City of Heroes: Homecoming

So, I saw @ineffablebob playing Homecoming the other day and asked him about it. And now I’ve got it installed along with my kids, @Oscuros, and his kid.

Installation instructions are here:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/installation-guide/

It’s still the game you remember, though there is a new archetype, a few new powersets, and much wider powerset availability than before. There are other things I haven’t seen yet like a new Task Force.

There are many small quality of life improvements, like travel powers at level 4, auras and capes at character creation, free server transfers and name changes, to name a few.

As I understand it, the existence of the servers is not legal, but they are actively trying to become so (and have been for years, I think). As such, streaming or uploading video are not allowed.

Even though I’d love to see a modern remake and certain aspects are downright archaic (particular indoor textures), there’s still something special about this game. You can see that in the monthly donation threads, where people rush to get donations in on the last Saturday of each month before they are closed (after reaching the monthly quota, frequently in less than an hour) and post with genuine excitement over being able to contribute. Perhaps this is because of all the MMOs I’ve played, this remains the only one where I’ve felt a sense of ownership of the characters I’ve created.

We talked about the Homecoming server a bit in the shutdown thread. It’s been 3-4 months since I’ve logged in, but I’ve been playing on and off since the server was opened to the public.

The dev team has made a number of technical improvements and bug fixes, including a 64-bit client. The game runs surprisingly well on a modern PC and OS. They’ve also added power sets, added a bunch of SG base items, made improvements to pet AI, etc. It’s very cool to see the CoH getting some love after all this time.

I wasn’t sure the 64-bit client was new, thanks. Yeah, I know it has been brought up before, just thought it deserved a new thread, since there might be people who are unaware this is a thing.

I have a number of characters on Homecoming, if anyone is looking to team up. I also have tons of cash if you are needing some start-up money, hit up my global @zenblack and I’ll hook you up.

Yep, I’m still playing this on a semi-regular basis. There’s so much content, from just starting out all the way up to the Incarnate endgame, that I’m still stumbling across things that I barely remember from back in the Live days. And of course there’s a gazillion types of characters that you can play, so there’s always another alt to create.

My global is @ineffablebob if anyone wants to get in touch in-game!

People’s original account credentials and/or characters are not around anymore correct? So you’ll be starting from scratch, correct? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I was just curious.

I also see from the installation page that it’s no longer a Mac/PC dichotomy, it’s tequila/rum!

Yeah, they didn’t get the database from the original game, so this is a clean start. Which may seem daunting if you had a lot of high-level characters and want to get back to that, but they also added a bunch of ways to progress quickly. Free double XP, many of the old “vet rewards” available for free or minimal cost, and once you do hit 50 the incarnate progression is laughably easy compared to the original game.

How does one access these? I was thinking how nice it would be to have an extra power or two (e.g. nemesis staff or sands of mu)

Thanks. Actually stumbled across one a while ago and went to see what it was.

Lots of good info in that link.

I love the character creation and in general this game, until I hit 25-30 or so, and then it just bogs down into a real slog. Given how many characters you are probably going to want to make, the exp rate in this game should be about 10x what it is, it’s just way too slow past 30 or so, at least for me.

I probably have 25+ characters that are hovering between 25-35 due to this. At some point it just becomes incredibly boring trying to level. It’s awesome fun starting a new character, leveling up, and getting new stuff to play with. One of the best early game MMOs ever I think. Certainly worth the time to play, as I have gotten many hours out of it, but I do wish it wasn’t such a slog to get to max level.

You can get characters up to 50 easily if you power level using the player created missions (I forget the name of the location but it right in Atlas… Players were taking turns doing that all the time if you just want to get to end game things on a certain toon.

And you can get free come boosts too. I remember people leveling in the sewers back in the day, but that was never my thing.

Everyone has a different patience threshold for character progress, of course, but as others have mentioned there are ways to go faster. Personally, I hate the farm/powerlevel teams because they bore me, but they do speed things along. There’s the double XP boosters that you can buy from the P2W vendor, definitely always have that going if you want quicker progress. Doing task forces is a great way to level quickly, since they have good XP rewards and are usually full teams (which have their own XP bonus). In particular, look out on the LFG channel for people forming the weekly strike force targets, which give very large bonuses. You’ll also often see folks in LFG advertising paper/tip mission teams, which will be good XP as long as the leader is higher level than you. Those are kinda powerleveling but I find them significantly less boring than the “sit at the door while the leader farms” powerlevel teams.

Ahh, I love the sewers! It’s where I go to try new powerset combos and get over the early game slog. Not as needed now with travel powers at 4 but back in the day no better way to plow toward travel levels. After that the game really opens up with choices and the quest lines are better imo so no more power leveling for me.

I did play this a bit when they relaunched this for a few months but not played much since. While I love the character creator in this having everything unlocked at once + what seems like a ton of new options since I played the “real” game (year after COV launch) made it borderline a pain to create/recreate what I wanted. I spent hours on it! Mostly enjoyable but MY GOD the choices! Hot Pink haried, zombie armed, robot legged, faerie winged, glowing, fire eyed, devil horned chick with a cool belt, an assault rifle and a hyena face? Sure why not… I’ll call her Badday Suzie but she’ll be a good guy. :)

That being said…redownloading now for the return of…Nor Easter! “Don’t mind me , I’m just blowing through!”

I’ll post here once in for group age if anyone interested.

In regards to character ownership…

I could not agree more and exactly why I love this game. No other game lets you conceptualize and build a unique character concept and actualize in the real game better. Add some light RP and then you find yourself playing as Sherlock Ohms and Dr. Wattson with a buddy and leveling and the rat chase just become background noise as you run around investigating crimes. Meanwhile, random people interact and participate for no good reason other than your own enthusiasm with your characters. What other game does a random pickup group start Rping along with you just because you nailed your concept so good and refuse to break character :).

Heh. I have a Tick clone called The Tock.

Heh, sounds like a storm defender. I had Force 9 and Eminence Front.

I’m currently playing a staff/bio armor brute named Honu (turtle). His battle cry is “Time for a shell-acking!”

That is excellent!

Speaking of battlecries, I still have all my old binds, including my movement and flight binds. I also still have the batch file I used to make rotating** taunts for Totally Rad. In talking with my son the other day about a character concept, I came up with an idea that could let me put a battlecry on a frequently used power and only trigger it occasionally. I really want to see if I can get that to work like I think it will and also has me jonesing to play TRad again. She was Rad/Rad defender originally, but I’d have the option to make her a blaster now (don’t want to play a sentinel)

**making a simple rotation that always plays the same order is easy. You just make a series of files where number 1 loads number 2 and so on until the last loads number 1. But what I did was have the batch file constantly cycle through the order and overwrite the same file so the order executed in game will vary depending on when a power is activated.

Those old binds should be very easy to convert to working order. Also now you can create popmenu’s that do all kinds of stuff for you and it is usable across characters so all your alts have access to them.

The unofficial Homecoming Wiki exists, which is basically the old Paragon wiki updated to what Homecoming has changed. It might be helpful to see if your bind commands still use the same syntax or you need to adjust it a little.

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Main_Page

Yes, the binds all work just fine. No conversion needed. I had not heard of popmenu before, so now have some reading to do there.

I also have the files for Speed on Demand (which will create a set of customized movement binds for you), but have not tried to run it.