Do You Prefer to Take it Slow? Introducing Steady Indom

[Lunar Ronin]

I've noticed a couple of issues lately.

 

I'm sure that most of you have noticed that, over time, Homecoming has developed a speed run meta.  It's largely gotten to the point that if someone advertises a TF/SF/Trial, a speed run is assumed.  That's fine for those who enjoy speed running.  I enjoy speed running myself on occasion, but not most of the time.  Then there's the new players, or those returning to City of Heroes after a long absence, who have yet to learn the content or the roles of various archetypes and power sets.  They need to learn how to walk before they can run.

 

I've also noticed that the Indomitable shard has lost its identity.  It was originally the unofficial PvP shard.  That hasn't been the case in over two years, as PvP players mostly migrated to the Excelsior shard.  Excelsior is now the unofficial PvP shard, in addition to being the most populated, with a large speed run community.  Everlasting is the unofficial role-playing shard.  Torchbearer is the original shard.  Reunion is the European shard.  Indomitable is... ?

 

Two issues, one solution.

 

For new and returning players, and for those who enjoy engaging in steamroll/kill most and kill all content and don't already have a group, there is now a new in-game global channel and a Discord server, Steady Indom.  Anyone and everyone is welcome.  There are two main rules of Steady Indom.  The first is that all content advertised on the in-game global channel and/or Discord server must be steamroll/kill most, or kill all.  No speed running.  The second main rule is to have fun.  My hope is to create a welcoming community of people who enjoy a steamroll/kill most or kill all playstyle, and are willing and open to teaching new players how to play the game.  If you don't already play on the Indomitable shard, feel free to transfer a couple of characters over to join us (you get five character transfer tokens every three days), or make a new one!

 

I can't do this on my own though.  I've led Hamidon raids, mothership raids, and Incarnate trials, but I'm one person.  On top of that, I'm an introvert that plays solo often to recharge.  If a few other content leaders who prefer the steamroll/kill most or kill all playstyle would join me, it'd help ensure our success.  Let's make Indomitable the unofficial steady shard.

 

To join the Steady Indom global channel, type while in-game: /chan_join "Steady Indom"  You can find our Discord server here.

 

GLHF to everyone, no matter your preferred playstyle or which shard you play on.  We're all City of Heroes players in the end.

[Scarlet Shocker]

@Riff checking in!

[Ridiculous Girl]

1 hour ago, Lunar Ronin said:

I'm sure that most of you have noticed that, over time, Homecoming has developed a speed run meta.  It's largely gotten to the point that if someone advertises a TF/SF/Trial, a speed run is assumed.  That's fine for those who enjoy speed running.  I enjoy speed running myself on occasion, but not most of the time.

 

i do not find that this is the case, and i am on excelsior. in fact, when a person fills a team and then mentions that it will be a speed run, without advertising it as such, in my experience more often than not several people on the team will rebel against that. i cannot recall a case of someone ever falsely advertising a speed run. i find that most team leaders advertise on LFG exactly what their intentions are. most speed runs seem to be grouped around certain TFs; the WST specifically is the worst offender, but there are a few others. this is not to say that it does not happen, but 95% of the time i know if i am getting on a normal run or not.

 

i do try to counteract this kind of behavior by giving every person forming a team, even if it is a dfb, a three star rating and a note what the team was. if i randomly PUG with them more than 5 times they get a four star rating. but if they pull that old switcheroo, and announce it's a speed run after team formation, they get bumped down to two stars and a mean note. maybe even a one star if they are a jerk about it. but i look, every time, at who's forming teams. i will not team with someone that pulls a stunt like that. though there have been a fair number of cases where some teammate will act like it is a speed run, doing so without asking the team or the leader. people that do this automatically get a one star from me, a scathing note, and a possible ignore.

Edited February 27 by Ridiculous Girl
fixed a word :)

[WuTang]

From a very new person's perspective.... group runs are a whirlwind of confusion. I just switch to follow, target, kill, repeat. Most of the time I'm learning nothing especially if the team is big, just facerolling my keyboard hoping for that heal that I'm sure will come 1 second too late. I don't begrudge anyone anything and it's all part of the experience but fast runs feel more like a carry, and I suppose they are for me...being undergeard and inexperienced. I do at least, as a Brute, try to keep eyes on the Bosses and keep them on me, but that's all I'm cognizant of in every pull.

Edited February 27 by WuTang

[Clave Dark 5]

I see Excel speedruns on lots of things, any and all TFs, and when I find myself on one and say something, I'm generally the only one doing so (I really should just drop when that happens).  That's one thing I like about SBB: level-capped so no hiding behind your wall of purples, Winter Expense and fully IOed builds, and you have to take it at the pace it goes at, no cheating your way through.  The "meta" is indeed to grab everything like merits and Inf are going to be nerfed (just look at Scrapyard).

 

I'd be happy to join this, except I game during odd hours and even after the big influx Indom is dead during the night (and Excel pretty much reverts back to what it was pre-influx: four people spamming to door-sit a farm, a Yin speed-run, and a Tin/Px, which may also be a speedrun). 

 

But all power to y'all!  Maybe I'll check in  sometimes, just to see if maybe there is something to get in on.

[KaizenSoze]

I will take this moment to present a tool to help with generating LFG messages for forming TF/SF/Trial teams. It has separate sections for Kill most, Speed, WST or not.

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

What a fun idea!

[Snarky]

22 hours ago, WuTang said:

From a very new person's perspective.... group runs are a whirlwind of confusion. I just switch to follow, target, kill, repeat. Most of the time I'm learning nothing especially if the team is big, just facerolling my keyboard hoping for that heal that I'm sure will come 1 second too late. I don't begrudge anyone anything and it's all part of the experience but fast runs feel more like a carry, and I suppose they are for me...being undergeard and inexperienced. I do at least, as a Brute, try to keep eyes on the Bosses and keep them on me, but that's all I'm cognizant of in every pull.

If you have not done a TF before even simple ones will be confusing.  
 

My first run on the new 1star LGTF felt like going down a mountain in a barrel.  It was only hours after it dropped, but evidently the team leads knew it from Beta.  It was speed lol. 
 

I recently joined a PUG abandoned sewers trial and the team (including lead) had never done it before. I explained about getting cannons. But then they tried to speed the bottom room lol . I had to explain the clear everything, then clear generators, then simul kill generator target head strategy.

 

I prefer speed. Just did a Faathim yesterday in under 90 min.  Which was fast….for that.  Would have been faster if a few members of the team stopped splitting off “to speed things up” then getting overwhelmed.  For the whole 90 minutes lol.  

[Glacier Peak]

We also have more XP and less lag!

[sbloyd]

I main a Warshade.  For doing group content, there are certain conditions I need in order to perform optimally - and a lot of folks will tell you optimal for a Warshade is still suboptimal in general, so I want to be performing as best I can so as to not be a drag on the group.  Unfortunately part of these conditions is "I need to get a bunch of live enemies clustered around me" and with the power level flying around in a lot of cases these days enemies melt like the proverbial snowball in Hell.  This means I need to move fast, which only ends up contributing to the problem.

[WuTang]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

If you have not done a TF before even simple ones will be confusing.  
 

My first run on the new 1star LGTF felt like going down a mountain in a barrel.  It was only hours after it dropped, but evidently the team leads knew it from Beta.  It was speed lol. 
 

I recently joined a PUG abandoned sewers trial and the team (including lead) had never done it before. I explained about getting cannons. But then they tried to speed the bottom room lol . I had to explain the clear everything, then clear generators, then simul kill generator target head strategy.

 

I prefer speed. Just did a Faathim yesterday in under 90 min.  Which was fast….for that.  Would have been faster if a few members of the team stopped splitting off “to speed things up” then getting overwhelmed.  For the whole 90 minutes lol.  

Don't really know what I've done. The other night we fought Calvin at the end.

I get random invites, I've never actually used the LFG features.

 

I'm trying to regear now to make myself more useful. But at under 50 I'm not sure how important that actually is. But on my main and highest level Brute I have mostly generic crafted IOs. Working on sets now....and I just found out there are melee procs...doh! So I was looking into those as well as starting to beef up my Radiation set resists, which I've been completely neglecting. See in my mind I thought Brute already had built in defenses that are good enough so I focused on my DPS. Only just stated slotting my Resists at level 45...live and learn.

[eiynp]

Reality is that even most ‘kill most’ groups would have passed for speed runs in a prior era, just because we are so much more powerful

 

i I did a +4 ITF the other day that killed damn near every Roman we could find and still finished in about 45 minutes

 

I don’t think there’s any coming back from that unfortunately, at least on HC. My advice to people new to the endgame is just to play a dps character and embrace the faceroll, at least at first

Edited February 28 by eiynp

[Clave Dark 5]

51 minutes ago, sbloyd said:

Unfortunately part of these conditions is "I need to get a bunch of live enemies clustered around me"

And then that one annoying guy keeps popping Fold Space to grab the group back to him, because he's the awesome here.

[Snarky]

25 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Don't really know what I've done. The other night we fought Calvin at the end.

I get random invites, I've never actually used the LFG features.

 

I'm trying to regear now to make myself more useful. But at under 50 I'm not sure how important that actually is. But on my main and highest level Brute I have mostly generic crafted IOs. Working on sets now....and I just found out there are melee procs...doh! So I was looking into those as well as starting to beef up my Radiation set resists, which I've been completely neglecting. See in my mind I thought Brute already had built in defenses that are good enough so I focused on my DPS. Only just stated slotting my Resists at level 45...live and learn.

Depending on your primary secondary sets a Brute can be built to be nearly as Tanky as a Tank. But even Tanks are not good to go out of the box.  
 

Hyperstrike has Invulnerability down to a science.  I have done a lot of work taking Dark Armor into a interesting niche spot.  Farmers make a while build that toughens versus the one damage type they farm then everything else enhances speed aoe dps.  
 

There is a lot of art to a good build.  One of my favorite parts of the game.  

[sbloyd]

8 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

And then that one annoying guy keeps popping Fold Space to grab the group back to him, because he's the awesome here.

If you've already Shadow Slipped them they should have the debuff that prevents them from being teleported, though. 😉 

[Lunar Ronin]

Steady Indom now has a public hub supergroup base on the Indomitable shard!  Feel free to check it out.

 

/macro_image "Tyrant_Lightning" "Steady" "enterbasefrompasscode STEADYINDOM-11314"

 

That will add a macro to your character that you can use when at a supergroup base portal to access the base.

 

For more information about Steady Indom (including ways to join), see the original post.

[Forager]

I love this idea. Since I came back to this game I often have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing... I'm worried that I'm not contributing much, wasting time on things I don't need to bother with or worse... getting in the way.

 

I tried to play a few years ago and got discouraged because of this, but I've recently taken coh up again.

[Glacier Peak]

What are the level ranges at for this now? 

[Lunar Ronin]

44 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

What are the level ranges at for this now? 

 

Right now, we're around level 43.  Any level is welcome to join though.

[Ukase]

I participated yesterday. It was a good bit of fun. These guys are not into sprinting, be warned! They are more long-distance runners with a lot of stamina. I had to beg off at just a smidge over 2 hours. I just can't sit still that long. I had to break and do something physical for a while. 

They have an SG base you can join, and it's small, ergo efficient and doesn't give you lag when you enter. (Cosmic Council's base, while very detailed and huge tends to make my characters pause for about 2 seconds before I can even move) 

[Ravenplume]

I absolutely hate how everything is speed run and rush rush rush,  Screw training and enhancing, forget reading any of the content, to hell with waiting for everyone to get into the mission or staying together.  Just go go go.

 

Still never managed to get a First/Night Ward team that lets you actually experience the arcs, and instead being dragged quickly through it all with no time to read or train, or anything other than just rushing to the next mission.

 

Come to think of it, I've never even done the Who Will Die arcs yet, largely because I figure it will be all speedy run like everything else.

Edited June 4 by Ravenplume

[ZamuelNow]

In the Indomitable server version of this thread I talked about time since a few of us have hit 50.  Here...I'm going to talk funds.  Despite some new player goodies I picked up on other characters, I decided to only fund my Steady Indom character with things he picked up while leveling (barring a single Team Inspiration from my mail).  Funding the character through normal play was quite doable though there were occassional hiccups since I didn't go in with an actual plan.  Kill Most runs through story content nets you a lot of drops for crafting and auction.  Actually got a couple of end of mission Prismatic Aethers.