minimum a far shorter cooldown/recharge to where it could act like a Build Up or Aim or some kind of clutch self-heal, and that would actually make people like it and use it more. The buff numbers are also too low, they need to be bumped up a bit more. 3. I do like how it can be used while alive, and that it's more useful as HP gets lower. That's fun and can be useful. Great idea! 4. This is a very cool power that needs to be a cool bounce-back for when you're on the ropes and the enemy is kicking your butt. It needs to be a worthy tide-turner. A shift in the fulcrum of the battle. However you want to say that. #disappointing Burn: 1. I have friends who absolutely love farming, and even I have to admit this nerd was not unexpected as it was quite OP for years. Stackable burn patches and better proc'ing potential for additional damage than most nuke T9 AoEs... Yeah something had to give. Brutes while good with damage, were probably never intended to be OP +600% bonus damage machines of farming epicness. I have a level 50+ TitanWeapons/FireAura brute character, so yes this does affect me too. He's what I used to test this out. 2. Burn and Consume should have some sort of synergy combo mechanic that gives additional damage, even if it's DoT. 3. Burn should ignite things and do most of it's damage via rather-long lasting DoT. Keep the current damage comparable to Page3 Live but have it do things like -DEF and rather long DoT. Enemies should burn to death, albeit more slowly. More damage, spread out over time. Damage applied as a debuff, rather than just because they stand in the stationary AoE patch. Consume: 1. Good changes, but still needs shorter cooldown 2. I wish it did a little more damage, when combined with Burn. Those two need a synergy that would make it logical and beneficial to get both 3. +END would be good if there was also a +Recovery% bonus per stack based on enemies hit as well 4. Increase the target cap? 5. Thank you for being able to slow heal enhancements! Temperature protection: 1. Mag 2 please, not Mag 1 protection. 2. Regeneration needs to scale better proprotional to current character level, a static unenhanceable number is barely noticeable in incarnate-level play. Healing Flames: 1. Recharge time needs to be reduced slightly 2. Healing done needs to be increased slightly

The renewed Atlas Park is awesome pulls from models used to make the Praetorian zones. And the sewers and subway systems underneath and massive and eerie sounding Honestly zones like Steel Canyon, Skyway, and Kings Row and yes even Peregrine Island could use some visual upgrades, but I know that'd have to be a labor of love because it's a lot of work and the tools will be rather limited (as in do zone editing software tools even exist for CoH anymore?)

1. Your temperature sensor doesn't sound like it's reporting correctly. Check your drivers. Who's the manufacturer of the PCB? (nVidea is the GPU chipset, not what I'm asking) Model #? 2. Cleaning out the heatsink is a 2x annual thing every gamer should do. Blocked airflow is really bad and you'd be surprised how much gets caught in them even in a relatively cleaner home. 3. Stock thermal paste on modern GPUs and CPUs is typically cheap crap that dries out into a chalk-line compound after a year or less. I would recommend using something good like Kyronaut, or even Artic Silver. The pads or putty also gets old. Avoid liquid metal unless you know exactly what you're doing, and even then you have to be careful to not move it when it's warmed up. (i.e.: gaming laptops or other mobile devices with liquid metal instead of thermal paste are a terrible idea, and an expensive one for the manufacturer warranty, and it doesn't even help much) But start with drivers, just updating the nVidea ones may not be enough, for for a firmware update or a GUI interface update for Afterburner or whatever

That is... Actually a clever idea! Few things to iron out though: 1. Need to have coding to handle situations where it hasn't been sold recently in the time period. Too big of a period like 3 years is excessive and will waste server processing resources unnecessarily. (Trust me, that's an issue at my work currently IRL with near 1000 employees accessing a particular database in the afternoon the server slows to a high-latency sluggish crawl) 2. The AH database has to log the date & time of posting, which it may already do but I don't know that for sure 3. The AH database has to be coded to be searchable by date and time 4. The AH database has be able to search and quickly calculate the +25% and -25% limits. 5. The AH client-facing GUI has to incorporate all this and probably offer a suggested price. These are all 100% solvable, but the question would be "is the juice worth the squeeze" -- in other words is the time and labor invested to set this up worth it? I would say absolutely, yes; but would need to do some pre-planning to see what can easily be done versus what would be a monumental task for whomever is doing the development work.

I would personally would LOVE this on Musculature For all powers: Increases Damage by 45%, Immobilization duration and Defense Debuff effects by 33%. Two thirds of these bonuses ignore the effects of enhancement diminishing returns. This power also applies a Level Shift. Maybe changed to this (where it still keeps its mez-like function, just in a different way that actually is more useful to more melee and ranged damage powersets) For all powers: Increases Damage by 45%, Knockback, and Defense Debuff effects by 33%. Two thirds of these bonuses ignore the effects of enhancement diminishing returns. This power also applies a Level Shift.