Eiko-chan

Given your post before this, I don't think I'll be touching this.

Epeen enhancers?

Joking aside, I'd call them what I called them: exclusive items.

I'd categorise a "nod of thanks" as something that says "here, let me make things a little easier for you". The exclusive items, on the other hand, say "here, have something no one else can have". That's not a "nod of thanks", that's a "you're special/different/better".

Not really. Veteran Rewards are completely static. They are completely out of my control. They are earned only by having an active subscription.

If I want a 50 sooner, I can play more, or I can play harder - get bigger teams, fight bigger groups. There are hoops, but I can hop them at my pace. Like with the other rewards I have no complaint with, I can get them, I just have to do the work.

There is no "work" to be done to gain exclusive veteran rewards I do not already have.

The primary difference I see here is that while other Veteran Rewards are generally available through alternate means (and here I mean respecs, costume changes, temporary powers, and other little minor bonuses (like this one)), the costume pieces (and base items) cannot be acquired in any way besides Veteran Rewards.

I can earn costume changes by paying a bit of influence; I can buy a respec, or do a respec trial. If I want a temporary power, I can find the story arc that grants it and run it (and, thanks to Ouroboros, re-run it as necessary). If I want a little more prestige, I can play a little longer.

There is no way whatsoever for me to acquire Angel Wings save by waiting 15 months for them. That's where these bonuses fail. They aren't "little bonuses". They are exclusive items. There just isn't enough justification in my mind to give veterans exclusive items.

Their continued patronage is worth a little nod of thanks, I'll agree, but having things other cannot simply because they are veterans is not, in my opinion, a nod of thanks.

I do compare with other games. That's why I play this one, and not those other ones. And it's exactly this point that makes your "but other games do it" a poor argument. Other games do lots of other things. I don't play those games. Why would I want this game to be more like games I don't enjoy playing?

And now, back to this (I had to mull on exactly why these examples were poor, but I got to it.)
In every one of these examples, the company is making as much of an investment in the customer as the customer is making in the company. The long-term benefits, in this case, are the company rewarding their investment in the customer - this customer has proven trustworthy and a safe investment of funds and risk. There is no good way, other than time, to judge the investment value of a customer in these cases. Only time and experience can tell the creditors, the insurers, the bankers, that risking money on you will not be a loss for them.

This analogy fails to transfer to games because games do not make investments in their players. The game does not risk thousands or millions on each new customer; a fly-by-night customer is not a potential loss, just a loss of potential. There is no risk that needs ameliorating in an MMO customer - there is no investment made in a veteran, no return to pay off.

In credit, being a long-term customer means you have been proved to be reliable and steady, and thus worthy of additional credit. Being a long-term subscriber to a game means nothing but that you enjoy the game, and have for a long time. It means absolutely nothing more.

A successful customer retention program should give small benefits to your long-term customers without denying central benefits to newcomers. CoX's Veteran Rewards fail at this, because they remove central benefits (costume pieces) from new customers.

No, it's not. This MMO is not like other MMOs. This MMO doesn't have an end game (not yet, anyway - and we don't really know what the end game will look like).
This game is expressly stated by Devs to be designed for alts, not for long-term investment in a single character.

This game is unique in the MMO world for how much of the investment in a character is up-front, in character generation. Other MMOs have you "build up" to a particular look, power, and feel for your character. City of Heroes allows you to craft your look and feel, and the direction of your powers, right from level 1.

This game is more about exploring characters and possibilities than other MMOs. This game is not about the grind of levels, the advancement of gear, the swapping of abilities. Characters grow and gain ability, but almost all will still use their low-tier abilities alongside those, while in other MMOs you swap out old abilities for new.

The costume creator is the biggest thing that sets this MMO apart from other games. It is the single most powerful marketing tool the game has; the single most powerful feature for drawing people away from other games. Needlessly hampering that feature, even in minor ways, just because you're not sure this new customer might be "loyal enough" (represented by veteran time) is simply bad business.

Comparing City of Heroes to "other MMOs" is a serious slight to City of Heroes. This is not other MMOs. It's something better.

Other MMOs, that we don't talk about around here. Not this one.

Every single one of those examples is based off the model of "people that give us more business", not "people that have been here the longest". Following those examples leads to the much hated "buying rewards" suggestion, and not to the "accept the system" suggestion.

Because they don't pay me to play the game. I pay them.

This isn't work. This is play. This is fun.

Does DisneyLand have special rides that only long-time repeat customers can ride?
Does K-Mart have special goods only purchasable after you've shopped there ten times before?
Does McDonald's have special menu items only available after you've bought twenty Big Macs?

Games aren't jobs. Any analogies that use jobs as their basis are already off on the wrong foot.

Why is this always the same stupid argument people use? "Sense of entitlement"? Who has expressed any sense of entitlement to anything?

Saying "It'd be nice if we didn't have to wait for nice costume pieces" is not a sense of entitlement, and being told I have a "sense of entitlement" just because I think it would be nice if more people had things gets a bit tiresome.

The costume codes are complete costume replacements - your character is replaced, wholesale, by whatever NPC it is the code unlocks. They do not unlock costume pieces you can use to mix-and-match your own creation and can only be used to completely replicate an existing NPC look, not to customise your own version of such a character.

So no, the costume codes don't harm the game because they add virtually nothing to it, unlike costume pieces.

They certainly work to keep especially very veteran players subscribed to the game just to keep the rewards coming, so in that respect they're probably working as intended.

However, I think locking rewards - especially desirable ones, like costumes - away behind arbitrary time deadlines discourages new players from coming to try the game and stick around. They will constantly be playing a futile game of "catch-up" with the 6-year vets, and may have to wait years before they get a costume piece that really clicks the character they want to play in place. With the costume designer being the one feature CoX really has over any other game (including CO), having parts of that locked behind arbitrary, unmovable goalposts can only harm the game.

The Booster packs are helping alleviate this somewhat, but there are still many things the Booster packs have not yet worked around and many costume pieces locked away from new players for, as far as I'm concerned, absolutely no justifiable reason.

I'm famously against Vet Rewards. Especially City Traveller and the many costume options locked away behind Vet Rewards. I believe Vet Rewards - especially those specific ones - are actively harmful, not helpful, to the community and game's bottom line.

It's hot out there. And people that expect me to acknowledge them. Who wants that?

It depends on whether you do a respec or a second build.

If you respec, your enhancements all get unslotted, but after you have picked your powers and slotted them, you get a third screen with all your old enhancements and a chance to reslot all your enhancements. You can keep up to 10 old enhancements through a respec (using the enhancement tray) and any enhancements you do not use or keep will get resold for cost (though IOs "cost" is much lower than market value; generally you should only shed TO/DO/SOs this way).

If you do a second build, your first build keeps all its powers, slots, and enhancements as is, and your second build starts from level 1 with no enhancements at all. You level up that build just as if you had gained all those levels without visiting a trainer, and then must purchase a second set of enhancements to enhance it.

If you do the second build route, you can switch between the two builds, swapping the two complete sets of powers, slots and enhancements, at any trainer. There is a 30 minute cooldown on this swap, to prevent some exploits that might otherwise occur (when you switch builds, every cooldown is reset. If you could swap faster, you could bypass intentionally long cooldowns.)

Hope that helps!

Not any more. Actually, I think the same time Defence types got paired, Resistance types did as well. Same pairing as the defence sets (Smashing+Lethal, Fire+Cold, Energy+Negative). Psionic remains unpaired for both Resistance and Defence.

Powers, on the other hand, are commonly unpaired. In fact, I believe only the Smashing+Lethal pair is universal; for every individual piece of the other pairs, there is an exception to the pairing (Ice Armour and Fiery Aura for the Fire+Cold pair, Electric Armour and Dark Armour for the Energy+Negative pair, right off the top of my head. There're others.)

EDIT: I just skimmed the IOs, and I'm only partially right. Most IO bonuses are paired, but there are a few exceptions of singular resistance bonuses.

Most of the AoE comes from the Assbot's missiles, which are going to explode in the same radius regardless of range. And up close, you can use YOUR AoE (Trip Mine).

I tested a few other samples, and got:

J.R.R. Tolkien
David Foster Wallace
Vladimir Nabokov
James Joyce
Neil Gaiman
George Orwell
James Fenimore Cooper
Chuck Palahniuk
William Shakespeare
Douglas Adams
William Gibson
Ursula K. Le Guin
Stephen King

Dan Brown, William Shakespeare, and Neil Gaiman were the most common, with about 3 instances each. My single longest writing (an unfinished novel) was rated as Shakespeare.

The conclusion I draw is that I have no consistent writing style at all.