Bridger_EU

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I've recently rolled up a villain on Defiant (a claw/regen stalker) and thought I'd say hello on the forums. ]

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Welcome to the boards, Shaikar.

I'd like to apologise on the behalf of the rest of the community for the petty unpleasantness that hijacked this thread. I've removed it and will be dealing with the culprits shortly. Please believe me when I say that the behaviour of these people does not represent that of the community as a whole.

I very much hope that the needless drama hasn't put you off, and that you enjoy your time here on the boards. If you ever come across anything here that you feel violates the Message Board Rules and Guidelines or otherwise concerns you, please let me know about it, either by emailing me directly (address in my sig, below), or by simply clicking the 'Notify Moderator' icon in the 'Post Extras' section at the bottom of the post in question (looks something like a page of text with a 'stop' or 'cancel' sign over it), which does the same thing.

Thanks.

I'm afraid I just had to remove several chunks of this thread due to petty baiting (and people rising to it).

Enough, now, or I'll have to lock it.

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But, aid self just seems to give my opponent an advantage that strikes me as unfair.

[/ QUOTE ]This is a pool power that you have to sacrifice another power for, so they person who takes the medicine pool set is being disadvantaged if anything.

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Actually, you have to sacrifice two power picks, one of which has to go on Aid Other or Stimulant, neither of which is particularly handy in 1v1 PvP.

Welcome to the nominations for June's Creative Genius!

Please use this thread to nominate submissions for the Creative Genius award for the month of June 2007.

Please be sure to familiarise yourself with the guidelines for the Creative board and the Creative Genius competition before making any nominations - you can read them here.

These nominations will remain open until 6pm GMT on Friday 27 July. The winner will be announced shortly after.

To nominate a submission, please post a link to the appropriate post.

There are some important rules to bear in mind when making nominations:
<ul type="square">[*]You may only nominate one submission. If you nominate more than one submission, only the first one will count.[*]You may not nominate your own submissions.[*]Nominated submissions must have been originally posted to this board during June 2007.[*]All original submissions first posted to these boards in June 2007 are eligible for nomination, regardless of what form they take.[*]Only nominated submissions will be considered for the Creative Genius award.[*]If no nominations are received, there will be no Creative Genius award for June 2007.[*]If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please post them to The Creative Board and Creative Genius. This thread should only be used for nominations, and any off-topic posts will be removed.[/list]Happy nominating!

The Creative Genius for May is Zurra, for the excellent:

Character Portrait - Royal Flush

Congratulations, Zurra.

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It would be nice if we could get some kind of official stance on this sort of thing.

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Sorry if I'm missing the obvious, but an official statement regarding what, exactly?

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I know they don't really consider us roleplayers to be worth much effort or even thought, but considering we actually outnumber the PvPers (at least in the EU) who get loads of attention in-game, a little consideration for our continued enjoyment of the game would be nice.

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A massive upheaval in the storyline of the game doesn't give roleplayers anything to enjoy or have fun with?

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I'm all for an invasion that doesn't go on for an undermined amount of time, but as it is, it will hugely impact everyone, even those who don't want to partake. In some extremes, people might even leave as they can't enjoy the game how they used to

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It's entirely possible that, being so busy, I may have missed complaints about the Invasion, but so far the vast majority of the player feedback I've seen about Issue #10 has been very positive.

It's perhaps worth bearing in mind that, like anything to do with game balance, you can't just directly compare the Ancillary pools and the Patron Power pools.

Villains have different ATs to Heroes, with different power sets and different Inherent powers.

As such, the question shouldn't be 'Are the Ancillary pools more powerful than the Patron pools?', it should be 'Is a Level X Hero more powerful than a Level X villain?'

Or, even more importantly, 'Is a team of Level X heroes more powerful than a team of Level X villains?'

The Ancillary and Patron pools are just one element of a character's effectiveness. You can only compare them directly if everything else about two characters is the same, which will never be the case when comparing Heroes and Villains, due to the different ATs.

I'm afraid that on a quick read, I have to agree - and these boards are not really the place for discussions of gender politics in the real world.

So, I'm going to lock this at the request of the original poster. If anyone objects strongly, or would like the thread re-opened, please drop me a mail and we can discuss it.

Thanks.

Nominations are now closed, so locking this while we pick the winner.

While I admire and applaud any attempt by people to resolve their issues and differences, doing so in public on the boards tends to be rather counter-productive.

I would humbly suggest that contacting the player in question privately will be more effective and less likely to cause any problems.

Welcome to the nominations for May's Creative Genius!

Please use this thread to nominate submissions for the Creative Genius award for the month of May 2007.

Please be sure to familiarise yourself with the guidelines for the Creative board and the Creative Genius competition before making any nominations - you can read them here.

These nominations will remain open until 6pm GMT on Monday 18 June. The winner will be announced shortly after.

To nominate a submission, please post a link to the appropriate post.

There are some important rules to bear in mind when making nominations:
<ul type="square">[*]You may only nominate one submission. If you nominate more than one submission, only the first one will count.[*]You may not nominate your own submissions.[*]Nominated submissions must have been originally posted to this board during May 2007.[*]All original submissions first posted to these boards in May 2007 are eligible for nomination, regardless of what form they take.[*]Only nominated submissions will be considered for the Creative Genius award.[*]If no nominations are received, there will be no Creative Genius award for May 2007.[*]If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please post them to The Creative Board and Creative Genius. This thread should only be used for nominations, and any off-topic posts will be removed.[/list]Happy nominating!

The Creative Genius for April is Midnights, for the incredibly handy:

Mids' Hero Designer

Congratulations, Midnights.

I'm very wary of threads like this, as in my experience they nearly always end up turning nasty and/or violating the 'no calling out players by name' rules.

I will leave this open for now, but if it spawns a whole sequence of 'who's the best X' or turns nasty, I'm afraid I'll have to lock it.

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1. The hero's are [removed] they keep runing back to there basses to recover....

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Welcome to the boards, DarkZ. Please be aware that terms such as the one you used in this post are not allowed here.

Please take the time to familiarise yourself with the Message Board Rules and Guidelines before continuing to post. Thanks.

As much as I appreciate and sympathise with the intention of this thread, 'petition' threads are a violation of the Message Board Rules, so I'm going to have to lock this.

I'm afraid that, ultimately, the only people who can really put a stop to all the pointless nonsense that's occurred are those people who continue to instigate it, and those who continue to rise to the bait rather than reporting it and letting me remove it before things get out of hand.

(Yes, there are some people who I could ban from the boards due to their violations of the rules, but that's not going to stop this flaring up on other boards and in-game. )

Hey all,

As I'm on holiday next week, I'm going to leave this open until Monday 4 June, when I get back. The winner should be announced sometime in that week.

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But my biggest gripe is the amount of so called 'tools' tonight i gave in as did the rest of us after 5 of us were used as somewhere to let off powers and generally insulting the RP scene. I'd say names, but whats that going to do? Yes i could ignore them, but unfortunatly it becomes hard to ignore when there jumping about dropping down AoE powers and the like. According to Terms and Conditions they arent doing anything wrong.

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On the contrary, the EULA and associated Rules of Conduct are pretty specific about behaviour like this.

The best thing to do it clearly and politely ask the player or players to stop disrupting your gaming. If they do not, or become abusive, /petition immediately and then move on. You may wish to make use of the /ignore command if necessary.

Please do this each and every time such an incident occurs, sending a /petition if necessary. As I've explained in the past, we don't generally ban a player for a 'first offence' (although there are exceptions). However, if the same player continues to break the rules despite warnings, more serious measures will be taken.

I've been forced to remove a post from this thread that made allegations concerning the intentions of other players.

As a result, I'm afraid that the bulk of the thread was automatically removed as well. My apologies to those whose reasonable posts may have been caught up in this.

If you must express concerns over the motivations or intentions of other players, please do so in a general sense, without naming anyone or otherwise offering information that may make it easy to identify them.

"I'm worried that some people may wish to spoil this event" is fine.

"I'm worried that &lt;player X&gt; and his cronies are planning to spoil this event" is a violation of the rules.

Thanks.

(While we're on the subject, please be sure to /petition any players who do attempt to grief you in-game - yes, deliberately trying to ruin an RP event can be a form of griefing - and be sure to /petition them again if they attempt the same thing at a later date.)

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This whole tournament is exclusionary to the point of being ridiculous but since im not participating Ill leave comments at this.

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Please guys, rather less of this..it is neither a constructive argument, or helpful.

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I have to agree. Please, everyone, let's try to little more constructive with any criticism.

Thanks.

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I also think I disagree with how quiet you keep what is done about it.

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Yes i must admit iv never quite understood that bit either.

Im not suggesting having them announced in a pop up screen as everyone logs on, however i think being told that the person you felt the need to complain about has been dealt with in X or Y fashion, at least lets you know something has at least been done.

Just my opinion that lot of course.

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There are several reasons for this, but the main ones are privacy related (we don't discuss the details of your account with anyone other than you - and that includes disciplinary actions) and that, in our experience of other games, disclosing these details to the player making the complaint has an unfortunate tendency to lead to further unpleasant behaviour ("Hahahah! I got you suspended, noob!", etc).

I believe that most other MMOs have similar policies, no doubt for similar reasons.

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I do disagree with the policy, but can do nothing about it.

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I'm afraid I'm still not clear on which policy you disagree with?

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I might drop you a PM tomorrow if you don't mind.

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As I mentioned before, please do (although you'll need to email me - address below).

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In more "persistant" online games you have a certain level to which you have to answer for your actions and the actions of those you associate with - CoH doesn't have this.

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I'm afraid I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Could you be a little more specific?

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It also has one of the lowest standards of behaviour overall I've ever seen in a game, and I play, in addition to MMOs, a variety of FPS and flight sim games. I have to put this down to a combination of idiot plus anonymity of the internet plus the knowledge there will probably be no come back.

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Honestly, our gaming experiences must differ a great deal. Perhaps, as you suggest, this is because I'm not a dedicated PvP player, and only tend to pop into the zones every now and then.

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I have a couple of questions for you/your company regarding abuse/harassment policy (largely unrelated to the initial post).

For about three or four months myself and a member of my SG have been getting a torrent of abuse, swearing, sexually explicit tells, sexually explicity comments on broadcast, and general nastyness from someone, over and above the usual swearing and childish comments that we get in PvP zones.

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I'm afraid that I'm not able to discuss the specifics of a case like this in public. If you have a complaint about our Customer Support, you should make it to our Customer Support team by updating the relevant ticket/petition or submitting a new one. If, following this, you remain unsatisfied with the response, please feel free to email me with the ticket details and I'll look into it.

I'll try to address some of your more general questions here.

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1. Do you think it's right that it's taken 4 months and several petitions plus chasing up petitions to make sure they actually get read, from both of us, for this to stop (at least temporarily - I don't know if it is him that's been banned, but he's at least gone quiet for a little while), yet if I posted his name or screenshots on the forums it would be instantly deleted and I'd be told off like a naughty child for breaking the forum rules? Can you see how this would be incredibly frustrating?

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Of course I don't think it's right for something like you describe to take four months to resolve. On the other hand, I don't know the details of the actual situation, so I can't really comment on the specific case you're describing.

I can say with absolute certainty that you should never have to 'chase up' a /petition to ensure that it's read. All /petitions are investigated. Sometimes this can be a time consuming process, depending on the exact situation, but a /petition is never ignored.

On the subject of the board rules and my moderation, I try my best to treat all board members with courtesy and respect at all times. If my enforcing of those rules comes across as being "told off like a naughty child", then I'm clearly failing in this regard and would greatly appreciate you emailing me to discuss how I can phrase things more appropriately.

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2. Given that everyone knows (or thinks they know) what a complete joke the ingame rules on behaviour standards are, and how rarely and weakly they're enforced, are you surprised at the standard of behaviour ingame?

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I think the critical thing here is "thinks they know". I can assure you that we don't regard the rules governing behaviour in-game as a joke. On the contrary, we take them very seriously and deal with any reported problems accordingly.

As to whether I'm surprised by the standard of behaviour in-game, I can't say I am, for the simple reason that I very rarely encounter any problems in this regard when playing my personal characters.

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3. Do you think that a certain amount of abuse, swearing, and comments of a sexual nature are acceptable in a PvP zone?

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No, I don't. On the other hand, I don't expect someone to be permanently banned from the game for a single infraction of the rules, and I'm more than happy to /ignore anyone that is bothering me, after having /petitioned them.

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Due to PvP being consensual in CoH there's really no ingame remedy for this sort of problem. Either the game has a policy on this sort of thing, or it doesn't. What's the point in it being there if it's not being enforced/being seen to be enforced? Where is the deterrant for those people who want to act like this?

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The game does have a policy. It's clearly stated in the EULA and accompanying Code of Conduct. Every single violation of that policy that is reported to our GMs via /petition is thoroughly investigated and any appropriate action taken.

On the subject of 'being seen to be enforced', though, I'm afraid that we have no interest in publicly humiliating players who violate the rules. Our entire system is geared towards ensuring that our players can enjoy the games free from unpleasant behaviour by others. That's what's important to us, not 'public enforcement'.

One thing that I've mentioned before but cannot be stressed enough is that you should always /petition each and every violation of the rules that causes you concern. Regardless of whether you've /petitioned the same character before, or whether other people tell you they've already /petitioned.

If someone sends you an abusive /tell, you should /petition. If the same person sends you another abusive /tell half an hour later, you should /petition. If they do the same thing a week later, you should /petition. Each and every time, /petition.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking that, if the player wasn't suspended or banned for the first offence, nothing will be done about further violations - or that our GMs will automatically 'know' about further violations made by the same player.

Unless the case is particularly extreme, it's very unlikely that a player will be banned for a single incident (although it has happened occasionally). In general, a first violation of the rules will result in a warning. If our GMs don't receive any further reports about the same player breaking the rules, they can only assume that the warning has been effective. If it hasn't, you need to /petition to let the know, so they can take the appropriate steps.

Okay, guys, I think that's more than enough recriminations.

Thanks.

Welcome to the nominations for April's Creative Genius!

Please use this thread to nominate submissions for the Creative Genius award for the month of April 2007.

Please be sure to familiarise yourself with the guidelines for the Creative board and the Creative Genius competition before making any nominations - you can read them here.

These nominations will remain open until 6pm GMT on Tuesday 22 May. The winner will be announced shortly after.

To nominate a submission, please post a link to the appropriate post.

There are some important rules to bear in mind when making nominations:
<ul type="square">[*]You may only nominate one submission. If you nominate more than one submission, only the first one will count.[*]You may not nominate your own submissions.[*]Nominated submissions must have been originally posted to this board during April 2007.[*]All original submissions first posted to these boards in April 2007 are eligible for nomination, regardless of what form they take.[*]Only nominated submissions will be considered for the Creative Genius award.[*]If no nominations are received, there will be no Creative Genius award for April 2007.[*]If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please post them to The Creative Board and Creative Genius. This thread should only be used for nominations, and any off-topic posts will be removed.[/list]Happy nominating!