GadgetDon

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  1. I had an idea for a series, but the movies wiped it out.

    For all its claims to multiculturalism, humanity has been the leader of the Federation, the Federation by and large represents human morality. You measure up to our standards, or you don't get in. This has to have caused some friction/simmering resentment, but the advantages of being in the Federation were so overwhelming in terms of safety and commerce, planets accepted the bargain.

    The Dominion War broke those advantages. For the first time, the Federation provided no real safety, and may even have made one a target. And it's clear that the big terror was "they may take Earth".

    OK, the war was won, but a lot of people dead, a lot of planets damaged. Wouldn't some of those resentments come out? "You let our people die while protecting Earth. Why should we be the buffer protecting Earth from the opponents they provoke?"

    So the new series would be about rebuilding the Federation. Building a truly interplanetary Federation. With an interplanetary crew, and yes, I'd have a non-human captain.

    So part would be dealing with the assumptions of "human morality is the correct morality", but also the risks of "hey, whatever you want to do, it's good if you think it's good."
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
    People come to this game to be superheroes, but they stay for the community. These new Freepers or Freeks or whatever you want to call them are going to come here to get in some tights and knock some people around. They'll have a blast, we know they will, because this game is fun. At the end of the day, though, you can only bust so many skulls by yourself. They're going to look for more reason to stay.
    I hope you're right - but my biggest concern about Freedom is how limited the Free players are in terms of participating in the community, or even realizing that the community is around them. The one channel they get is /help, which means /help is going to be utterly useless for actual help when it becomes the lft/general bull channel.

    Even Premium users will be hugely limited, cut off from much of the fun and interaction.

    I tried the competition, speaking cryptically, and the reason I didn't stick with it was that they never got the importance of community. I tried it when they went Free, and it wasn't any better - but wasn't any worse. If there's anything that will kill this, it's the complete and utter crippling of this game's great community features.
  3. My objections are mostly satisfied, give badge now to encourage participation in the stress test but available to everyone later.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    We don't anticipate the queue being an issue as we will be cranking it way up for this event. That's the purpose of the event, and the entire reason we created this badge, is to get as many people as possible onto one server with the improvements as possible.

    We'll have more updates later on today.
    Except it's still a badge that, unless you can play within this one narrow block of time, play in exactly the way you want to, play with whoever you can run into there instead of your normal people, play with whatever character you happen to have on Freedom or one you create instead of your main, you will NEVER earn this badge.
  5. I'm going to split the team a bit (and do my best to bring more people into the team - for a project as big and as popular as described, we both should be able to have more people and we need the ability to do two things at once.

    The larger team is making changes. If I really am stuck with only 4 people, it's a team of 3 (the odd man out may rotate from time to time). Assuming nothing changes, priority #1 is the Shepard's crook, then mending. And the community team lets it be known that changes are coming to the Shepard's crook, so don't assume that how it is now is how it always will be. Then comes mending.

    But team #2 is going to be "work with the community team and the players to be our sanity check on what we think we know". I know the scenario as laid out says that there's nothing wrong with the Cannon while the Crook is completely overpowered - but what if we're wrong?

    I remember the infamous video of regen scrappers doing godlike things shown as proof of the overpowered nature, players noticing "wait, that scrapper is slicing through deep purple foes like they didn't exist" and only on review was it realized that the scenario was run in a test environment without the purple patch. Sometimes, developers miss things. And players do have a unique perspective. While we as developers know how the powers work when used as we planned them to be used, the players know how they're working as the players are using them.

    So even while the odds are strong that what we've seen in our testing is true for players, cannon fine while crook overpowered - there's a chance that we're wrong. That the cannon actually does need some refining while the crook really isn't that bad. So work with the players to find out why player perception does not match our data. Yes, it uses up 1/4 of our workforce, but one of two good things happens: (a) Through the process, we both quiet the complaints by those players who are wrong and earn respect with the players as "we take their feedback seriously", or (b) We find an error in our data, fix the things that really need fixing, can look to see why our data was at variance with reality and do better in the future - and earn respect with the players as "we take their feedback seriously".
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    Stuff
    Any chance that "stuff" includes fixing the incredible messup that was the "security" update?
  7. My guess is that the thought was "we avoid a lot of trouble, and it wasn't that long ago people were having to rebuild channels when they hit a cap".
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Residentx10 View Post
    Then what's the big deal?
    Because a large number of people found themselves unable to log in after this ill-concieved idiotic lame brained and completely ineffective for the purposes intended change, and the only resolution is a phone call to a toll number with ridiculous wait times or email with inconsistent response time, and in most cases a large amount of info required that many people may not have kept.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Residentx10 View Post
    I played on a differnt computer this weekend and it didn't even ask me the security stuff.
    It's not while playing. It's logging into the account on plaync.com (or whatever the URL de jour is) where you can change email, buy stuff, set payment options, etc.
  10. Maestro, from what I understand, the European servers have pretty tight knit communities, and the global name is their name. So a lot of them probably would be happier to keep it as it is now. Because in their minds, it's not quite as bad as "OK, we're wiping your old accounts, but here are nice shiny new accounts in compensation" - but it's on the continuum. And this is going to cause serious disruption. Me, I'd hate to lose GadgetDon as my global name, it's where I am everywhere - and while I'd still be part of every global channel I'm currently in and all my global friends remain global friends, it'll take a long time for people to get used to seeing "PointOfBalance23" in a chat channel and think "Oh, yeah, that's GadgetDon" (and even longer for me to memorize my friends' names - names get locked into my head).

    Is it discrimination? In the dictionary meaning of the word, yes. In the normal use of the term, no. Does NC Soft have reasons it plans to do it the way they do? Yes. Is it unfair? Yeah.

    Is there a better solution to satisfy more people (and in the process, provide NC Software with happier and more loyal customers)? Hell yes. I hope they realize it, and the inertia of "a decision has been made, move on to the next issue" won't stand in the way of that better solution.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gaia View Post
    In practice NCSoft would probably have to prove
    Yes. Guilty until proven innocent. The claim of "discrimination" throws the burden of proof on its head. The accusation is the proof that the accused acted with evil intent to harm others.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Bloodspeaker View Post
    Perhaps, but at the end of the day, if they've taken players' concerns seriously and decided that the implementation as stated IS the best way to go, will you still assume all they actually did was mouth platitudes? Sounds as if you've already decided.
    I take them at their word that they've seriously discussed it. Part of the discussion, though, is going to be "OK, we've got code that is written, works great on our test bench and all we have to do is give the order to do it. And talking to the programmer, he says we'll need to do a lot more testing if we're not only adding the EU records but also modifying the NA records as we go - concerns about race conditions and such."
  13. My advice to those unhappy -

    Focus on the "happy customers both keep paying money and encourage others to join the game" strategy. From a system management point, they think they've got solid reasons for what they did (and the worst part is - they do). Show that there are other reasons that are more important, that make it a better choice for NC Soft to go the extra mile to use the veteran status.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Knightingale View Post
    just for the record here....

    Discrimination is a word.

    It has a dictionary definition, go look it up. Sometimes it does 'refer' to matters of racial or ethnic discrimination, but that's not what the word itself means. Hence why we add the words Racial or Ethnic.
    Yes, discrimination is a word. It applies to all sorts of situations, many highly justified. Indeed, the solution that's generally been preferred by the posters in this thread calls for discriminating against newer or less active players and in favor of longer-active players. Yes, that is just as much "discrimination" as "in a conflict, the EU player loses out". In a vacuum, most people in the thread consider shafting newer/less active players more just (or less unjust) than shafting EU players. Add the costs and time and safety concerns of simpler existing codes, the balance will change for some.

    The reason I object to the term discrimination in this case is twofold. First, it was raised in conjunction with a law with the suggestion that what NC was doing was illegal, which is silly. Second, even with that out of the way, when people use the word "discrimination" they usually mean it in a perjorative way, the decision is being made for emotional mean reasons, a.k.a. as "the devs hate us" (or in this case, it's the suits doing the hating). Which I would also describe as silly.

    I don't think the people making the decisions gave sufficient consideration to the importance of the social aspects (particularly with global names). I believe they made a mistake because they didn't think through all the ramifications, and are making a mistake in not taking the hit to deal with those ramifications. But they aren't doing it because they're stupid, or because they hate EU customers.
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Knightingale View Post
    We're not being silly. Honestly what's the difference?

    I agree we're not being discriminated against because of our race, ethnic origin, religion, sex, colour of our skin, what car we drive, what we have for breakfast, how many badgers we own......

    Maybe this isn't as serious as the racial discrimination that happened in the 60's. It is, after all, just a game.

    But discrimination is discrimination. Doesn't matter what the differentiating factor is.
    On the contrary, discrimination happens all the time. Access to City of Heroes at all is discriminatory based on those who are willing and able to pay. The ability to play is discriminatory to the computer you have (official support is only given to Intel Macs and PCs with Windows XP or above - Linux users have a hack but it's not officially supported. Windows 98, BeOS, and PPC Mac users are out in the cold).

    While numbers have never been released, my presumption is that the number of City of Heroes NA accounts is huge, and the number of City of Heroes EU accounts is pretty big too (this includes all inactive/trial accounts). Given that the NA database is significantly larger (I doubt anyone will argue against that), I'm sure the code they've written uses the NA database and adds records from the EU database. Their scheme, then, is simple. Is there a conflict on the new account name for the record being added? Change it before adding. Is there a conflict in the global? Clear it before adding. Simpler code, far less chance of bugs introduced that could corrupt the database, perhaps even running faster. These are three justifiable reasons for adopting this system. (And I suspect they've got this code written and probably tested on copies of the database and known to be working, which is another advantage - always hard to pull code out of the "frozen" status.)

    Now, as I've said, I believe that the negative effects on the EU customers are more important than the these reasons, particularly for global name. I think the advantages in making EU customers happy outweigh the downsides of having to make these changes. But that's a judgement call.

    Which is very different from race or sex or ethnic origin, where the only reason for that discrimination is "I don't like those people". And equating discrimination for "I don't like them" with "we've got working code that is simpler and less likely to have bugs" is, to use a word, silly. And arguing that they are the same, threatening "you're breaking the law", stating "you MUST do this because we're in the EU" is not only silly, it's counter productive.

    Again, to make it very clear - I think the current proposal, even with the reactivation to try to change old accounts and even if they can clear inactive globals, is the wrong decision. Global names are important in a social game, the social aspects and community are what The Second Superhero MMO complete messed up, and the benefits to NC Soft in supporting these social connections (and avoiding the cost to NC Soft of angering loyal customers who pay every month) outweigh the time, security, and cost benefits of going with what they have now. But it's a question of "what's the better thing to do", not "what do they have a duty to do" and definitely not "what are they legally required to do."
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Toffy View Post
    I would also like to point out that the EU have an EU anti discrimination law (Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29 June 2000 implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin : also called the "Race Directive”)

    Therefore my question is as we (ie EU players) are been discrimination on are racial origin, does that mean NCsoft will be in contradiction with EU law??
    It's not racial or ethnic origin. It's that you had one type of account (EU CoH) as opposed to another (NA CoH). Living in Europe isn't a race or ethnic origin, both the U.S. and Europe have a wide variety in this area.

    I fully stand with those who are unhappy about the potential loss of long-used global names to inactive/trial/recently set up names (and am sort of half-crouched with those unhappy about the change in login name), but let's not be silly about this.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lady Arete View Post
    I'm happy that we finally will get rid of the server list segregation, and yes the global names are the real problemthingy. How should the Devs handle it?
    Well my to cents/insert appropriate coinage here)
    Devs, you already have the appropriate tools or way of establishing who gets what.
    Veteran badges.

    As said earlier in this thread use that to find out who should get a NA or EU name token added (or whatever you decide in the end).
    If names conflict between the two prior lists, let the paid veteran time decide.
    I think this is the reasonable approach, particularly for globals. Having your global name revoked doesn't make it harder to log on (a stated concern) so there's no downside in favoring the most loyal customer, it's just clearing the global name so no issue of "what do we add". Yes, it makes the merge routine a touch more complex, but just a touch, you're clearly reading both records from the database. And it would be hard to argue against the justice of "most loyal member gets the global". Oh, and I presume whoever loses the globalname gets the flag set so they can do a global name change.

    As for the login name, my advice for those affected on the other side of the pond is to grumble a little and accept this. Nobody will see it, it's a minor annoyance on your end. I would recommend to NCSoft that, when someone logs in, if the username/password fails, check if "EU".username/password would have worked. If so, pop up a dialog box, explain what may have happened, and ask if they want to log in as EUusername.

    And a further word of advice - please look for some way to merge accounts. Make it "has to have been what was an NA and EU account", require the user to log into both master accounts to approve the change (assuming the issues with the "security" changes get resolved), and a reasonable fee could be assessed.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    One potential issue which was highlighted by the recent Play NC security updates: There are many players who do not have access to the email address their account was originally set up under, who may have forgotten their original security question, or any number of combinations of factors.

    Again, I do apologize to the players who stand to be inconvenienced by this, however when all possible variables were factored in, we feel this was the proper decision to make.
    The potential issue highlighted by the recent Play NC security updates and now this is - NC Soft seems to think the players are peons who can be treated as NC Soft wants and they'll just shut up, sit down, and take it. And that clearly there's no need to discuss anything with those peons about how they'd like it, because, well, they're just peons. It's not like there's any competition out there where these peons can take their money.

    OK, here's a suggestion that will be summary ignored, probably get this post deleted and maybe get my account suspended, but here goes.

    TALK TO US. BEFORE IT'S A FAIT ACCOMPLI. In spite of what sometimes seems the best efforts of those setting policy, you've got a highly loyal membership, many of which are very smart, have a variety of expertise in areas such as consumer handling, management, security, and more. All the feedback you've gotten on the security change and this way of combining NA & EU and most of the feedback on the launcher could have been gotten in time to do something.

    I'm not saying give the "community voice" a veto (particularly since the community rarely speaks with one voice), just collect the feedback early enough that it's possible to incorporate it and seriously consider the feedback. Worst case - you'll figure out what the objections are to your plan and be prepared with explanations about why you did what you did and be prepped for dealing with the side effects. Best case - you get ideas you hadn't consider and are able to make your customers happier. And if nothing else,

    Yes, this won't be possible for everything. Creative decisions clearly need the view of the creator, you don't want to take a poll on whether the coming storm is the work of Nemesis, Fifth Column, whoever it is that really hates Kheldans, or Yet Another Marcus Cole. Some responses to the competition need to be private, announcing that you're considering Free Play or negotiating a license with Marvel to use their characters storyline would clearly be wrong. And an emergency security issue that needs handling now can't wait.

    But just like you use customers as free testing and consider that feedback as you tweak what you do there, use us to improve the way the company deals with us. It seems that, in every interview, you talk about the incredible community you've got. If you believe it, use it.
  19. Given the lack of any further redname responses in this thread, I presume the official position is "that's all your guys problem" to those who have had problems. I'm curious if that will also be the position if anyone misses out on the "loyalty" reward due to this SNAFU. Or does "loyalty" only go one way?
  20. The NCSoft Launcher seems to be like the little girl with the curl in her forehead.

    There was a little girl
    Who had a little curl
    Right in the middle of her forehead.
    When she was good,
    She was very, very good,
    And when she was bad she was horrid

    (For the record, my experiences have been very positive. It would be a very positive option. But the removal of the old launcher as an option is a mistake.)
  21. BTW, one thing I want to make clear, and I suspect most people in this thread would say the same thing.

    Once I got to a real human, the support person was very helpful, acted quickly and professionally in spite of being, I'm sure, under as much stress and frustration as I was. From all the experiences I have NC Soft support, the amount of respect I have for them even exceeds my disapproval and disgust at the brain-dead idiots who pushed this system through without apparently either forethought or concern about the results it has had for the customers.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU View Post
    *shudders at the horror of all the Blizzard spam he gets with phising emails set up to look just like that*
    Yes, the potential of phishing clearly means a 45 minute call to a toll number is a superior solution.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Capa_Devans View Post
    Getting the security questions wrong does generate an auto email that <x> IP address attempted to log in and an instruction to contact support if this was an error.
    Right, so all it needs is the link to reset the security questions.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU View Post
    More tries before lockout, I can understand (although I personally dont agree with it).

    Making it have "leeway" though I *dont* agree with fullstop. That just makes it more insecure (same as having all passwords lowercase even if you entered it as a mixture of upper and lower case).

    Some people also complain about passwords requiring at least 1 number, and at least 1 uppercase letter. I can see *why* they would complain about it, but as you never know where that number/uppercase letter will appear, it doesnt necessarily make it exponentially faster to break brute force wise.
    More leeway always and forever, that's arguably a reasonable step to take forward though I'd still say it's wrong.

    More leeway during a transition period where suddenly information entered seven or more years ago and never had to look at since becomes the block to entering the site AND you must get the caps exactly right - absolutely required. I gave one proposed solution, here's my revised proposed solution:

    A failed attempt to enter the security questions causes an email to be sent to the address on record, warning you of the failed attempt and a link to reset the security questions. All automated, no need for support intervention (which will save NCSoft money), minor hassle for the user, the only "hole" is if the email address has also been hacked. This solution will require minimal programming time (they already have the ability to send a link to reset the security questions used by the support staff) and make everyone a lot happier.

    If they want to be strict about it, only allow this method of getting in to be used once. If they want to be completely paranoid, only make it available to accounts that have neither updated their security questions since the new system went into effect or the security questions have been successfully answered.

    But here's why the whole thing is completely misguided even if more notice had been provided and thus we all had time to know what our answers would be, why "no leeway" is the wrong attitude.

    (1) We're not dealing with military secrets here, we're not dealing with social security numbers or bank accounts or credit cards. For some people, the concern about their characters may be as high as their social security numbers or bank accounts or credit cards, and an option to require high security to enter the master account is. For most people, though, it's just an additional senseless hassle. And so the question is, when does the hassle become more than the value of what we're getting?

    (2) It's still simple text. Vulnerable to phishing attempts, vulnerable to keyloggers, potentially vulnerable to traffic watching. Worse, it's presented as "real world information" for which the right answer could be determined through facebook/twitter/other sources. Yes, really security conscious people could provide false answers, but most people AREN'T really security conscious.

    (3) You're dealing with humans. Humans really, really, really hate passwords, which is why most passwords are pretty simple and pretty breakable. They have pretty bad memories, and this system is particular finicky (Was it Boston, Boston Parkway, Boston Pkwy, Boston Pkwy.? Did I use caps or not). Barring the minority of people with superior memories, humans respond by writing down passwords giving a single source of failure. One person had them stored in gmail - which doesn't have this level of security.

    So they're putting paying customers through a lot of hassle that, in the end, will offer little extra security but probably future hassle. There's a term for that. "Bad choice". Particularly since there's always other things people could be doing with their money.
  25. 45 minutes on a non-800 number and I'm in. Very, very, very unhappy, but I'm in. This was not acceptable.

    BTW, it was fixed by clearing the security answers. I did need to enter my birthdate, but that I've had cause to think about in the 7 years since I set up the account.

    So, a recommended solution - any account that hasn't updated its security questions in more than, say, two years (or three years, the cutoff point is arbitrary) gets those security answers cleared. On login, when there are no security questions, suggest answering them, and suggest a link to set it. (If you want to be really pushy, bring up an alert to say "set it now, or wait for later" - I hate those but can understand the purpose.) Bingo bango, problem solved.