CodeJunkie

Of course I do and I know what you are going to say. That people could be funneling things from WW to the black market and vice verse...yes, that happens, even in real life. The merging of the markets only works if no one really knows they are merged because why would heroes knowingly sell items to their enemies and potential enemies and the same goes for villains?

The reason why I said the devs would more than likely open both markets up to both sides would be to control and track what actions players are making. There would be nothing stopping a hero from buying something from WW and then reselling it on the black market and vice verse, or even a Villain buy low at WW and reselling high on the BM. Either side would probably take a ding to their alignment depending on their actions. By doing that everyone should get what they want and no gaping plot holes are created and reasons for conflict on the subject of a merged market. The markets are essentially merged at that point, but the players just have to make the effort to move goods from one market to the other if they want to do so.

Thematically was the wrong word I guess.

Ok, so don't pay your subscription fee and see how many vet rewards you get.

You are trying to use the "buy one get one free" logic to say you are getting something for free. What I mean by that is that marketing departments know that if they use the word free, people will bite on whatever BS sale is going on...even though in reality you are still paying for something. Buy one get one free simply means you are paying half price for two of the same thing. If it was truly "free" they would be giving it away. I was reading an article a couple months ago about this very issue and apparently in Massachusetts at one point the government had passed a law stating that no merchant could use the word free in any sales pitches unless what ever was free was actually "free". That didn't last long.

In no way shape or form has NCSoft stated that vet rewards are "free" with your subscription. They state many times over that it is for PAID time. The caveat is that the time has to actually pass, meaning you cannot pay ahead and that is completely fair to everyone.

Exactly. In fact new players to the game are actually getting certain things much sooner than players that have been playing since the beginning. Think about it. Many players like myself had to wait almost 3 years to get wings, trench coats and what not. What is it like 9 months for a trench coat? We stuck with the game and kept our accounts active NOT knowing what was coming and that doesn't apply to just veteran rewards either. There is a whole host of things in the game that did not exist for a long time. Capes, markets, multiple costumes, multiple builds, AE...hell, power customization. The vet rewards are there to say thank you to the players that have hung in there through thick and thin.

New players that want to complain about not getting this or that after a couple of months are in affect riding the trench coat tales of the players that kept the game alive by staying loyal...plain and simple.

There is one major problem with this. If players can pick which rewards or costumes they get every three months there is a point when they will have picked all the rewards they WANT and they will be left with the stuff they DO NOT WANT. At that time the complaining starts again about how there are no rewards they want or how they have to wait another year for something "cool". The system as it stands is 100% fair. Every player gets the exact same rewards and the exact same time intervals.

But see, the thing is, the system is fair. Everyone gets the same rewards on the same schedule. You can't get more fair than that. The fact that you started 3 or 4 years after the game started doesn't make the system unfair. A lot of the rewards that are in the system are things that the veteran player base had been requesting for years before the system was created. The rewards are a thank you to all the players that stuck it out even though there were no wings, trench coats and what not.

The solution to this "issue" is for the devs to simply add more costume pieces like shorts, more armors and wings that the rest of the player base can access.

Yeah, sorry, I missed the sarcasm there.

Out of curiosity, what were some of the names you tried? I usually don't have an issue getting names and I have been quite surprised at some of the names I have been able to obtain.

very true.

Maybe being a bus driver will come as a "secret identity" so we can finally get some use out of those pesky bus stations. <---- joke

I think he means allowing you to switch actual characters without having to logout and back in as the other character, but setup a changing character emote much like the costume change emotes.

Even still I don't see it happening. There are reasons why you have to logout and back in to begin with.

Because it would be ugly and just plain retarded in my opinion. If they are going to add vehicles at least do it right.

However, vehicles per say are not a bad idea, but the game world is not designed in a way that they would be useful. You can get to pretty much anywhere pretty quickly...especially these days.

I'm just waiting it out for the most part. Good thing I have been really busy lately. I did however, decide to finally check out Vanguard last night. I'm kind of diggin' it. It's like a combination of EQ and UO, but a lot better than both.

Well, actually, I just didn't want to go into ways that it could be done since the bottom line is really that it isn't needed. And yes, difficulty in making something work is no reason to not do something, but I wanted to state the reason why things currently are the way they are.

If the devs want to spend the time to do it...by all means, go for it. It doesn't matter to me either way really, but the issue at hand isn't as trivial as some think it is.

Ha!

Why? What magical force do you think "open source" is exactly?

Besides, as another poster already said, the biggest issue really isn't with the GUI/presentation, but with keeping the data up to date. A website based tool would really the better way to go since it is very data heavy. You rule out the biggest long term problem, keeping users up to date. Since they do not have to update a piece of software on their computer it makes updates much, much easier and you end up with less confusion and user complaints...(usually).

The reason there is an inf cap has nothing to do with some arbitrary limit. The limit exists because 32-bit signed integers only go up to the value of 2gb (2,147,483,648). And unsigned 32-bit integer only goes up to a value of 4gb. They could theoretically update all code dealing with influence to use unsigned integers but that is a lot of code to change and there is no guarantee it would even work.

Another solution is to update the code base to run under a 64-bit OS. Unfortunately, they would be very highly likely to lose a very large player base doing that. That option is not a viable solution.

So yes, an account wide inf cap would indeed be 2 billion inf under the current code base, unless they were to do some under the covers mojo to fake out the pool limit. Basically to show a pooled inf bucket of say 20 billion, but it would only be a superficial total of all the characters inf and then even that is useless since each character can only hold up to 2 billion. Even then there would have to be all these transaction limits imposed.

In short, there is no need for it and even though it could happen would be too much work for too little gain.