Garielle

Ummm... I dunno what to say to this. Are you implying that the people who design the interface are the same ones that add products (which are already created) to the database? Or are you, perhaps, implying that adding items to the market somehow requires a change to the market's UI?

To add to this, if your husband has applied any of his purchased (or bonus) slots to a sever already, then his additional global slots need to be used on that server.

In my case, I have 6 extra slots, 4 of which are applied to Freedom already, and 2 on Virtue. If I were to drop to premium, I would be able to access 8 characters, but at least 4 of those would have to be on Freedom, and at least 2 on Virtue.

As for the reward token, they are not awarded at the end of the billing cycle, but rather a more convoluted date that has to do with the amount of time the account has been playable. As mentioned in this post by Zwillinger, it is a little more difficult to pinpoint this date.

Transferring SGs to other SERVERS is something that the developers (specifically Positron) have said they would like to see made possible. Beyond that, there is no word on when this may be made possible. As for transferring them between factions, I don't think any mention of that has ever been made, and given that the alignment system already takes SG membership into account, I don't know that I would be too optimistic about it happening.

I don't think there's any "if" about it. There's no reason, looking at historical evidence, to expect that it would NOT be invaded. As for giving some indication that they are trying, I think that's part of the motivation for trying to rekickstart the "Devs Choice" arcs by selecting new "Devs Choice" arcs on a regular basis.

I remember the comment you are referring to in one of the dev webcasts, I believe it was made by Positron or perhaps War Witch. If I recall though, they were addressing the question of whether the DVD edition stuff would ever be made into Paragon Rewards (ie. Free).

I think part of the issue is the fact that the stuff in the DVD editions was sold as "exclusive". Unlike pre-order items (which are already Paragon Rewards now), there was additional money paid for this "exclusive" access. Those making the decision aren't willing to give those who paid that additional money the proverbial middle finger, nor are they willing to compensate them.

I have seen the idea of a flag expressed by others as well, and on the surface, it's a good idea. The problem with a "Story" tag is moderating it. Who would assign the tag? The author? People who play the arc?

If it's the authors and story arcs show up more frequently in search results, then what's to stop farm writers from marking their farms as stories in order to game the system? Have someone in charge of moderating use of the flag? If they are going to do that, why not have someone just lock the farms altogether? Initially, that's what they did, and they realized there was simply no way to keep up with the number of farms being put into the system, so human moderation isn't really an answer either.

Okay, so let's just reverse it. Have players have the ability to flag arcs as farms. The flaw there is, once again, if the story arcs get better search placement, what's to stop other authors (either farm authors OR story authors) from flagging a story arc as a farm just to get better placement for their own arc? Please keep in mind, this is the same system where story arcs already get 1 star ratings for not being farms.

Bottom line, if some people can see someway to game the system, they will. The whole reason the farms are in the MA system to begin with is people looking for the shortest, easiest, path from 1 to 50.

So what's the answer? Haven't figured that one out yet.

Assuming that by "normal missions", you mean normal contacts, outside of MA, you still CAN do it on normal missions. The change was specific to MA. What did notice is that this also affects Non-Self Cast buffs and DEBUFFs. Essentially, if you go into an MA arc and get debuffed, you can exit, re-enter, and the debuff will go poof. That's not to say you won't be debuffed AGAIN, but hey...

It's nearly as good (but not quite as good) as the way missions in general used to work. When you exited, you were instantly healed to full health, so you could duck out for a quick heal at low levels if your rest was on cooldown.

I would agree with you except that we know that whatever content involves the target has already been rewritten to account for said character's demise. With Back Alley Brawler, this would mean revamping the starting experience again. While that may get a nod or two, I think it's a bit early to be revamping that already, and BaBs is an integral part of that story. Not only in artwork and story, but he's there fighting in the zone.

That's really all this is. Heroes teaming up for a task that is of a magnitude that requires it. This is nothing new to CoH. Since their inception, Task Forces (not including MA arcs, Ouroboros Flashbacks, and SSAs, none of which are actually Task Forces) have always required a team in order to start them.

Yep, you can find a group willing to help you start a TF and ask them to leave the team after it starts so you can solo it, but that hasn't changed either. If you can find 11 people to help you start the trial and leave, and you are up to the challenge, go for it. If someone does though, please don't whine that it's too hard to solo. That's already a known fact. It's intentional. It's the way it's designed to work.

What you fail to acknowledge is how the developers envisioned the MA system being used. They intended it to be a storytelling device. A way for players to create their own stories, from their own imaginations, and share them with other players. If their original vision had been accurate, MA would have been a boon for the game. It would have been the source of a constant influx of new content coming in from the player base without any additional staff costs for development.

The ability to level from 1 to 50 does not mean, nor should it, the ability to level from 1 to 50 in a few hours.

In the beginning, they attempted to identify farms and lock them. For that reason, those who created the farms usually asked that they NOT be rated, it order to avoid calling attention to them. They realized this was a futile effort since weeding them out simply required too many man hours, and was therefore too costly, so they stopped bothering.

This, logically, lead to the conclusion that using MA for farming was perfectly acceptable. This lead to the creation of even more farms. The number of farms far outweighed the number of actual "story" based arcs, so those players who are more interested in story content stopped bothering. A good number of casual story writers slowly gave up as well, as it wasn't worth the time and effort to put together a solid story that no one was going to play. There are a few exceptions to this, but most of the people who loved the idea of creating actual stories have had their hopes dashed.

Oh, I used to be allergic to chocolate as well. In fact, when I was younger, I was pretty much allergic to EVERYTHING. Including eggs, chocolate, peanut butter, all forms of milk (including my own mother's milk..as an INFANT you pervs!), bees, cats, poison ivy (my reaction was far worse than most), ummm... I am sure there is more that I can't recall right off. The cabinet under my bathroom sink was always stocked with sample cases of liquid benadryl given to us by my pediatrician.

I have a level 50(+2) Demons/Therm that I thoroughly enjoy. Went with Fire Mastery for my Epic Pool (Fireblast, Fireball, and Rise of the Phoenix) and of course, the fire based Judgement power. Tons of fun.

After reading this thread, however, I think I may have to come up with a good concept for a Demons/Time MM. One more for my list of "toons to create".

You can't find it cause I burned it. I am highly allergic to peanut butter, so if I were to accidentally steal a peanut butter cookie while I was stealing all your OTHER cookies, it could be fatal. You wouldn't want my death on your hands, now would you?

Yes.

While, the dev and community teams at Paragon Studios definitely enjoy poking a little fun with fake news on April Fool's Day, this is November, so that's not the case here.

Actually, they have. They avoid doing major patches this close to the weekend because, as has been mentioned, it generally means that some folks (or perhaps many folks) may need to work through the weekend in order to address unforeseen issues which may arise.

This should serve as an indication that whatever they are patching is something that needed to be addressed quickly. As there are no glaringly obvious major bugs directly related to most recent patch, this probably means they discovered some sort of exploitable hole which they felt the need to plug quickly. This is further evidenced by the fact that there haven't been any "Check Out What We're Giving You Today" announcements, as far as I have seen.

Yes, there is. Which leaves me feeling a bit like...

If I am not mistaken, that is the same account wide badge that was given at the end of May during the first Praetorian invasion event. Looks like this is a "second chance" for folks who didn't have active subscriptions at the time.