What ever happened to the Gadgetry Powerpool?

[GraspingVileTerror]

Would you be willing to elaborate on what you mean in regard to the Homecoming players' interaction you mentioned, @twozerofoxtrot?

[SuperPlyx]

8 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

How is this a question?  Wrist-mounted weaponry has been a staple of sci-fi and related genres for decades.

Context....:"Blaster Drone: You fire a series of blasts from a sophisticated energy drone. Wrist Blaster deals Moderate energy damage ...."

 

Is it a drone or a wrist mounted weapon. It is not very clear in that description.

[Mezmera]

2 hours ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

Would you be willing to elaborate on what you mean in regard to the Homecoming players' interaction you mentioned, @twozerofoxtrot?

 

They probably mean that the Origin pools that we do have are already hardly selected by most people that don't realize how good they are.  The Sorcery pool was a good pool for some AT's because how OP Rune of Protection was and yet when they were revamping that pool last update the devs talked about the statistics about how many leveled out 50's selected the Sorcery pool it was selected at a rate of less than 5% and it was better before. 

 

Which I'm sure that 5% selected rate would likely apply to Force of Will and Experimentation as well.  Showing just how niche these pools are in the minds of most players even though they are arguably some of the best pools.  So the HC devs may be thinking why introduce more niche pool sets when they can repurpose the powers into other things they may be looking to revamp.  

Edited September 22, 2021 by Mezmera

[GM Impervium]

Hey all, not trying to come off as censoring discussion, but, can we ixnay on the server drama stuff?

 

Thanks 😃

[twozerofoxtrot]

3 hours ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

Would you be willing to elaborate on what you mean in regard to the Homecoming players' interaction you mentioned, @twozerofoxtrot?

 

Precisely as @Mezmera has laid out; explained better than I could have.

[PeregrineFalcon]

10 hours ago, tidge said:

Mmmm brownies.

I can't actually respond to this without giving away that my character might be involved in a possible IP violation. But there is a good explanation out there for this.

 

On the plus side I agree. Mmmmmmm... brownies! 😄

[PeregrineFalcon]

@GM Impervium Any chance we can get someone to say something about Gadgetry?

[Supertanker]

Instead of Gadgetry, how about Power Armor? A Flight power with rocket boot SPX, a ranged blast with an Arcane Power-type effect but "Target Locked" or something like that. A passive resist armor power.

 

Yeah, it would have overlap with other sets but so does the Fighting Pool and people keep taking it anyway.

[GM Impervium]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

@GM Impervium Any chance we can get someone to say something about Gadgetry?

 

I know the Devs like to keep things close to the vest, but I don't see any harm in admitting that, as far as I'm aware (and maybe I'm mistaken), there's no plans for Gadgetry to appear in the next Page (which is otherwise shaping up nicely so far!).

 

Beyond that is up to them, and is anyone's guess 😃

[Mezmera]

2 minutes ago, GM Impervium said:

 

I know the Devs like to keep things close to the vest, but I don't see any harm in admitting that, as far as I'm aware (and maybe I'm mistaken), there's no plans for Gadgetry to appear in the next Page (which is otherwise shaping up nicely so far!).

 

Beyond that is up to them, and is anyone's guess 😃

 

The attractive thing about HC is the larger player base which means a larger pool of resources HC can pull together.  I'm more looking forward to considerable content being added.  We get Gadgetry then we run the same mundane stuff?  You'll throw the Bolero a few times at Recluse then what?

 

We don't need to copy other servers word for word.  Sure it'd be nice to get the remaining Origin pool powers but they'll likely find their way into HC in some shape or form.  Some ability to flexibly add powers and tinker with them on the fly would be novel but there's broader things that can be accomplished on HC which I'm hoping to see soon^tm.

[Marshal_General]

16 hours ago, Mezmera said:

 

The attractive thing about HC is the larger player base which means a larger pool of resources HC can pull together.  I'm more looking forward to considerable content being added.  We get Gadgetry then we run the same mundane stuff?  You'll throw the Bolero a few times at Recluse then what?

 

We don't need to copy other servers word for word.  Sure it'd be nice to get the remaining Origin pool powers but they'll likely find their way into HC in some shape or form.  Some ability to flexibly add powers and tinker with them on the fly would be novel but there's broader things that can be accomplished on HC which I'm hoping to see soon^tm.

If you throw a bolero a few times st Recluse he will at least look more fashionable.

[OmegaOne]

I'll throw my support for the devs finishing off the last two origin pools as well - when they can get around to it of course. I have characters that both could be great fits for! Also looking forward to running through the new content being developed for sure.

 

Also - just out of curiosity - why shouldn't Homecoming use powers, powersets, art assets, etc. (or even the idea of such things if not directly transferrable) developed by the other servers? I mean it's not like anybody in the community owns the code or IP. If someone creates a "Clown Mastermind" power set, why shouldn't the other servers use it for themselves? With a  stats/balance pass and testing of course. Are there any legal issues preventing this?

[OmegaOne]

On 9/21/2021 at 4:39 PM, SuperPlyx said:

Reading that wiki article raises couple questions about the 2 drone powers. 

"Blaster Drone: You fire a series of blasts from a sophisticated energy drone. Wrist Blaster deals Moderate energy damage ...."

What is a "wrist blaster"?

 

Also, will you need to resummon the drone each time you want it to fire? Or will it be the first "pet" that you can tell when you want it to fire? 

I see some serious issue with the drone.

Regarding the "Wrist Blaster" it just looks like it was accidentally left in the description - Paragon was probably re-purposing an unused power they developed. As for the Drones, yeah it would be helpful to know what the original intent for them was. In any case, from the description it feels like Blaster Drone and Drone Barrage work like normal blast powers (i.e. not an autonomous pet) but just have the FX of firing from a drone. One of the IDF Battle Drones have similar attacks IIRC. Maybe toggle the drone which brings up the blast powers in a tray? Jet Pack and Force Barrier are pretty straightforward - there are already powers like them in the game, and Nano Net seems pretty similar to "Electrified Net Arrow" in Tactical Arrow.

 

For Utility Belt - the FX for the Bolas would seem to be the main issue. There are throwable objects and grenades in the game, but I'm not sure if there are any suitable art assets that could be used as a substitute. Closest bola-like thing in the game that comes to mind is Power Push fx from the Energy Blast set.

Edited September 25, 2021 by OmegaOne

[tidge]

33 minutes ago, OmegaOne said:

 Are there any legal issues preventing this?

 

I'm not a lawyer. My response is: "Why even go there?" Why invite accusations of 'artistic theft' from other servers on top of any aspect of 'code theft' from an actual design studio?

 

There is a wide spectrum of (potentially) implementable ideas from active Homecoming participants who have accepted the terms of service for Homecoming. I'm perfectly comfortable with the Homecoming teams doing their own development according to their own established process.

 

re: "Wrist Blasters" I think that the Paralytic Poison animation already originates from the "wrist", but it is a launched "blob" and not a "blast".

[gamingglen]

On 9/24/2021 at 11:08 AM, Marshal_General said:

If you throw a bolero a few times st Recluse he will at least look more fashionable.

 Aw come on.  He is quite fashionable. After all, every Rogue Isles' fashion show has the spider motif.

If they don't, Arachnos thugs, er, Arbiters come and shut it down. 

[GM Impervium]

On 9/25/2021 at 11:42 AM, OmegaOne said:

Also - just out of curiosity - why shouldn't Homecoming use powers, powersets, art assets, etc. (or even the idea of such things if not directly transferrable) developed by the other servers? I mean it's not like anybody in the community owns the code or IP. If someone creates a "Clown Mastermind" power set, why shouldn't the other servers use it for themselves? With a  stats/balance pass and testing of course. Are there any legal issues preventing this?

 

So, a couple things.

First, Homecoming wants to be as professional and above-the-table as possible. All of our content is made in-house, so there's no question about whether something "belongs" to someone or what happens to it if they leave the team or no longer play on the server or what have you. There's enough hard feelings going around when we release a feature that looks anything like what someone else may have done, so it'd be a huge can of worms if we just dipped into the "community pool" so to speak and just plugged stuff in.

Additionally, there's an issue of compatibility. Without getting into specifics, something that works on one server, may not necessarily work on HC, or vice versa. At least, not without some amount of work, and by that point, you might as well do it all yourself anyway so it fully fits in your code base instead of just plugging in heavily modified code.

So basically, it's just best to do our own thing 😃

Edited September 27, 2021 by GM Impervium
spelling/text errors

[SuperPlyx]

While I mostly agree with @GM Impervium It does bring up the question of:  If server XYZ has added something does that mean Homecoming can never add that too? Because it was not made in house first? Or that it would seem to be copying?

[Glacier Peak]

48 minutes ago, SuperPlyx said:

While I mostly agree with @GM Impervium It does bring up the question of:  If server XYZ has added something does that mean Homecoming can never add that too? Because it was not made in house first? Or that it would seem to be copying?

I'd say copying is one thing, artistic expression that's influenced by separate work is another. 

[GraspingVileTerror]

I don't know if anyone has a complete answer to your questions there, @SuperPlyx.

But that's because it takes whole legal teams and loads of money to answer those sorts of questions most of the time when they come up in the industry.

 

Homecoming tends to err on the side of cautious.  

I don't think they're going to be stopped by some other bootleg server having a Paragon Studios-planned Power Pool there with the same name as a Power Pool here, even if such a theoretical original Power Pool had broadly similar content.  And that's because the operation here is already working with the content and code that . . . "shares a common ancestry" with those other servers.

Bonus points if the specific Devs who worked on it for Homecoming have detailed documentation of their entire development cycle, potentially including local requests from their own community who offer completely unassociated-to-other-similar-ventures samples as part of their feedback/requests (ie:  Using photos of real hulu dancers, rather than a screenshots of hulu skirts that someone put in City on a different server).

 

But let's say another server creates and puts a completely original element in to their branch of the game; an element that is not derived from any existing assets or code that were in that "shared ancestry."  Unless that other server explicitly provides that content to everyone with CC0 ( https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ ) or an unlimited and specific license agreement to Homecoming LLC . . . then I'd wager that the Devs here won't try their luck.  Not even if it were the most compelling and amazing element to be made in the past 15 years, that could completely revolutionize and invigourate the game.

 

I know that probably sounds bizarrely hypocritical to some folks, given the origins of Homecoming and the other City servers out there.  But I've got a hunch that the fewer boats Homecoming is seen as rocking, the more comfortable the frontrunners feel.

Just a hunch.

[misatz]

I'm still waiting on a new travel power, vehicles 😛 Not all super heroes can fly or have super speed lol Have a car, helicopter and motor cycle etc