issue 26 Patch Notes for September 10th, 2019

[swordchucks]

1 hour ago, Derekl1963 said:

But does it change it unequivocally for the worse because the folks that want to gather as many Merits as humanly possible now have a harder time of it?  Not at all.  Reading the reports in this thread, people are already changing and adapting and having fun doing so.

Part of the issue is that different servers/shards have different cultures.  On Everlasting, I never saw the "run it 10 times" zerg rushes that were apparently going on with other servers.  That gives me a certain perspective and it means your perspective might be less applicable to my experiences. 

 

Yes, we're adapting to the change, but that adaptation can't replace the social aspect that's lost in the smaller groups.  Having done Hami in a single league (even before this nerf), I think there's a weird overestimation of how hard it actually is.  It takes a bit more effort, yes, but it's not really challenging if you can follow basic instructions. 

 

My A+ answer would be to cap the zones at whatever level they need to be from a system performance standpoint and then tweak the raid to auto-scale the important bits based on the number of players in zone (or in a certain section of the zone for MSR).  I'd rather not have instances, really, since the social aspect of 100 folks all beating up the same monsters is awesome and a big draw for me.

[QuiJon]

2 hours ago, Derekl1963 said:

Even if it's not a "commercial" game, Homecoming still needs to keep the money flowing.  A large part of that is the same ol' bugaboo that every online game faces - keeping the game as interesting as possible to as many people as possible.  Commercial or non/not-for-profit, ya gotta have the bodies coming in to keep the lights on.

(Honestly, I wonder if I should make that my sig...  Because over the week I've been back, I see a lot of people that don't grasp that principle.)
 

Certainly true.  But does it change it unequivocally for the worse because the folks that want to gather as many Merits as humanly possible now have a harder time of it?  Not at all.  Reading the reports in this thread, people are already changing and adapting and having fun doing so.  I expect that trend to continue (it almost always does), and those that won't adapt to be left in the dust.

To the first comment you are right it needs to stay interesting. But I would argue that the strength of this game, and why people played it for as long as we did, had nothing to do with making the content "last". What kept the game interesting for most of us, because if you remember we went a LONG time with no post level 50 content to play, was in the games uniqueness in that different ATs, and Power combinations played differently. We made Alts. We made a lot of Alts. And I see this as still being the case when I look at the numbers and they say how many individual characters have been made so far. And even if less players stick with it, homecoming doesn't have to maintain 4 servers we could go down to 3 or 2 etc. Point being is at one point this game was being supported in secret by just a few hundred players right? Other organizations run servers for even less then that. 

 

As for your second point, yes I say it does change it for the worse. For me it isn't about it being harder, it is about it possibly being imposible to raid hamdion now. I know the general idea right now is people will adapt and learn to raid making having MORE raids easier. However if you go back to may or so when we were commonly doing the long form raids, we didn't get 150-200 people at raids. We got maybe a league and a half. So it is just as likely that the extra people that want to raid now wont if it becomes hard again and will go back to doing other things. Now you might say that doesn't stop me from raiding. But yes it does with a cap on the hive or RWZ. Because even if we can do the long form raid which I don't have a problem with doing, I have to be able to get into the zone to raid. I live on the west coast. The raids on my server happen at 7pm for me. I get home I have to spend some time with wife and kids, eat dinner etc. I make it to my computer just by 7, sometimes even I will miss the first take down by the time I get on. If the population wanting to raid drops back down I wont even be able to get into a hive to join an ongoing raid. And if we drop back down to old attendance numbers there will likely not be enough other players to form a full second league to raid in a different instance, that is if those people are even competent enough to follow directions and raid on their own. For many of us it isn't a matter of "adapting" I cant tell my work I just am going to leave early every night. Or tell my kids I wont be seeing them before their bed time. If I can not get into a hive with a group that is competent to complete the raid, I can no longer raid. This is why I said this can be a bad idea. Sure we don't know how everything will fall out yet. Maybe people will learn to raid, but maybe they wont. But for those that can not log in a hour early and camp in the Hive yes this does "change it unequivocally for the worse" if we can not raid at all.

 

And this is also not just changing to how it was on live. I was in the original group that used to take down hamidon on Liberty, we commonly had well over 100 people in the Hive on a raid. This has become an issue because someone decided that it was unfair for people to come into the hive and do minimal work and be rewarded. And I say if "fixing" that prevents people that do work from being rewarded as well, then the fix is not worth it. 

[Apparition]

21 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

As for your second point, yes I say it does change it for the worse. For me it isn't about it being harder, it is about it possibly being imposible to raid hamdion now. I know the general idea right now is people will adapt and learn to raid making having MORE raids easier. However if you go back to may or so when we were commonly doing the long form raids, we didn't get 150-200 people at raids. We got maybe a league and a half. So it is just as likely that the extra people that want to raid now wont if it becomes hard again and will go back to doing other things. Now you might say that doesn't stop me from raiding. But yes it does with a cap on the hive or RWZ. Because even if we can do the long form raid which I don't have a problem with doing, I have to be able to get into the zone to raid. I live on the west coast. The raids on my server happen at 7pm for me. I get home I have to spend some time with wife and kids, eat dinner etc. I make it to my computer just by 7, sometimes even I will miss the first take down by the time I get on. If the population wanting to raid drops back down I wont even be able to get into a hive to join an ongoing raid. And if we drop back down to old attendance numbers there will likely not be enough other players to form a full second league to raid in a different instance, that is if those people are even competent enough to follow directions and raid on their own. For many of us it isn't a matter of "adapting" I cant tell my work I just am going to leave early every night. Or tell my kids I wont be seeing them before their bed time. If I can not get into a hive with a group that is competent to complete the raid, I can no longer raid. This is why I said this can be a bad idea. Sure we don't know how everything will fall out yet. Maybe people will learn to raid, but maybe they wont. But for those that can not log in a hour early and camp in the Hive yes this does "change it unequivocally for the worse" if we can not raid at all.

 

And this is also not just changing to how it was on live. I was in the original group that used to take down hamidon on Liberty, we commonly had well over 100 people in the Hive on a raid. This has become an issue because someone decided that it was unfair for people to come into the hive and do minimal work and be rewarded. And I say if "fixing" that prevents people that do work from being rewarded as well, then the fix is not worth it. 

 

Back in May and June, there were a lot less level 50 PCs running around.  I am a crazy bastard in that I like to level five levels at a time, turn off XP, and do all of the content I want to do.  I turn off XP at level 9, 14, 19, 24, etc., and only after I finish the content I want to do do I turn XP back on.  It takes me about a month (more now now that I have level 50 characters to switch to when my friends want to do something, or for raids) to level a toon to level 50.  I didn't ding level 50 on a toon until at the very end of May.  Next ding of 50 was in early July.  Then again in mid-August.  Next one will probably be in early-to-mid-October.  Then there are others that I actually know of that started the day the Excelsior server opened and have over a dozen characters, none of which have reached level 50 yet.

 

Regardless, there were far fewer level 50s running around three months ago than there are now.

 

As to having well over 100 people in the Hive on a raid, that was pre-Issue 9.  That was an entirely different Hamidon raid.  Hamidon raids were completely revamped in Issue 9 to what we have today, and that Hamidon was capped at 50 people.  So, yes, yes it is changing it back to how it was on live.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Apparition

[Abraxus]

This is just me.  I don't speak for anyone else.  That said...

 

I believe The Hamidon was intended to be the most super, of the super villains in the game.  A world destroyer that even Recluse, and Statesman feared.  As such, I believe it was meant to be the ultimate challenge in the game, that was not always successful if a team didn't employ actual teamwork, coordination, cohesion, communication, and be composed of the right compliment of archetypes.  All working in unison, knowing that given the power of this enemy, the whole effort could fail.  There was actual risk!  I believe those circumstances, and that risk were removed at some point because the SCORE server (from which the code for Homecoming was derived) was altered to accommodate for a much lower population.  Some rules were bent, and others were totally broken so that fewer could be mightier. 

Now that low population is no longer a factor, that rule has been reset to the way it was in live.  Some don't like it because they have experienced that victory enough times, they have come to expect it, and the massive rewards that come with it.  But, it was the way it was for a reason.  I believe that reason was that the monster was supposed to be nigh unbeatable by anyone but the best of the best teams, and that when victory was achieved, it was well earned.  It wasn't meant to be a party in the Hami-zone, and certainly not the cake-walk that allowed it to be run multiple times a night with victory all but assured regardless of competence, team size, or actual participation.

 

That is probably not going to go over well with the folks that don't like this change.  But, as others have said, it CAN be done.  It's just more of an earned victory, rather than a given one.  Let's try to show a little perspective in our estimation of game play here.  Please?

Edited September 11, 2019 by Abraxus

[Doc_Scorpion]

32 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

For me it isn't about it being harder, it is about it possibly being imposible

It has already been demonstrated to be possible to successfully raid Hami with the new (old) population cap - both on Live, and last night here on Homecoming.  So I stopped reading right there.

[Foxfyre]

43 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

For me it isn't about it being harder, it is about it possibly being imposible to raid hamdion now.

Hami has never been impossible.

For one....the encounter is balanced around SO's.  It wasn't even built for IO'd out and Incarnated toons.  So we're already far stronger than devs expected characters to be when they invented the raid.

For another, the raid now with the 50 player cap exists exactly as it did on live.  Every server on live had ZERO problems raiding Hamidon as he currently exists.

And as we proved last night with 3 successful raids, Hami still goes down easy as long as you know what you're doing.

[subbacultchas]

I've been out of town and busy with my kid's sports, so I've not played much lately or done Hami  in a week or two. I'm going to have to make time this coming week to do it the old way with yall Foxfyre.

Still the same tentative time on Excelsior?

 

[Foxfyre]

1 minute ago, subbacultchas said:

I've been out of town and busy with my kid's sports, so I've not played much lately or done Hami  in a week or two. I'm going to have to make time this coming week to do it the old way with yall Foxfyre.

Still the same tentative time on Excelsior?

 

Yup.  Only change is it's better to be early if you're worried about getting into Hive 1.

[subbacultchas]

Bet. I'll try to get there tonight or tomorrow a bit early and park my butt.

Thanks!

[QuiJon]

4 minutes ago, Foxfyre said:

Hami has never been impossible.
 

I don't mean impossible as in can not be done. I mean impossible for ME personally to attend. I live on the west coast. Even at you alls current time of raiding that is only like 7 oclock here. I have to get home from work, eat diner, spend time with kids, help with homework. It honestly was not uncommon for me to even sometimes miss the first take down entirely by the time I log into the game. 

 

Now if as people seem to think, that the crowds just need to learn how to do it the right way and then we will have 2-3 hives of take downs a night, then not a problem. However back in may we didn't have this many people raiding. They started doing this really because likely of how easy it was or became when the zergs became possible. But those really became possible around 1.5-2 leagues worth of players. A population that we can not have in the zone anymore. So now if those players decide long form raids are not worth the time and go back to doing other things, and I am not on in time to camp out in the hive for an hour before each raid to get into hive 1, then my ability to raid hamidon is over. Now if people learn to raid and we can run 2-3 raid teams in different instances then I guess my problem is solved. I personally though don't think the raids started getting the attendance they did because people just decided to raid. Even those that came and helped were still there because it was considered the best return on time investment for merits. But in an hour I can farm 25 million influence pretty easy to buy a ATO or HamiO now anyway I just kind of like coming out and being with everyone on the server even if I am being a wallflower. 

 

So when I say impossible to raid I mean if people don't get on board with multiple instance raids and just give up on raiding, then anyone over that one league it becomes impossible to raid hamidon. But that is just it, you came into hive 2 late last night, so you saw a generally organized group of raiders that made a mistake to try and push through the spawn of mitos rather then clear them. But you didn't see the cluster fuck of idiocy taking place before that which lead to most of the league just giving up and leaving. I was following the blaster team leader and he was not even getting close enough to targets to attack them. But generally people didn't seem interested in sticking around to learn anything once they figured it wasn't going to happen they just bailed. And it isn't fair to expect you all and your experienced leaders to run 2-3 sets of raids every night, so like I said, if people don't want to learn and don't make a point of learning it will be impossible for over 50 people a night to raid hamidon.

[Starforge]

I mean, if time is the issue for you I'd advise learning how to lead a raid yourself so you can try to form one up when you're actually able to play.

[QuiJon]

41 minutes ago, Abraxus said:

This is just me.  I don't speak for anyone else.  That said...

 

I believe The Hamidon was intended to be the most super, of the super villains in the game.  A world destroyer that even Recluse, and Statesman feared.  As such, I believe it was meant to be the ultimate challenge in the game, that was not always successful if a team didn't employ actual teamwork, coordination, cohesion, communication, and be composed of the right compliment of archetypes.  All working in unison, knowing that given the power of this enemy, the whole effort could fail.  There was actual risk!  I believe those circumstances, and that risk were removed at some point because the SCORE server (from which the code for Homecoming was derived) was altered to accommodate for a much lower population.  Some rules were bent, and others were totally broken so that fewer could be mightier. 

Now that low population is no longer a factor, that rule has been reset to the way it was in live.  Some don't like it because they have experienced that victory enough times, they have come to expect it, and the massive rewards that come with it.  But, it was the way it was for a reason.  I believe that reason was that the monster was supposed to be nigh unbeatable by anyone but the best of the best teams, and that when victory was achieved, it was well earned.  It wasn't meant to be a party in the Hami-zone, and certainly not the cake-walk that allowed it to be run multiple times a night with victory all but assured regardless of competence, team size, or actual participation.

 

That is probably not going to go over well with the folks that don't like this change.  But, as others have said, it CAN be done.  It's just more of an earned victory, rather than a given one.  Let's try to show a little perspective in our estimation of game play here.  Please?

Nothing in this is right. Hamidon was changed from his original form which was close to a crap shoot if you could beat him sometimes to this version that is essentially a slightly stronger version then what is in the LGTF. But it was changed so mitos spawns were set numbers instead of one per player. Mitos have certain weaknesses so all felt included. But when they made these changes the raid became boring. It was a time sink. If you had enough of each piece of the puzzle and were willing to take the time to do it right, you won, you would never lose. It was essentially like running a TF the only way you lose is if you didn't bring the tools with you to begin with. 

The issue is that when this change was done on live, no one gave a crap about HamiOs anymore because we had IOs out then. But hamidon now is one of the best reward/time investment in the game for the merits. So capping the zones makes it harder to even be included. So for many people that can not camp out in the hive to make sure they get on a team to take him down, think like if there was a great TF in the normal game that awarded 160 merits for 75 minutes of work. But you were on a Sentinel and everytime someone said they were forming a team you responded and were told sorry we don't like sentinels they don't do enough damage and passed over for inclusion. That is atleast why I am upset this change right now atleast is effectively exluding me from content. 

[QuiJon]

2 minutes ago, Starforge said:

I mean, if time is the issue for you I'd advise learning how to lead a raid yourself so you can try to form one up when you're actually able to play.

Even if I had the mind set that I was willing to lead the raid, which I really don't care to after working all day, I have to have people willing to want to learn. And my experience last night says they don't. There was a wipe and everyone just said "fuck it" and quit and left. Like if it wasn't gonna be a zerg anymore they don't care to be there. Maybe this will change as hopefully new people cycle through the hive 1 raids and get the hang of the long form take down. I hope it does. But I didn't see a lot of willingness last night to listen or learn from the group in hive 2, from the league as a whole or the raid leaders that were also obviously new to this. 

[macskull]

3 minutes ago, Starforge said:

I mean, if time is the issue for you I'd advise learning how to lead a raid yourself so you can try to form one up when you're actually able to play.

The issue now becomes if you're trying to do it during off hours you have to be far more picky about what you can get into the Hive since you're only gonna get 50 and you either need 1) everyone prepared to zerg it or 2) the right mix of characters, and the odds of having either of those aren't always great.

 

I think this change sucks, personally, not because it means "oh no we can't get a bunch of really fast merits" but because there are going to be dozens of people every night that are perfectly willing and able to take down Hami that won't be able to because the zone will be full an hour before the advertised raid start time. As far as my own gameplay goes, I'm pretty indifferent, though it is too bad that Hami is no longer worth my time.

[Puma]

2 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Nothing in this is right. Hamidon was changed from his original form which was close to a crap shoot if you could beat him sometimes to this version that is essentially a slightly stronger version then what is in the LGTF. But it was changed so mitos spawns were set numbers instead of one per player. Mitos have certain weaknesses so all felt included. But when they made these changes the raid became boring. It was a time sink. If you had enough of each piece of the puzzle and were willing to take the time to do it right, you won, you would never lose. It was essentially like running a TF the only way you lose is if you didn't bring the tools with you to begin with. 

The issue is that when this change was done on live, no one gave a crap about HamiOs anymore because we had IOs out then. But hamidon now is one of the best reward/time investment in the game for the merits. So capping the zones makes it harder to even be included. So for many people that can not camp out in the hive to make sure they get on a team to take him down, think like if there was a great TF in the normal game that awarded 160 merits for 75 minutes of work. But you were on a Sentinel and everytime someone said they were forming a team you responded and were told sorry we don't like sentinels they don't do enough damage and passed over for inclusion. That is atleast why I am upset this change right now atleast is effectively exluding me from content. 

Not that this will make you feel better, but any team that passes over ANY archetype in this game because they dont do enough damage is a team being run by a newb who doesn't know what they're doing and you don't want to be on. 


There isn't a single archetype in this game that doesn't offer something valuable to a team. There isn't content in this game that ANY team can't handle if they're just smart.  You could literally run a STF/LRSF with nothing but emp/archery defs and have no problems. 

Sorry you experience this, but that's their idiocy, not your too, that's the problem. 

[QuiJon]

39 minutes ago, Puma said:

Not that this will make you feel better, but any team that passes over ANY archetype in this game because they dont do enough damage is a team being run by a newb who doesn't know what they're doing and you don't want to be on. 


There isn't a single archetype in this game that doesn't offer something valuable to a team. There isn't content in this game that ANY team can't handle if they're just smart.  You could literally run a STF/LRSF with nothing but emp/archery defs and have no problems. 

Sorry you experience this, but that's their idiocy, not your too, that's the problem. 

I didn't experience this, I was saying that the now luck of the draw timing that is required to get into a raid excludes players from content AS IF someone was purposely excluding the AT you wanted to play from taking part in a team. Because the cap will fill up the zone and because not enough people seem to know how to raid effectively to have multiple leagues going absent of working together in one zone, the time I am able to log in excludes me from taking part in content I would like to take part in. No, I agree with everything you said, I was just trying to make an example.

[Leandro]

 

[ryuplaneswalker]

On 9/10/2019 at 3:32 AM, Leandro said:

Eochai and Jack in Irons will now reward their badges on defeat regardless of how much damage the player does to them.

Thank you god./

[HeroReborn]

I'm finding it the GUI messed up after the change. I'm using a 4k monitor, and had previously changed a lot of the window scales etc around to work.

 

- All character windows are scrambled to upper left on first login, and load window options doesn't work (to get back the set up I previously saved).

- Screen shot key no longer seems to copy to clip board (used to be able to press screen shot and then paste into paint or other graphic program).

- Macro text now is white on grey, making it much harder to read. I think it used to black bordered white text)

- Handles for changing tray number on floating trays has almost disappeared. (See tray 4 in screenshot)

- Text has gotten smaller, but font size is still same in settings

- Scroll bars on map window is tiny and hard to grab

- Text on dialogs like supergroup base teleport options (listing zones) has gotten smaller.

- Are the reticles meant to be huge now?

- Unable to scroll all the way down in email (screen shot stops at G, if I click subject and reverse order I can access windfall etc but cant scroll past K )

- Text on IO's seems smaller and harder to read - wasn't great before, but now is extremely hard. Doesn't show well in screen shot, but text on them is tiny. Used to be readable at the same windowscale.

- Text in nav window also smaller though readable

- Subjective: like someone else mentioned, getting headaches and eye strain after a few minutes of play that didn't experience before.

 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2019 by HeroReborn

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

23 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

Exactly.  It will take some time to learn for those who have never done normal Hamidon raids before, but it's not rocket science.

Participated in well over a hundred Hami raids from the days of Yellow Dawn to shutdown and even at a zone cap of 50 it was never that hard with coordinated leadership. The last year or so before shutdown it was common to run two raids a night and the Zerg Through The Blooms strat was used fairly often in the last year in open to the server raids on Virtue. It did require a fair number of people to invest in temp powers, but it wasn't expecially difficult. Personally i'm hoping to have time for a couple raids this week, but we'll see.

[GM Capocollo]

20 hours ago, Squid Vicious said:

Up next, the ‘enterbasefromcode’ ‘fix’ for example.   You heard it here first!

 

This has already been acknowledged and announced.  It's not a secret that we're planning on reverting this.

[jubakumbi]

9 minutes ago, GM Capocollo said:

 

This has already been acknowledged and announced.  It's not a secret that we're planning on reverting this.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”

― John Lydgate

[Ukase]

14 minutes ago, GM Capocollo said:

 

This has already been acknowledged and announced.  It's not a secret that we're planning on reverting this.

Dooooooom! 

Can't you just disable it in PvP zones? The problem is - now that we've tasted this treat, the "regular" base tp is awful. What's the point of that ridiculously long, interruptible animation in the "regular" base tp?  And what's the point of the long recharge? It was annoying before - now it will be super annoying because we know it's possible for it to be practically instant. 

[GM Capocollo]

2 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Dooooooom! 

Can't you just disable it in PvP zones? The problem is - now that we've tasted this treat, the "regular" base tp is awful. What's the point of that ridiculously long, interruptible animation in the "regular" base tp?  And what's the point of the long recharge? It was annoying before - now it will be super annoying because we know it's possible for it to be practically instant. 

Additional quality-of-life changes will be accompanying the removal of the command.

[Korbian]

@HeroReborn Go into Options>Windows, and provided you patched up correctly, the very top option should be "Automatic UI Scale".  Disable it and you might be good to go.  It may need tweaking still.  There's a thread in the help section you can refer to:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/10074-ui-problems-i-think/