Snow Globe

While I have my own issues with the league interface (it is poorly designed and full of bad formatting and even worse labelling), remember this is the first day most people are seeing it.

Yup, that's all.

Section 1: Incarnate system.
Section 2: Trial Badges.
Section 2a: Behavioral Adjustment Facility (BAF) Trial Badges.
Section 2b: Lambda Trial Badges.
Section 3: New Task/Strike Force Badges.
Section 4: Badge fixes.

Section 1: New Incarnate System badges.

• Judgement Unlocked - Unlock the Judgement ability.
  "You unlocked your Judgement Incarnate slot allowing you to create powerful new abilities that can be slotted there."
  
• Destiny Unlocked - Unlock the Destiny ability.
  "You unlocked your Destiny Incarnate slot allowing you to create powerful new abilities that can be slotted there."
  
• Interface Unlocked - Unlock the Interface ability.
  "You unlocked your Interface Incarnate slot allowing you to create powerful new abilities that can be slotted there."
  
• Lore Unlocked - Unlock the Lore ability.
  "You unlocked your Lore Incarnate slot allowing you to create powerful new abilities that can be slotted there."
  

Section 2: Trial Badges.

Section 2a: B. A. F. Trial Badges.
Accolade - Master of the B.A.F. - achieve the following special achievements during the Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial: Not On My Watch, Alarm Raiser, Gotta Keep 'Em Separated, and Strong and Pretty.
""

• Behavior Adjuster - Complete BAF.
  "You have completed the Incarnate Trial: Behavioral Adjustment Facility."
  
• Not On My Watch - Allow no Mindwashed Prisoners to escape during a Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial.
  "Not a single Mindwashed Resistance member was allowed to escape the Behavioral Adjustment Facility on your watch."
  
• Alarm Raiser - Never disable a Guard Tower using the controls at its base during a Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial.
  "Whether by chutzpah or ignorance, you managed to assault the Behavioral Adjustment Facility without ever disabling a single one of their guard towers."
  
• Gotta Keep 'Em Separated - Defeat Siege & Nightstar without moving them from their initial locations during a Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial.
  ""
  
• Strong and Pretty - Defeat Siege & Nightstar while none of their reinforcements are alive during a Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial.
  ""

Section 2b: Lambda Trial Badges.
Accolade - Master of Lambda Sector - achieve the following special achievements during the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial: Antacid, Lambda Looter, Synchronized, and Well-Stocked.
""

• Lambda Leader - Complete the Lambda Trial.
  "You have completed the Incarnate Trial: Lambda Sector."
  
• Syncronized - Destroy a Weapons Cache and an Incubation Pod within 2 seconds of each other during the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial.
  "You proved masterful coordination during a raid on Lambda Sector by your league destroying two separate objectives simultaneously."
  
• Well-Stocked * - Complete the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial having acquired 10 Pacification Grenades and 10 Molecular Acids but using none of them.
  ""
  
• Antacid * - Complete the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial having acquired 10 Molecular Acids but using none of them.
  ""
  
• Lambda Looter * - Complete the Lambda Sector Incarnate Trial having acquired 10 Pacification Grenades but using none of them.
  ""

* Guessing for Antacid, Lambda Looter, and Well-Stocked.

Section 3: New Task/Strike Force Badges.

• Land, Sea & Air - Complete Admiral Sutter Task Force.
  "You shut down the alliance between the Sky Raiders and the Praetorian Imperial Defense Force, halting an assault on Skyway City in the process."
  
• Promethean - Complete Mortimer Kal Strike Force
  ""
  

Section 4: Badge fixes.

• All 6 respec badges can be earned, but only 3 actual respecs can be earned by the trials.

That's good to know.

May I make a suggestion?

1. Get a friend/2nd account with a lower level character (40-45 would be best as Founders Falls safeguard has all the side missions, but really anything from level 5 on will do).
2. Do the lower character's required number of radio missions.
3. Have them pick up the safeguard.
4. You enter the mission, but they stay outside.
5. You leave the team after you've zoned in.
6. You head to the bank, ignoring the mobs in the bank lobby.
7. You defeat group trying to break into vault. This stops timer.
8. You do all the side missions.
9. You continue to ignore all mobs in the bank.
10. You exit the safeguard and rejoin other character.
11. Safeguard owner resets mission, go back to step 4 as often as needed to get credit for all the badges.
12. If you've used a character lower than 40, you may need to go back to step 2 to see if you can get the "right" side missions.
13. Help the other character by completing the safeguard on the team with them in the map.

The above should considerably shorten your time.

That was all the discussion I really wanted when I posted the original suggestion. Some people DO care. I wanted to find out a way so that people that did care could accept.

Some people are adamant about not having @<anything> or about not seeing any other character with the same name as they have. I already know that the suggestion won't do anything for them. For those that object to @<global name> the suggestion protects their privacy a little.

Anything beyond naming conventions is something the developers are going to have to figure out from that point. I'm not privy to their business model or their actual code. Character names are a touchy subject for players, and I was hoping to be pre-emptive in coming up with a naming scheme to prevent most of what happened with the EU-NA server merge.

Like Arcanaville said, after you get around the touchy naming issues:
"for the most part neither you nor I would have any reason to need to know what they did, or have any real say in how they did what they did."

The players will not have any real say on if the developers wanted to change revenue models, allow temporary server transfers, or make cross server content. Though I'm fairly certain they would take all that into account and compare all that with the amount of player demand for cross server teaming.

I seriously don't think secondary (or more) accounts even figures into the developer's calculations. Even so, there are plenty of player that would still do it though. They could use the fact players don't need to buy more character slots as a huge advantage, and people would STILL buy more character slots.

Except not one of the detractors of the suggestion, including you, are talking about the suggestion. People are talking about wanting cross server content, about revenue loss if cross server play is ever enabled, and how much work it would take to implement cross server teaming.

Until a SPECIFIC hurdle can be overcome, NONE OF THAT IS POSSIBLE.

That specific hurdle is the unique name issue. Without that all the rest is literally meaningless to the discussion. The developers have to handle the name situation in a way that doesn't drive players away. This is one way that tries to appeal to most players. The rest of the cross server play discussion is completely secondary to how the developers address the naming issue.

The name issue will have to come up no matter how the developers choose to do cross-server play. They might go serverless, they might use transfer points, they might do mission terminals, use the Team Up Teleporter, or use something else entirely. None of that matters if character names collide preventing players from teaming. Heck if they fix the name collisions that could allow cross server PVP for those that want it.

Except you aren't talking about the suggestion you are pretty much saying we don't need this because the developers shouldn't think about cross server play at all.

Congratulations, you've completely missed the point of this thread and have descended to a long-winded /jranger. If you don't have anything constructive to add, please go elsewhere. I'm certainly not forcing you to read this thread.

There is a list of team-unfriendly badges, and most of them are in the safeguards. Same thing also goes for Mayhem Arsons, and Winter Presents.

Please point out where I claimed I was speaking for everyone. I would have thought that line was clearly an opinion, even though it is one that has been continually expressed both on the forums and in the game.

Care to point out any post or player that likes hunting deep grey-conning critters just to move the TF along?

That quote is saying the plans were not going to happen in 2007. For all we know they've been kicking around the technical issues for cross server play but were stuck on how to deal with the character name-space issue all this time.

And some players will max out one or two servers, this suggestion will not allow cross server groups to exist. Thanks for raising the point though, I'll update my original post in a bit to reflect this concern.

Putting a request for 'cross-server content' without having "just plain cross-server LFT" is putting the cart in front of the horse. In order to have content made, the developers need to have the capability for players to team.

You have the choice to see this as "half-full" or "half-empty". You can't build a community without interaction. The dilution is already happening with players starting characters on new servers. The intermingling is also already happening with people starting characters on new servers. All cross server play will do is allow for players to do so at higher levels.

They used the exact same phrasing as they used with side switching. Positron has said that type of phrasing means that they couldn't do X feature "yet". Not just that they didn't have the resources, but "we don't know how to do that". That is the problem with vague answers to upcoming feature requests. On the other hand not providing specific answers tends to get developers into more troubles.

For the most part of actually doing the code, I'd normally agree with you. However this particular issue isn't something they can code without repercussions. People are incredibly attached to their character names. People

I hope the staff at Paragon Studios make sure that the Numina TF is never the WST overlapping any of the following:

Halloween
Rikti Raid Event Weeks
"Spur of the Moment" versions of either.

With 16 zone hunts and the frequency the zone events are triggered, Numina would take considerably longer than it needs to.

Then again, you could just remove all the kill grey hunts that Numina has. It isn't as if they are actually fun in the first place.

And people will likely mostly stick to their "home" servers. Going pure serverless would render this suggestion moot and would have greater difficulties. On the other hand not expecting to meet other players in an MMO isn't realistic.

That is how your post is coming across though.

My primary server is Triumph. It is one of the least populated NA servers. I know players on Freedom, Virtue, Pinnacle, and most of the rest of the NA servers. Cross server play presents a chance to build communities. Isolating servers does the opposite.

The quote I posted wasn't about resources, it was a standard reply to something they couldn't do at the time. The same type of reply was made for side switching.

Yes, PSO 1&2 for the Gamecube.

While this is all true (except the lobby limit to my knowledge), the idea that it used to facilitate teaming is something that can be translated to this game.

The developers are still likely to do it, as it is an often requested feature. It is also the one feature that gets most people excited because it allows for greater teaming possibilities.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=467547
Yes, my suggestion would be a foundation for a type of "server-less" game configuration.

You could always swap instances or use other tools players have already to minimize your interaction with others. I'm sorry that you feel the need to limit your interaction with others.

You want a smaller game, I'd rather have a larger one.

Nope, not unless you mean to have <local or character name>@<global name>. The game can't handle two (or more) characters named "Snow Globe" on a single server or instance. Until that hurdle is overcome, cross server play isn't even possible.

That is different. During a permanent transfer, the original is copied from one server to another, deleted from the original server (including from super groups), and the first time it logs in the name is checked against the new server's character list.

I agree with your first point. Some players will likely still buy permanent transfers though, just like some players buy respecs.

The second point could be handled by the access points themselves, telling players that they can't transfer to a full server.

That is why I'm doing this suggestion now, so the developers can start putting the foundation for cross-server play to be built later.

Yeah, the amount of doom over removal of leagues, the turnstile, or either of the new trials would have been epic. Though I think if leagues hadn't worked out that would be sad.

I'm not even going to hazard a guess about this. This would likely get anyone in trouble for getting people's hopes up for stuff that might have to be changed or removed. Besides, it would preempt the developer's control over announcements. Take a look at the uproar over ED before Issue 6 went live for the worst case scenario.

I would hazard a guess that this is very true.

Actually the complaints were about poor color choices in the body text, not the signatures.

This should work for that:

Here you go. This doesn't change color or fontsize. It only forces a san-serif font family.
It works in all browsers/add-ons that allow userscripts.

I'll point out that my version is a heavily stripped down and slightly changed version of the above script.

Hmm... I'll try.

Thank you, I'm glad you found it useful!

But it is the one with the most player hang-up. It is also essential for the process to start.

What you just described is a permanent transfer, not a temporary one. Besides, mission data & contacts are kept with the character. I'm not talking about deleting or removing a character from their home server. The only person doing so is you.

I don't think additional hardware would be needed. At most two additional database columns would be needed: "home server" and "current play server". And I never for a single minute didn't think additional programming time wouldn't be needed. However this (cross-server play) is one of those "affects a ton of people" things and one of those "most requested" things that the developers & NCsoft would likely green-light the resources needed.

I never denied that. On the other hand, without this suggestion in place, that additional programming would be meaningless.

None of these are an issue with my suggestion. I purposely said that there should be transfer points: Pocket D, Portal Corp, Grandville, Nerva. All those have the big dimensional portals. Heck a special building could be made and put into several zones and Praetoria. For the duration of your play session, or until you moved back to your home server you would exist on the other server.

I've never played WoW. However I have played Phantasy Star Online. In that game there is a similar mechanism which is superbly suited to a science fiction setting.

In that game you are on a fleet of spaceships. Each server is a different ship. If you want to team with someone else you transfer to the other ship, then while you are online you are playing as if you were based on that ship. When you log out, you're back to your home ship.

Unfortunately it is a show-stopper, because without addressing name conflicts the rest is meaningless. You are making thing more complicated than it needs to be, which is something I was trying to avoid.

Exactly. It is the least resource intensive means to play with people from other servers.

Tells, petitions, ignore & friends lists, player notes...


Yes each server can have the same character name, but not all on Triumph. With my suggestion, they can all be on one server at one time. At least temporarily.

Usually under a minute.

Even if it took

You seem to be under the misunderstanding that the character is removed from the original server. It is NOT removed with my suggestion, the only person that is suggesting removal from the original server is YOU. If we went that route, the player might as well buy a permanent server transfer.

That is NOT what I'm suggesting.

I've used the server transfers, I know what they do. What they do is exactly what you are saying: delete the character from Server A and put it on Server B. Again that is NOT what I'm suggesting, so you might want to quit thinking along those lines.

Yes, this would likely result in players not using the current server transfers as much. However even they knew that there was the possibility that there would be an end (or hefty reduction) of people using server transfers when server transfers were introduced.

Here is a script that does exactly what you asked for:
Edit:
Eliminated an unneeded line.

Yes, a universally unique name would be best. However in the case of "Snow Globe" I have characters with that name on two servers. That means there are up to nine other players with characters named "Snow Globe" with up to four on the EU servers.

I figured the least intrusive way to go about it, other than going by the ID that the game database assigns each character is this way. Besides if it were based on the game database ID, then people would be up in arms that there could be a few dozen of "their" character's name on the same server, not to mention other servers. We've already seen the posts about that.

Yes, but it is a needed first step. It is needed for more people in the trials, it is needed for some player's identities (getting back to the producer's letter). My friends know me as the "Snow Globe from the Triumph server." That I also have the global name is in a lot of ways secondary to that fact.

Yes it will indirectly allow up to 14 other players having the same name at the same time on a server, but the chances of that happening is extremely rare.

At any rate, there is now a link to the suggestion in my signature so I'll not derail this thread further.

Well, I did a quick greasemonkey script if you have firefox:
It adds alt text tags, and title tags (which allows for tooltips to be displayed), so the original poster will only have to point the cursor at the dot to see what the status is.

I'll say that during the testing of my script that Zukunft changed between "Up" and "Unknown" randomly.

Edit:
Apparently works for Google Chrome, Opera, Safari using Greasekit, and other browsers that allow userscripts (IE needs a plugin).