Gratitude. Because all I have against hate is love.

[Aeroprism]

I don't know if this topic is really needed in anyone's life but being a visceral and generally impulsive/emotional person, I felt like it was necessary for me to write this.

 

Yesterday I was googling stuff about Homecoming, namely how to create an account beyond my own because some of my family members are transitionning from kid's cartoons to awesome video games daddy plays and this led me to read some Reddit posts about Homecoming and to be completely fair, those left me beyond surprised.

 

They left me disheartened and sad.

 

What the fridge is wrong with all the Homecoming hate out there? So what if the birth of this project was handled with secrecy? I'm sure the people involved had their reasons and I will certainly not climb on a moral soapbox and pretend that I would have done better in their place.

 

Bottom line is, because of these passionate people, we have a quality home to play this game. A home that keeps getting better and better and that manages to please a majority of different people by being fair and transparent.

 

I think that, once more, the people who work their asses off here need to be reminded that we appreciate them. My own gratitude for being given an opportunity to play this once more, it can hardly be descibed with words.

 

I know that no matter what you do, you can't please everyone, but it still kicks me in the nuts to see how people take pride in e-crapping on other people because of their own shiny entitlement.

 

And there I am, e-crapping on haters instead of doing what I wanted to do with this topic:

 

THANK YOU HOMECOMING TEAM!

[jprewitt73]

[cranebump]

I oftentimes believe that negative responses exist because people feel they must cosmically balance anyone else's moment of joy with their own hastily provided big ol' basket of shit (because it's evidently grossly unfair for anyone to have the former without also smelling the latter [which your typical internet jackass will provide, free of charge]). 

Edited April 24 by cranebump

[PeregrineFalcon]

57 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

What the fridge is wrong with all the Homecoming hate out there? So what if the birth of this project was handled with secrecy?

No. It was more than just that.

 

There was a bunch of other stuff going on behind the scenes. The Homecoming folks did some stuff that made a bunch of people very mad at them. I don't know exactly what, because no one will give out any details. Basically people disagreed and feelings got hurt. It happens. While I tend to disagree with most of the dislike toward Homecoming that's posted on Reddit, I'm not naive enough to believe that the Homecoming devs are entirely blameless. Nothing ever works that way IRL.

[Aeroprism]

2 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

No. It was more than just that.

 

There was a bunch of other stuff going on behind the scenes. The Homecoming folks did some stuff that made a bunch of people very mad at them. I don't know exactly what, because no one will give out any details. Basically people disagreed and feelings got hurt. It happens. While I tend to disagree with most of the dislike toward Homecoming that's posted on Reddit, I'm not naive enough to believe that the Homecoming devs are entirely blameless. Nothing ever works that way IRL.

 

Absolutely. No one is perfect and no one is blameless, but if Monday morning I do something that annoys/upsets one of my friend and then I spend the rest of the week being helpful, nice and useful without asking much in return and my friends only remembers Monday morning, then my friend has an attitude problem and needs to ponder his personality.

 

[Frostbiter]

Whatever happened, and I'll be the first to admit my ignorance on the years between 2012 and 2019, let's just bury any hatchets we may have and be grateful for what has returned.

[Haijinx]

Reddit is kind of a Scary place.

 

You can find people who will say nasty things about anything there.

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

What the fridge is wrong with all the Homecoming hate out there?

 

Jealousy and elitism.  Likely there may be other reasons, but all the negative vibe I've seen over 5 years now can be chalked up to those two: jealousy and elitism.   Unfortunately, they are the bon bons of the masses.  If someone posts a positive work on YouTube regarding Homecoming, it may get a few dozen views (with rare exceptions), but if someone decides to go elsewhere for their CoH fix and also uses a video to throws fertilizer in the process, it will score hundreds if not thousands of views.  Simply put, people like drama, whether real or fictional.  As Alfred Pennyworth has said "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

 

Don't let it trouble you.  For my part, I just quietly block the negativity channels and ignore social media that cannot at least speak with courteous and constructive critiques. It's ironic, because their own willingness to voice without restraint is what silences them to me.

Edited April 24 by Techwright

[Player2]

There were a lot of people who either knew or claimed to know about a secret server back in the time before Homecoming went public.  Because secrecy was paramount at the time, those people were called liars and it pitted COH fan against COH fan as the community turned ugly.  Some didn't believe in the secret server but wanted it to be true, while others believed it and hoped their time to play again would come.  What they had against the people who were claiming the secret server existed was that if the lid was blown the whole thing could fall through and ruin it for the people who could play or might get a chance someday... so they treated those people like crap to make them shut up.

 

After the game finally did come to light, there were no apologies given for the poor treatment; no "Hey sorry we had to shut you up, now shut up and come game with us."  No one said "Hey, you were right all along."  People were thrown under the bus, and the whole matter was swept under the rug.  And there was such an overwhelming gratitude from the community at large that they could play the game again that no one cared about those people that were shunned and otherwise treated poorly.  So yeah, there's some people out there that aren't happy because even though the game is back they no longer feel like part of the community... at least not this one.  So they'll go off and play on one of the other servers and always harbor ill-feelings about Homecoming even though this was the source for any of those other servers being able to get off the ground.

 

That's my take on it all, anyhow.

[tatmia]

In addition, there were promises of  collaboration between various development groups trying to bring servers back online and some of us watched it that fall apart in real time.  While a lot of the discord fights were in private channels, there's enough breadcrumbs in April 2019 OuroDev Discord and Rebirth Discord (the original Discord before servers split off to make their own) if people wanted to genuinely understand the conflicts.  

I'm not a dev (my sad attempt at standing up a personal server in 2019 proves that), but I can understand  why a few of them are  still a bit prickly.  

 

 

[Oubliette_Red]

47 minutes ago, tatmia said:

In addition, there were promises of  collaboration between various development groups trying to bring servers back online and some of us watched it that fall apart in real time.  While a lot of the discord fights were in private channels, there's enough breadcrumbs in April 2019 OuroDev Discord and Rebirth Discord (the original Discord before servers split off to make their own) if people wanted to genuinely understand the conflicts.  

I'm not a dev (my sad attempt at standing up a personal server in 2019 proves that), but I can understand  why a few of them are  still a bit prickly. 

 

To quote one of my favourite lines in a book, some people will "hold on to a grudge until it dies of old age, then have it stuffed and mounted."  I still hate my X but I have at least gotten over the urge to shoot them on site. There are better thing to put your energies towards, like rolling up another character and playing with friends.

 

Playing with friends, that's something that I would think would be missing on the Shadow server, if your game friends weren't there, how much fun would it really be?

[tatmia]

1 hour ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Playing with friends, that's something that I would think would be missing on the Shadow server, if your game friends weren't there, how much fun would it really be?

 

One of my first friends from Live was on the secret server.  He wasn't part of the original forum cartel that was invited, but had a real-life friend that brought him along.   He was able to find a few additional friends so he had fun, but you're correct, he's much happier now.   

I'm still tickled that we both showed up for a PUG Posi on our mains from live and found each other as we had lost contact when the game shut down.   I'm grinning just typing this.  

[temnix]

I am grateful to Homecoming for making the game playable again, for sure, but not for making it free. I like handouts as much as the next guy, but I avoid them because I realize that each comes with an obligation and establishes a relationship that is not reciprocal. In the time of "the live game" I used to buy monthly suscription cards at GameShop, and that gave me a modicum of influence over the game's direction, at least theoretically. It might have been the force of an ant, but I had the power to express my disinterest by walking out, which indeed I did when I became unhappy with the game's mechanics shortchanging my main character, who kept on dying and could not develop. That might have been because I was not a good player, or more serious objections might have come in, but either way, my preferences mattered - as much as an ant's, in any event. Cryptic depended on the money of people like me, nor could this game have been created on crowdfunded money then or now - something that players should appreciate. It took solid, even mighty production values to bring about the world of CoH, and that meant guaranteed salaries for the developers, a secure business model and everything else that lets one feel at ease and be creative. Also limiting the player base to those who actually contributed kept that base limited. It is like with property ownership requirements for voting - a very intelligent restriction.

 

Now that the game is funded by donations, some of them probably from people much richer than myself, and exists in a permanent mod-like state, in some weird financial dimension, I am no longer a stakeholder, I have no say in things, and neither does anyone else, even the donors, except by crying with one mighty voice - of a crowd. Our opinions matter as a statistic. If something is wanted by a large mob, Homecoming might implement it. If not, it is a spark in the wind. This does not bode an innovative future. Then again, people do come to the game mostly out of nostalgia. Floating before the wind, Homecoming feels no obligation to review its direction, its standards, its ideas. For example, they have completely censorious and kill-happy moderators on these boards, the kind that would make Emperor Cole proud. Remember the happy citizens of Praetoria? No disturbing truths or uncomely manners trouble their ears and eyes. They are happy to live in their golden sandbox, walled in on every sound by sonic boom. As long as they all "unite" in being happy, or unhappy in permitted ways, their paradise can go on forever. And Homecoming is not especially hypocritical, illiberal or heavy-handed, only as much as the rest of the Internet and society today. That I don't like, thousands of people poking inside old and essentially primitive, childish, power-gaming mechanics I don't like, but this happy-happy dimension is protected by its lack of curiosity, ignorance of its own nature, just ignorance and a business model that allows it to roll on.

 

Yes, and eliminating the importance of role-playing with that gull I also don't like. That change knocked the bottom from under the very limited meaning, truth and seriousness that could be found in this game. Now that's all optional, and idiots are as welcome as anyone. A lot of things were made optional by Homecoming. Free, it's all free like cheese in the mousetrap!

 

I don't know if that is what users vociferated about on Reddit or not. That place is far stupider than this one. Now let's see if I get another warning point for saying something moderators don't like.

[lemming]

I think it was a year or so after that I heard about the secret server via a friend's son who was playing on it.  At the time I thought that was cool, but I was pretty busy with other stuff such as helping develop a different game, so we just would ask him how things were going occasionally.

 

On the hate some people have, it's fandom.   Some people take stuff way too seriously.   The devs/GMs still have to deal with some people being way too dramatic, taking things too serious when it comes to game play.

 

And to rebut temnix, we do have input.  Especially if you take part in beta testing.  You don't get to have final say on things, but calling people stupid rarely convinces them that you are smarter.

[Go0gleplex]

I've found that for most of humanity it is easier for them to hate something they either don't understand or that they feel some misplaced perception that they sit in some position of judgement over others...not that they have to live with the consequences of the choices others make for themselves. Especially when they rip things simply to make themselves feel as if they actually matter in the grand scheme of things. Such folks aren't usually worth the air it would take to argue with. 

 

As I told my daughter...as long as whatever it is you or others are doing is not illegal, hurting someone, or putting lives at risk it's no one's business but yours/theirs. And the Homecoming folks have done little but the opposite of that in ensuring the continuance of something folks enjoy, generally smile about, and indulge a bit of their creativity.  Which of course is gonna drive the sour apples round the twist even tighter. 😉 

[High_Beam]

The Malibu just rolls on by.  No need to even slow down.

[FlammeFatale]

There are fun and interesting subreddits, but I find the gaming ones can be very bitter and toxic. At least the ones for the games I am interested in.

However, the drama can be actually entertaining as long as you do not take it seriously and bring some popcorn.

 

I rarely lurk in the CoH sub, but from what I have gathered, the negativity about Homecoming seems to be always from the same 2 or 3 people.

 

There are worse places, perhaps I should say better, if you enjoy the drama. You should try the Starfield sub, where people with 500-1000 hours of play declare that the game sucks and there is nothing to do. Or the Fallout NV sub, where saying that you like Fallout 4 too can get you massively downvoted.  😁

[Shred Monkey]

22 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

and this led me to read some Reddit posts

 

This is where your day went in the wrong direction.  This is never a good thing.  Not ever.  Not once in the history of mankind has doing this ended well.  Stay away... stay far away.

[Snakebit]

It’s always the same people, and they are all associated with a different server. One of the moderators is a dev on that other server and is involved in the drama quite often, and they enforce the no-drama rule only when it suits them. A recent thread from a couple of weeks ago is proof positive.

[Player2]

  

16 hours ago, temnix said:

Our opinions matter as a statistic. If something is wanted by a large mob, Homecoming might implement it. If not, it is a spark in the wind. This does not bode an innovative future.

 

 

And yet, we have seen continued development since it was released with some fixes for old problems and entirely new ideas presented giving life to old player requests, such as the asymmetrical boots, gloves, and shoulders.  People still want more, but that will always be the case.  No matter how much we're given, there will be someone with an idea that didn't get realized that will spark similar desire in others.  But we've gotten innovations under Homecoming.

  

16 hours ago, temnix said:

Yes, and eliminating the importance of role-playing with that gull I also don't like. That change knocked the bottom from under the very limited meaning, truth and seriousness that could be found in this game. Now that's all optional, and idiots are as welcome as anyone. A lot of things were made optional by Homecoming. Free, it's all free like cheese in the mousetrap!

 

The Gull?  You mean the one in Pocket D that has been there changing the way some people play since before the 2012 shutdown?  Yeah, Null is a holdover that has been granted some additional features under Homecoming, but there were some core changes that were just given away.  There's also the S.T.A.R.T. vendors, previously P2W, which are new with Homecoming... but they're just a new delivery system for stuff that NCSoft was doling out in the past as rewards for time played and/or microtransactions.

 

Honestly, I like that everything is up front and given away with little need to "earn it."  Why were butterfly wings something that had to be earned originally?  To string people along to keep them playing because grind = money, even after the game went from subscription to free-to-play.  Why were some powersets premium and required players to pay to unlock them?  For the cash grab to milk the player base as much as possible.  Now you can start with virtually any costume options, play every AT and power set combination, and have 1000 characters slots per shard.  And people keep on playing, so giving it all away didn't stop us from grinding or playing with teams or doing whatever else we love in the game... it just made it all more accessible.

 

I'm sure there are people that would disagree because they prefer the model where things need to be unlocked to have fun.  Meh.  Boring.  But they could still choose to limit themselves and do the old mission content that was required for somethings, or choose not to take things until they would be awarded for whatever the original goalposts were.  It's all about having fun now, and you can be intense and power to 50 with farming or running missions and task forces, or you could slow play and stop at whatever level you want just to start a new character from scratch again and again.  And despite all of these options of content and play styles... the game still gets updated.  New missions, new features, even a new hopefully seasonal event added recently.  And now with the legitimacy of officially being licensed, player interest spiked and I'm sure there will be more fun and innovations on the horizon.