Arcanaville

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Arcanaville, what are you going to fix next?

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I was thinking America, but I should really give Obama a shot at it first.

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Double XP does a level 50 how much good?

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If it doesn't do any good, would that be a problem?

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A reward that isn't a reward is a problem. A big one.

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Not if its not intended to be a reward for level 50s in the first place. XP itself is a reward that has no benefit to 50s, because 50s don't need to level anymore. That doesn't make XP itself problematic.

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Ok, how about this: Can the developers confirm that the double xp bars would double the INF that would normally be earned instead of XP, and the extra debt removal be equally increased at level 50?

It seems to me that all the rest of these rewards are meant for all characters, why would this be an exception?

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If the question is "why are some rewards valuable to a level 50 and why are some not?" that might seem like a reasonable question. But given the apparent design intent, the actual question being asked is ultimately "why would a reward explicitly intended to accelerate levelling not be meant for a level 50?" and in that event the answer is obvious.

It does not appear to be a reward that just happens to involve XP. It seems to be a reward explicitly targetting levelling speed: the fact that its benefit accrues relative to "bars" of XP and not points of XP or minutes played means its intended to be a proportional levelling speed boost. The fact that its targetted at levelling automatically exempts level 50s has having the issue that the reward is actually targetting. Since there are rewards that 50s can get but not others (epic archetypes, purple recipes) I don't see any specific reason why every single reward must include level 50s as participants, especially when they are so specifically targetted at an activity that level 50s no longer participate in.

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Badgers are collectors. Setting this system up the way it is is bound to feel punishing to that personality type.

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This makes a lot of sense to me. Let's dump the whole mechanic that gives a little bonus to folks, something else to do in the game, and throws the RPers a bone, because it may interfere with a few folks' obsessive compulsion.

I wouldn't mind if the amount of time to earn the badge is reduced, but to me this is like getting something for nothing. There's no downside.

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Snow_Globe isn't completely off his rocker here. There is an intrinsic value to the badge system that actual badge collectors provide. Unless it is required for an accolade or other unlockable, only completists really go after, or even care about things like explore badges, or many of the defeat badges. The devs have sent mixed messages about the badge system by statement and action for as long as the badge system has been in place. It is not unambiguously a given that players just aren't supposed to be able to get all the badges as Venture claims. In an absolute sense, that's technically true, but the devs have always hoped that the players would pursue everything else.

You can't tell people "be a collector, of some stuff." That's incompatible with the collector mindset, and a good game designer should acknowledge the target audience they are targetting. If the devs are targetting people who care enough to pursue some of the badges with no meaning beyond collection, and will happily ignore all the ones that are designed to be out of reach, they are targetting a phone booth: there aren't bound to be lots of people like that.

*If* the devs push the collector mindset too far, they could devalue badge collecting past a tipping point, and simply eliminate collectors from the system. The only people left would be the ones who would only pursue badges if there was something else in it for them. And in that case, badges cease to be a meaningful reward item in the game. They would only be a game mechanical contrivance to act as a placeholder to unlock the *true* rewards.

That is a gameplay loss of some value. Why its not a higher priority to address is something that I'm honestly not sure about. It almost seems like the Powers That Be think its something they can fix whenever they want, so its a low priority. I'm not sure I agree. I don't think there's any danger *now* to the badge system, but I also believe that the first sign I detect that it is in danger will be when its dead. We're not going to have swimming polar bears giving us a hint.

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I am surprised over and over at how much people complain. This is suppose to be a mini-game to play while ur logged out. Not somethin u have to do as fast as possible, its extra stuff. Why does everyone want everythin instantly? I hear people complain about how that ruined other games becuase of people wantin everythin now now. Calm down it suppose to take time to get rewards, why dont u just complain it takes a year to get the 12 month badge and how bout the devs make it only 6 months while ur all at it. I think this is a sweet thing to add that gives us somethin in which we used to get nothin, not playin.

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A mini game? I didn't know I was playing WHILE I AM LOGGED OFF!

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The mini-game (if you want to call it that) is selecting the place to log out. Basically, the game gives you one last move to make before you call it a night/day.

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Double XP does a level 50 how much good?

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If it doesn't do any good, would that be a problem?

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A reward that isn't a reward is a problem. A big one.

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Not if its not intended to be a reward for level 50s in the first place. XP itself is a reward that has no benefit to 50s, because 50s don't need to level anymore. That doesn't make XP itself problematic.

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Um, you didn't see these points in the announcement:

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Um, yes I did. I also read every word of the posts in the thread as well, incuding yours. Just because I didn't point out all of the glaring errors in it, doesn't mean I didn't read it. I elected to give you the benefit of the doubt that they are relatively trivial errors, not realizing that was highly unsound judgement as you are the sort of person that points out "a year" is incorrect when the more technically correct phrase that would have been more accurate is "some indeterminant amount of time close to, but exceeding one year."

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I see some problems if they are left as-is. And not just from the hard-core badgers.

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Exempting badging, the purpose seems to be to make the day jobs take long enough to get that it is *deliberately* not possible to get them all quickly, so a normal player has to prioritize what day job to get (and then what day job to get next, and so forth). If it was possible to just get them all relatively quickly, that would eliminate practically any thought put into acquiring them.

Now, because they tied badges to the system, they bring in a completely different set of competing criteria that it now is a sizable barrier to badge completists (and I'm one of them in large measure). In my opinion, that was an error. They really need to prioritize revamping the "badge" system to account for "indefinite progress badges" (i.e. empath), account-wide badges (i.e. veteran badges), awards not ordinarily achievable by most players (i.e. Bug Hunter), and now things like this (mere placeholders for other things, and not things intended to be actively collected in and of themselves).

Unless they do expect people to actively collect them, and they expect people to spend a year collecting them. Which is not absurdly long, but probably right at the edge of reasonableness. And that constrains the amount of such badges that can be added: you can't keep adding badges indefinitely that each take one month minimum to earn, with no possibility of increased rate, because at some point you push the ability for them to be collected and earned beyond the tolerance point for collectors. It starts to become overly negative reinforcement, which is a bad gameplay situation.

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i remember seeing some where that the day job badges were linked to costumes

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Day job badges are NOT linked to costumes.

The day job related costumes are free, unlocked at the start, content in Issue 13.

And the 30 days is what we are initially going with. The values may change in beta.

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I'm not sure what could happen during beta that would be relevant. During the entire beta program none of us is going to earn even one of these things, maybe one on the outside, unless the rate is arbitrarily sped up on test, which seems to defeat the purpose of testing the earning rate.

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I agree that it's important to look first at what's possible IN SET, but I think synergies, particularly very powerful ones need to be considered. I'm sure that at least for extreem monster barring, they are, but I have no Idea about other cases. I think that to some degree they should be. If one set has something very easy, some very potent synergy that permits it to do something very powerful (but not brokenly powerful), then that thing needs to be considered. Weighed evenly with what can be done in set? of course not, but I can't imagine that it's without value.

It's probably acounted for to a large degree by datamining. If people ARE taking cj + fighting and steadfast + gaussians on SR, then SR performance should be notably high...

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Oddly, if average players are taking CJ + Weave, their performance should be notably low. "Performance" isn't datamined by the strongest thing you defeat in a week, but by how many bars of XP you earned. For *most* players, unless you have also build in massive amounts of endurance extras, you're probably lowering your levelling speed by running those extra toggles, unless you never solo at all. And if you never solo, your own personal performance tends to get swamped out by the average performance of all the teams you join. You'll be safer, but slower.

That's the funny thing about defining "performance" as "the rate at which you earn rewards in the game." Its almost completely blind to total defensive performance above a certain level. Only when defensive performance becomes so high that something becomes a herder does it start to affect datamined performance. Passive defensive strength *does* show up, because it never steals endurance away from someone trying to output offense and level. Or when it gets so low that the thing being looked at actually starts to die or have to stop fighting until they Rest or recover health. In between "dies a lot" and "can start to herd spawns together and leverage AoEs more" the devs performance statistics become partially blind to defensive performance in general. Not totally blind, because higher defenses are *sometimes* useful in terms of speeding up a fight, especially when fighting bosses at the end of the mission. But they do not generally allow you to kill faster during a solo mission, except as previously mentioned when you need some minimum amount of it just to survive the spawns.

That doesn't mean topline defensive performance isn't important. It just means its not easy for the devs to directly datamine. At least, it doesn't appear to be, based on what they've said they datamine. One of the reasons why its important to have good numerical models to judge the powersets on: datamining itself might be absolute in its final judgement of the performance of a set, but datamining can't look everywhere. If you don't have a numerical model, you cannot connect the dots that datamining gives you to assemble a complete picture of powerset performance.

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in your posts your saying EA is great with IOs; yea well Invulerability is fantasitc with IOs as is damn near every other Armour. IOs are not what sets are balanced around Frost, dont ever bring them up in comparisons because it complicates them needlessly.

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On the other hand, we can't totally discount them. The reality of what SR has become is almost totally due to IOs (well, that and the defence resistance change). Talking about SR without a few cheap ones doesn't really seem fair now... does it?

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It depends on what your goal is. My goal in balancing powersets would be to make sure each powerset itself gave to every player that chose it approximately the same total value of tools to succeed as all of its peer powersets (the other choices). Powerset synergy and Invention synergy would be secondary to the primary goal of making sure each powerset had approximately the same chance to succeed at the game. Factoring in inventions and powerset synergy is dangerous for two reasons: first, inventions are still defined as optional parts of the game, and even if they were not, factoring in inventions and powerset synergy would quickly devolve into judging build decisions, which is attempting to balance out - meaning factor out - player build decisions. All build decisions can't be equally good, because if they were, all build decisions would also be equally meaningless: decisions have no effect.

I judge defensive powersets based on their performance if you take and run everything, not because I believe players do take and run everything or *should* take and run everything. I don't actually care what the "real" performance of players is, because most of that performance is based on player *choices*: build choices, playstyle choices, etc. Players should have to live with their choices, because that's the only thing that makes those choices meaningful. I judge powersets based on the value of the tools in the bag, not on whether you use all the tools in the bag. In my opinion, the only promise a powerset should be able to make to a player is this one: the value of all my powers is comparable to the value of all the powers in the other powersets you have to choose from. What you choose to do with that value is entirely up to you: I don't promise *you* will do just as well as everyone else.

It is nice, but not essential, that a powerset be able to say "I will synergize with everything else in the game just as well as everything else will" because that is a difficult thing to judge, and because even if it was a simple thing to judge, the effort it takes to make this statement true for all powersets under all conditions would have so strong of a homogenizing effect on the game as to be inherently detrimental long before it had any benefit. This is something for which the main issue is ensuring things remain within an acceptable range, not strive to become perfectly identical in. In fact, qualitative differences that are extremely difficult or impossible to numerically compare are probably the best thing a game designer can do in this regard, because its fine for people to argue about which things are better, as long as none of them can actually prove it.

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sure it would. And rest's actual recharge would have to be factored in as well, as would travel time between spawns. But that wasn't the point of the comparison. The point of comparison was actual mitigation of continuous incoming damage, and left such factors as travel time between spawns, rest time, lulls in activity, and such out of the argument.

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Any mention of downtime without mentioning Rest isn't an approximation: its a violation of the game balance intent of the power. It would be comparable to eliminating natural recovery.

At best, you could factor Rest out of a comparison where the intent was continuous activity at some balanced, slower level. But that's not the comparison you performed: you assigned significant amounts of idle downtime (60 seconds) when that was never the best option available.

My calculations show best strength mitigation, on the assumption that such defensive measures are always achievable at some level of offense, even if the endurance factors alter the offensive output available. They are explicitly stated to be defensive mitigation comparisons, not offensive contribution comparisons. But attempting to introduce offensive contributions due to endurance must factor in Rest, or they are not incomplete, but rather invalid.


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THE ONLY WAY to really see how a set performs when adding in such random calculations as mob# dependent mitigation, endurance modification, stealth is to take a random sampling of players with a broad variety of primaries and a broad variety of slotting options, say 100 people, and see how they perform at various levels as far as xp/minute and drops/minute.

Any other attempt to 'compare' secondary sets is more or less pointless, since, as another poster commented, 'numbers cannot show the whole picture'. Knowing how many railroad ties are on a railroad track, the stress points of steel, the average weight, speed, and frequency of trains that pass on the tracks and the local weather conditions will NOT allow you to calculate where and when the track is going to break... there are too many other factors involved to even give you a reliable ballpark figure.

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I don't agree. My analysis of Willpower from I11 appears to be dead on, and my analysis of Invuln appears, after a very long time, to be ultimately borne out. I am pretty comfortable with my overall perspective of fiery aura, dark armor, regen, SR, Ice, Stone, and all the other melee defensive sets. With special attention to endurance drain, I'm also comfortable with my differential analysis between energy and electric. I do not know of a defensive set that performs wildly contrary to what my analysis of its numbers imply, given sufficiently rigorous analysis, especially in conventional PvE combat.

Datamining is a good way to comfirm results, and prove that the models used for analysis are looking at the right things. And endurance *is* a factor in levelling speed, especially solo levelling speed (its actually my current long-term project). But even there, I'm not seeing major surprises in how endurance ultimately affects solo levelling performance for any archetype or powerset combination.

My numbers-don't-give-the-whole-picture analysis of melee defensive sets says the priority for balancing based on performance are: Energy Aura, Electric Armor, and Invulnerability, in that order. Worth making a note of, for future reference (Castle has already admitted looking at EA, and making changes to Invuln, in prior public posts). While its easy to incorrectly analyze the performance of the secondaries, that doesn't mean its impossible to do so correctly.

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I do my own work, thank you, Arcanaville's conclusions are incomplete. They are not wrong, they are just done in a 'perfect world' where everyone has endless endurance and revolve around an 'immortality line' that is relatively inadequate compared to 'incoming damage stopped'

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What conclusions are those, specifically, that you think are incomplete?

If I was going to factor in endurance into survivability calculations - and I have, several times - then:

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Total end/turn expenditure for /ea: 1.14 end/sec without adding in attacks. with brawl, it's about 2.04 end/sec. It will run out of end in 270.3 seconds. recovery time for both with all toggles turned off can be assumed to be 60 seconds
total end/turn expenditure for stone: 1.25 end/sec without attacks. with brawl, it's about 2.25 end/sec. That means that it will run out of end in around 210 seconds. Recovery time for both with all toggles turned off can be assumed to be 60 seconds

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I'd probably consider that even if I was going to compare without stamina (not unreasonable) I'd consider it a superior strategy to rest for 17 seconds every 135 seconds, rather than stand around for 60 seconds every 270 seconds (which would be completely unreasonable). In fact, I'd probably incorporate such calculations into any calculations I present that presumed to incorporate endurance into survivability or sustainability.

This would significantly reduce the maximum impact of enhanced recovery on maximum sustainable activity limits, which would be overestimated without factoring in Rest.

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Dear Positron,

Good afternoon. Thank you for responding to our questions for more information about Issue 13.

And on a side note. Please fix the store so that I can purchase Booster Packs for other players as gifts. I'd like to purchase 10 or so of these for my friends that also play. Plus I'd like to give you my money to help with the development of my favorite game. However, since I only have 1 account and I can't very well purchase 10 Cyborg Packs for 1 account then I guess that I'll have to keep the money that I would have liked to have given to your company.

P.S. Rocket Pack costume items please.

Thank You.

- Peregrine Falcon

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Dear Peregrine Falcon,

Thank you for your feedback. We would LOVE to come up with a way for players to "gift" our Super Boosters to other players. The real problem with this lies in credit card fraud. It may seem like a simple problem, but it's really very complex. Once we have a workable solution that Billing and Customer Service can sign off on, we will allow players to gift Microtransactions post haste.

Yes, yes, Rocket Packs are on Sexy Jay's todo list, I just am not exactly clear on when they will be done.

Hope this clears things up for you a little bit.

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Here's an idea. We can buy character slots (and other things) from within the game client in the login screen. What if you allow players to purchase the booster pack from within *that* store, and allow players to specify the global handle of the player they wish to gift it to. Then when that player logs in, they'll have a screen where they can "pick up" the gift and activate it on their account, or refuse it (why? in case someone accidentally buys something for someone that already has it).


Edit: Yahrr

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does the self destruct option get interupted if hit like the pocket D TP?

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I would highly, HIGHLY reccomend you do NOT zone while the self-destruct power is counting down. There is currently a bit of an issue with the FX script that can cause the camera shake to not stop and increase over time...indefinitely. If this happens, the only fix is to completely shut down the game and restart it.

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What he was asking is if it is interruptable a la snipes and Assassin's Strikes, etc.

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It is not interruptible. Once you push the button, you're committed. It also seems to break stealth like any other attack (and does so immediately upon starting up).

It ignores recharge strength (there is no way to improve its recharge with any sort of +recharge buffs of any kind), and its damage ignores strength (so there is no way to buff the damage of the power with damage buffs). It *will* get more accurate if you have tohit buffs or accuracy buffs working: tohit buffs are mechanically buffs to the player's ability to hit and not buffs transferred to the power (so there's no way for a power to "ignore" tohit buffs), and the power is not coded to ignore accuracy buffs (of course only one thing actually *has* accuracy buffs at the moment).

And if you "go into a large group, pop a red or two and maybe a yellow, and dole out a sweet purchased Nova to your enemies" you'll probably defeat minions with it, but nothing else unless they are really heavily resistance debuffed. If you're a tank and do this your team shouldn't rez you, they should drop you into the nearest smokestack and get another tank.

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I’m primarily responsible for making cool stories and missions, and designing systems to help support missions.

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Most of the zone events at the moment are fairly one-dimensional. Giant monster spawn, Rikti Invasion, Steel Canyon fire - all are relatively simple in terms of how they execute. What do you think about making more complex zone events? I know people were brainstorming the zombie invasion, but thinking more generally, what do you think about making zone events that were more non-linear: they reacted to player participation, and changed with each iteration. In a simple example, the RWZ zone has a sequenced event: defeat towers to drop shield, plant bombs to unlock final critter, defeat final critter.

Conversely, the Rikti Invasion went the opposite direction: rather than see defeating the drop ships as an opportunity to add a new element to the zone event (crashed dropships in ths city) they were basically put "back onto the railroad" to maintain the linear progression of the event.

And in either case, zone events typically do not have a lot of story attached to them. In the case of the Rikti invasion, its a culmination of a story, but there's no story actually *in* it. Similarly, there's no story attached to the Hellions burning up buildings in Steel. Maybe there shouldn't be, in that case, if its intended to be random acts of violence, but I've always wondered if that was a passed opportunity as well. Maybe there's a reason they are targetting buildings in Steel. Maybe they are being put up to it. Maybe there's something special about those buildings in particular, or the sites they are on.


Would you prefer to see more complex zone events, or do you see an advantage to simpler zone events? Do you think they should have more story, or should be reserved as the punchlines for story content in other places? What would factor into your decision-making for that sort of content?

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You do realize that BECAUSE villains are all crowded into a single zone and heroes aren't that it makes more lag for the villain zones.

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I don't realize that, primarily because that factor ordinarily is not the largest contributor to lag on the red side. Other factors contribute to lag on the red side more than the density of the players, most of the time. Grandville, for example, is a geometry monster.

Also, the densest hero zones (cf: Talos) are denser than most of the red zones most of the time, and aren't as laggy on average. At least, that was true the last time I examined lag.

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Are you still surprised that Villain players feel like they're being neglected? Now, I'll grant you - the quality level of the Villain zones should not be disregarded.

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Ironically, I'll bet serious money that the lower zone count in CoV was actually a *deliberate* decision to improve player concentrations in the zones, specifically the fix the "empty zone" problem that plagued and still plagues some zones on some servers at times.

Angry_Citizen:
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-MMO game designer. Then I can play City of City of Heroes.

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Been done.


Nylonus:
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Busboy - Log out at EL Super Mexicano

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So if I don't want that job I have to log out in the middle of the ocean?


Forbin_Project:
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I have several characters that don't have "day jobs". will there be places for them to log out where they don't need to participate in this feature?

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Logout near homeless person in alley: Unemployed
Logout in front of Television: Couch Potato

Day job bonus: zone teleport power that returns you to alley or television, so you can log out.

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I love in Posi's letter how he talks about 'rewards' for the missions created by the users. How it was bantered back and forth in the office with raised voices. I have a nagging suspicion this means no xp/influence/etc for these missions in which case. Crappy system and count me out. Not gonna bust my butt to create tons of missions that grant absolutely no reward.

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Then you missed the entire point of the mission creator.

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Oh I got the point. I got it a long time ago. This is a great way for the devs to have the players create content for them so that they don't have to. We already provide free Q&A services when we Beta test the issues. Now they want us to be quasi-content creators. Then if were lucky enough to be sprinkled with the blessings of 'Devs Choice' then our mission will give rewards. Great.

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Frankly, I don't think the actual mission designers are necessarily thrilled about the player mission editor. First of all, its a player-requested feature, so its not a grand conspiracy to lower their workload.

Second, its extremely unlikely that the devs will reduce the amount of story-driven content in the game just because the players are making player-generated missions, and player-generated missions, being outside of canon, cannot progress the story of the game in any case; they will still have to crank out just as much mission content as before.

Third, if the player mission editor system is successful, its very likely to cause harsher criticism to be directed to the dev-generated mission content, since there will now be content to compare it to. There could be one thousand crap missions for every one good one, but the good one will be held up as an example for the devs to *beat* since it was, after all, a volunteer effort, while the devs get paid to do it.

There's thousands of players, and only a couple mission designers, but they will probably be getting "so why didn't you guys think to do this" complaints until the end of time.

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First veats now empathy for vills......sigh....I sure hope u got something big for heroes coming.

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But...but... I thought the Dev Team hated Villains?

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That's a very unfair characterization of the Devs.

They obviously hate Heroes and Villains equally.

(probably civs too)

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That's a very narrow vision of the devs.

The devs hate players. They don't have time to dice players up into little groups.

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I am seriously displeased...

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A new game system that allows players to earn tokens by completing Trials, Task Forces, Strike Forces, Raids, etc. The most challenging and time consuming tasks grant the most reward tokens, which can be redeemed throughout Hero and Villain zones for recipes, enhancements, salvage, costume pieces, badges, inspirations and other game items.

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Thank you for putting in reason number 1 why I quit World of Warcraft two years ago and sold my account.

I suppose the only redeeming quality is that PvP in City of Heroes is stupid pointless, and it's not like the invention sets go so far out of the way to make things lopsided.

But honestly, things like this are a slap in the face to casual gamers who don't have time to go doing TF's and whatnot every night.

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Most casual gamers with either not care or not notice.

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I did just have a nasty thought: the ultimate easter egg day job: log out standing on Heart of the Hamidon. An entire raid could do it, taking turns a couple at a time. I wonder if Positron is that evil.

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?

Did you forget that Hamidon's not there most of the time these days?

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I was thinking specifically about the case where that spot only unlocked for a limited time after a raid completed. Otherwise, yeah, the spot's not all that difficult to log out on if Hamidon isn't actually intentionally spawned.

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Okay, this day job thing? Isn't that basically rewarding us for NOT playing the game?

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Well nobody can play 24/7 so what's the big deal? You aren't getting anything for when you can't play now so there's no way on earth this can be seen as anything but a positive. *shrugs*

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The thing is the announcement clearly says that the Day Job system will provide real, tangible, in-game benefits. How good an idea is it, really, if in order to complete a tough mission it's recommended to first log off and get the Regen boost for Caregiving before attempting it? Or if one of the accolades for getting multiple Day Job badges is just the perfect title for your favorite character, only you can't play them while you're earning it? I just think it's not a good road to travel down. In fact, didn't Positron once say that WoW's "rested XP" system was rewarding players for not playing?

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I don't think XP itself is going to be an offline reward. It sounds more like its a variant on explore badges, except you have to be at the spot (offline) for a significant amount of time to earn it. And my guess is that we're talking about bonuses comparable to set bonuses. If you need help with that tough mission, you're probably going to need a lot of patience unlocking many rewards over several weeks or months to get a few percent more regen. Nobody is getting Instant Healing after just logging out on the right spot overnight.


I did just have a nasty thought: the ultimate easter egg day job: log out standing on Heart of the Hamidon. An entire raid could do it, taking turns a couple at a time. I wonder if Positron is that evil.

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Nope, it isn't. In fact, it's has a major, glaring flaw. Limiting Double XP Weekends to just three states would be too many people for the comparison to be correct. For it to be correct, the devs would have to select fewer than 1,000 people IN those three states. Otherwise, it's spot on.

It merely shows the absurdity of the argument it was a reply to. That you can spot that the argument is nonsensical is excellent, it shows you recognize that the argument it’s derived from is also nonsensical unless one has some emotional attachment to the argument it's derived from and is ignoring that fact.

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Nice try, but your example is nonsensical because you're sandbagging. You've selected an example in which there is no credible marketting purpose either stated or implied, and therefore obscuring the issue by changing the perspective of the problem to one of suggesting the PAX giveaways have no purpose.

A better example in the same vein would be to redraft your doubleXP example in a way that at least grants a legitimate marketting purpose to a restricted doubleXP period. Suppose NCsoft decides to open a new set of servers in India, because market research suggests that there are lots of Indian players that would want to play on regional servers. To promote the launch of the India servers, they offer any players that want to transfer to them a one-time free transfer of their characters, and for one week after launch, all players on the Indian servers will have doubleXP rewards in effect.

Here, there is a specific marketting purpose to a restricted doubleXP period, and its targetted at a relatively small subset of the player population. But I don't think its some unfair exclusionary reward that unjustly benefits Indians at my expense: in my opinion, that's an impractically narrow perspective.

This version of your otherwise broken analogy now correctly proposes the same (or at least as similar as the analogy allows) question: is it automatically bad for NCsoft to grant an exclusive reward to a subset of the player population, even if there is a legitimate marketting purpose to that reward.

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I generally have a lot of respect for your opinions, but implying that anyone who dislikes the decision made by marketing in this instance is somehow being unreasonable is simply something I can't agree with.

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I never said that. I said I believe (and still believe) that the majority of reasonable players don't begrudge NC for creating exclusive marketing giveaways.

There are lots of decisions that either the dev team or NCsoft in general make that I either disagree with, or which go against my personal preferences (which are two different things). But thats not the same thing as saying I believe they are idiotic, incompetent, ignorant, unresponsive, or poor decision-makers every time they make a decision I disagree with.

I'm disappointed I missed the last double XP weekend. I do not believe NCsoft had an obligation to check with my schedule first. I can be disappointed in something without thinking that that fact alone makes the source of my disappointment deficient.

I also stand by my assertion that it is unreasonable to presume that being disappointed in a circumstance carries with it the presumption that someone made an error to create that circumstance. If I end up not getting the costume option, I'll be disappointed. It won't change my mind that NCsoft is being completely reasonable in its approach to marketing exclusives. I'm saying that with the full knowledge that there is very little probability of NCsoft being at a public venue anywhere within two thousand miles of me.