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Difficult to know how something like that will be received, isn't it?

And of course you must be honest with yourself as to what you are actually saying.

Does "Want me to double that" mean:
- You are silly to think your accomplishment is actually worth much - let me demonstrate by carelessly doubling the amount you have earned out of my chump change. See how advanced I am as a player compared to you?

Or...

- That's well done. If it is agreeable to you, I would like to reward your efforts with additional inf, so you can buy something really nice for yourself.

For a naughty or nice analysis, it is important to try andanticipate how they hear your offer, but it is essential that you are ruthlessly honest with yourself about which end of the spectrum your offer tends towards.

Keep in mind that there is no body language, intonation, or anything but bare text to temper a remark in this medium.

The problem you get into with this is (I would guess) a radical redesign of the database infrastructure of the CoX platform. That is more fundamental than the code that accesses the character database, though that would be very significant change as well. Realtime interoperability between multiple servers and a single datastore has not, heretofore, been a required function in CoX, and it is a bear trying to retrofit stuff like that into an existing product.

Well, after the umpteenth time someone says "I want everyone to go through the inconvenience of a server merge so that they will be available to serve as team mates at my pleasure" it gets a bit old.

My best on those lines was with a fire scrapper, wading into one of the large Crey/Freak spawns in the vacant lot to the left of the Crey's Folly gate. I waded into the middle and there are explosions, and my fire, and Crey agent auras going off, and bad guys are dropping - except I can't target this one really fast moving figure in the glare, coming right at me!

The dust (and fire and explosions, etc.) settle a bit, and I realize there is another scrapper in the middle of the fight. We'd both closed from different vectors and started laying waste to the bad guys, and both panicked at not being able to target each other. And yes, each started apologizing profusely for poaching the other guy's fight.

Thing is, that applies to any death penalty. That's leaving aside death due to mapserves, etc.

Reputation would be as fair (ie. unfair) as anything else - lie down with dogs you get up with fleas, team with the inept, be tarred with that same brush.

Mind you, when debt still had teeth, as it were, I would see people quit teams for one death (their own or a wipe), get very antsy at anything but the safest play, or even in more than on case, type 'I can't take more debt!" and disconnect on the spot.

At the time (and to this day) one of my measures of a good gamer is someone who takes a defeat in stride, preferably with good humor. If they offer a tactical suggestion, they do it with courtesy and grace, not demanding or playing the u-got-me-killd victim card. Sportsmanlike, as Fezzik would put it.

An humorous reference to the Vanguard NPCs. Alas, once again I have failed to amuse.

Thing is, unless someone DOES want the name - ie. enters it as theirs - your instance of the name would stay in place.

ANd if you scored sopme damage ... is it 25% of the thing's hit points?... you get a "defeat" credited (as i n Defeat 10 Wossnames) regardless of who delivers the finishing move.

About the only completely stealable reward is the goody you may get from the victim of a villainous attack after dispatching the last mob in a spawn. Those kudos go to the character that finishes the last opponent.

Doesn't make unwanted KSing, intrusion on a private fight ("The Marquess of Queensbury rules will be observed at all times. I thank yez." - Barry Fitzgerald, "The Quiet Man") any less irritating, to be sure.

You could, however, probably sell tickets to watch. For INF, of course, not advocating RMT.

That was releasing names - not allowing more than one character with a given name on a given server, which has never been allowed. I myself would hope that never changes - first come, first served on a name on a given server.

And to note - a paid up account has never been vulnerable to name purging. Only unpaid (ie. inactive in that sense) accounts.

Or one could leave RP justifications to players, to invent or ignore as they prefer. They are costumes for pity's sake. Why my Roman centurion who was flash frozen in a glacier just as he was hit by a meteorite during a solar flare, thus gaining superpowers, has to have some justification that a hero who wasn't even born when he went into the deep freeze gave him the armor he was wearing when he marched with the Eagles...well, you see the issue.

It is only a potential side effect if the developers choose to make it one - which would seem odd at best, spiteful at worst.

Why would increased ease of use have to be "balanced" by increased difficulty of access? That really does not play to the usual connotation of "balance" in gaming, which usually refers to offsetting a function with high benefit in gameplay with a counterbalancing penalty or weakness (simple example: the higher the damage the longer the cycle time).

That concern doesn't seem to apply to something like this (making something which does not affect gameplay more generally useful to those who expend time and effort to get it).

I notice a lot of the proposals seem to begin in agreement with the premise that costume bits should, somehow, be limited to characters (rather than players, ie account holders) and thus you'd have to buy the improvements, or get a token that only one character can have, etc.

This accepts the current narrative as some kind of base state - one prize for one character. One can fiddle around to try and keep that basis, or simply change the whole paradigm: do this, and your account gets a goodie (player based actions, like staying subscribed for X months, follow that model, after all).

Glad you like Champions Online ;-)

Tossup, I think. AE will still be a fast way to go from mission to mission, even if the really honking big XP farms are curtailed (this leaves aside if some enterprising soul discovers a loophole).

Lots of people gripe about having to travel to mission doors. Not an issue in AE.
People gripe about the distance from hospitals, especially in zones without one. Not an issue in AE.

So even with missions populated with stock enemies (or custom ones that get full value) in less abnormal distributions, AE will attract players who dislike those aspects of play outside. You just exit a complete mission, turn around, and enter the next. Even with

Will they keep looking for teammates? It seems likely. Missions in AE may be less mindless (no guarantees there - I suspect that darned city map that was the sine qua non for many a "boss farm" will still be popular, since it is just an open field for ploughing through spawns as fast as possible with a zerg).

We may see fewer messages for filling, but that doesn't mean we won't see them for teaming. I would hope we'll see less of the really mindless spam for really inane missions, to be sure.