Johnny_Butane

Well the fact is, we are allowed X number of powers by level 50 and are given Y number extra of slots to put in them. It's not unreasonable to assume that originally the devs determined Y based on the value of X.

Now X has changed, increased by four. A case can be made for increasing Y to follow suit and I don't think asking for it should be out of the question. I've already stated I think 3-4 more slots by 50 would be plenty, but I'm not holding my breath or waiting on them.



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I wouldn't say 'perfectly'. The eyebeams of those characters are usually very potent. Our eyebeams are very 'meh'; a Medium damage single target attack with a little defense debuff.

Eyebeams in comics typically range from this...

...which I'd say was a High damage single target attack,


to these...



...which I'd peg as being Extreme DoT cones with knockback.


A case for the Incarnate system? You tell me.




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But it raises the question of who helped them do it since eveyone else was surprized.
The obvious answer would be H.E.L.P.eR., but that raises further questions.



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Question:

If you don't want to slot a power at all, even its default slot, why did you take it? I can't imagine why you'd use a power in such a state or that you couldn't find one aspect worth enhancing.

I supposed possibly you took it because you "had" to, because it was a prerequisite for the power(s) you actually wanted.

In that case, I'd suggest again that the devs take the power prerequisites off all regular, Patron and Ancillary pools and allow players to take a power as long as they meet the level requirment. You'd still be limited to a set number of pools, of course; no dipping into both Energy and Pyre Mastery for example.

City Traveler would still allow vets the advantage to get their travels at level 6, but everyone else could then take their travel power at 14 without needing one of the powers in the pool.



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This is not the place for it, but the devs as a collective are surely not stupid. The have demonstrated they are capable of planning, designing and executing many features and systems for this game. I have complete faith they could alter the name system to allow duplicate names and anticipate and solve the problems that would arise from that.

On an individual level however, some particular devs have demonstrated things I've called them on.

-Lack of knowledge and respect for the super hero genre.
-Prioritizing design based on outdated fantasy MMO mechanics at the expense of being more faithful to the superhero genre.
-Only ever reaching for low hanging fruit and short changing players on the execution systems and features that should have been more fleshed out.
-On occasion, hypocrisy.


That's a few off the top of my head. None of which impact the devs ability as a group to pull of a change to the naming system or not.



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I agree with this.

Outfit your character in a t-shirt and jeans and then run a tip mission with Frostfire and compare. That clashes more than any couple of old/new parts would. The citizen NPCs and enemy groups should really be re-created with player costume assets.

Glancing at Paragon Wiki, Crey, Family, Outcasts, PPD, Skulls, Hellions, Warriors, and Ghosts enemy groups could easily be updated and up-rezed with minimal work using mainly parts that are already in the costume editor for players.

Nemesis soliders, Lost, Vahzilok and some others would require new assets because I don't see equivalent parts available for them.

If the devs are going to be updating costume parts, they should kill two birds and update the NPCs and enemy groups to use them at the same time.



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No, it isn't. You can't trademark a common word. For example, both DC comics and Marvel comics have characters named 'Match'. One is a mutant with flame powers, and one is Superboy's evil twin. Long before Disney bought Marvel, Marvel had a character named 'Beast' and so did Disney.

Example: If Marvel put out a book about a superhero named 'Dog', they couldn't trademark the name in and of itself. They'd have to title the book 'Ultimate Adventures of Dog' or something and trademark that. Even if they trademarked the logo for the book 'Dog' in a distinctive font like the comic 'Spawn' for example, that doesn't stop someone else from using 'Dog' as a character name with a different font.

The catch is, Marvel can however hold a copyright on Phoenix's looks and backstory. Another company can have a character named Phoenix if it is distinct enough from Marvel's. In that same manner, legally speaking, you could have a CoH character named Wolverine provided he wasn't a mutant, wasn't a hundred years old, wasn't short and hairy, didn't have claws, didn't wear yellow, blue and brown, etc.*

The name filter in this game however, doesn't run on law. You can't make a bright pink mutated carp Electric Blaster named 'Spawn' even though if McFarlane said anything, it wouldn't hold up in court. The name is blocked to save GM's from getting support tickets and to save on legal fees if McFarlane wanted to lauch a frivolous case against them.


*Here's where Marvel gets tricky. Ever notice how varied and random Wolverine's backstory and history has been? He's been a super hero, a spy, an assassin, a mercenary, a night club owner, etc. This is (in part) Marvel trying to protect him. If another company was foolish enough to want to write about a character named Wolverine, they'd have to make sure he was in no way similar to any of those, lest Marvel could say "our Wolverine was a space cowboy too. Clearly they are infringing on our character."


So yeah, we still can't use Phoenix as a character name, but it's not because Marvel has trademarked the name.


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What about improved model detail? The tank tops and t-shirts in the game so are tight they look painted on()!

Even guys who wear tight shirts to show off their pecs have folding and bunching around their waist that texture doesn't suffice for.

On the female side of things, their tank tops and t-shirts cling like they came from a wet t-shirt contest, but without the see-through. Of course, I know some players who don't see that as a negative thing...



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I personally lean towards this option.

First, even if you think the new part looks better in every way, somebody will disagree and prefer the old option. All you can hope for is the vast majority prefer the new costume part and the people using the old clashing pieces are few and far between.

Second, as long as the new menus to separate the old and new pieces are designed intelligently, they shouldn't be that much harder to navigate. Personally, I don't try to fly through the costume editor at speed when creating a costume. It's not a rush process. Either I know the part I'm navigating too, or I'm flipping through options.

Third, there's something to consider that goes with my first point:
Did you ever read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud? You know how it's easier for people to project themselves onto a simple smiley face instead of a more detailed drawing? I feel something similar happens with costume parts (and not just faces). It's easier for a player to find a costume piece that "works" for what they want to use it for when it's less detailed.
When you guys update the piece and add more model and texture detail, it may not be the detail that the player was filling in with their mind.


I have two friends who purposefully use the static tails for concept reasons on a couple of their characters.



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I can't respond to several different ongoing conversations at once and effectively communicate in all of them.

I'm not sold on name purges.

Chase says it best:

Also, name purges as the devs do them usually do nothing for the person who camps a name with an active account. Even if you purge characters who haven't been played in X number of days, people will still log them for 30 seconds just to beat the system.

And the fact of the matter is, I'm on both sides of that issue:
I'm sitting on a few names too, for when I have the time to devote to launching them/making a build push. I sit on them because I don't want to lose the name, but at the same time, I'd have no qualms about sharing them with someone if I can still use them too.


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One of the Incarnate slots shown before is a PBAoE team buff. This slot comes in various flavours of buffs. IIRC, one of them was +Regen and +Recovery.

Now, if this buff afffects the caster as well, and if the up/downtime is reasonable, it may be an alternative using as many slots for Stamina and Health as an Incarnate.

So that's a "maybe"?



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Lots of gold on the surface. Looks very nice for some people. Not so much fun if you disagree.
Now where have I seen that kind of thing before before?

"Looks can be deceiving..."




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I've been told as far back as middle school that my writing "reads" very differently from person to person for some reason. What seems innocuous to one person comes across hostile to another. I can assure you I've not been intentionally spewing venom in this thread.

I am however getting a little vexed that some people seem to be intentionally going out of their way to misconstrue what I've been saying.



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No, but I bet the devs do, and they're the ones who floated the idea at HeroCon, likey for a reason.




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This would just result in a wave of people re-subbing a week before the scrub just to secure their name before vanishing again at the end of the month.

Even if they don't use the name any more and even if they had never intended to come back before hearing about the purge, they will return just to keep the name.
That's human nature.

You can see how much people fuss over being asked to just to possibly share a name in this thread. Losing a name even though they never use it? Yeah, they'll pony up $15, some just out of spite. Then they'll come to the forum and complain about it.



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Then they should back up their opinion with well thought-out counter arguments that hold up to scrutiny.

So far most of the counterarguments have been fear-based and irrational. Fear of being mistaken for a griefer and having a GM take action against you. Fear of being blacklisted by all teams forever. Etc. These were easily refuted; the system doesn't work that way, the devs know better and have likey anticipated such things beforehand especially when people have pointed out such issues before.

The fact that it keeps coming up and has persisted should be a red flag that the issue is far from closed and a significant number of people aren't happen with the system as it is now.


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Well put.


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The crowd, like a number of people in this thread, reacted with a knee jerk response with no time to give any thought to the matter and without any information or facts.
That is not something to make a decision based on.

Given information and time to think, they may well have given a different answer. They may have found that the fears they had were unfounded and based on misconceptions.


For that matter, I don't see a "majority" in this thread on either side of the fence. The number of people posting in this thread or at that QA session versus the number of people playing the game, is very tiny.

The reasons people are giving for being against freeing up the names don't really hold up to scrutiny. A number of them are based on wild assumptions and others mostly emotionally fueled from what I see.

Besides, a number of things come to mind that "the majority" on these forums railed against that turned out OK. Merging the markets. Unlimited respecs. Cross-faction ATs. ED. Even free Fitness for crying out loud.

If the devs brought up changing the naming system, chances are it's FOR something they want to do, like in preparation for cross-server teaming. Meaning I'm less about trying to sway the devs here and more about trying to figure out why people would be against this and maybe shoot down some of their fears and show them their concerns are perhaps misplaced.


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Considering others have posted in favour of allowing duplicate names in this thread and previous threads, and considering the devs offered to do just that, yes, other people obviously do mind.


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This is a fallacy.

The fact there are other names available is irrelevant. There are always going to be "names" available, even if they are just random letters. The question is how far do you have to go from the name you want before it's not the name you want anymore. You personally may not have minded going 'Jack Wild', but you do not speak for everyone.

Accept that other people do mind. Since you are very flexible about names, how would the system allowing duplicate character names hurt you? You seem all too willing to just use another name if you found too many people using one you like.

If someone wants to use the name Shadow Lord, they should be allowed to. They should not be blocked from having it because four years ago someone took the name, got it to level 25 and then walked away from the game never to return. That's not something a name purge would affect. Nor would it be fair if that person did come back and found themselves Generic'ed.

The preferable alternative, the one that serves both people equally and hurts both the least, is to allow duplicate names.


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He contentds that with duplicate names, the wrong people would get ignored, and further that it would snowball because his his theoretical freinds would ignore that person just because their freind said to.

I countered that such a situation would snowball regardless of the naming system if he truly thinks people can't think for themselves.

Player chat logs show more than what's just in the chat box.

So why would you assume they wouldn't change the chat logs to show the global names after making a change to the name system? They likely would. The developers are not stupid, after all.

Furthermore, the server logs are what a GM goes by, not the chat logs you have locally, which can be fabricated. A GM may request a player's logs to show him where in the server logs to look(which I've never actually seen happen), but the GM will not take player chat logs as fact.

What your and Mandu's counter argument comes back is the knee jerk assumption that chat logs wont show global names. They likely would if changes were made to the name system. The devs are not that short sighted.

Beyond that, if some people aren't going to check someone's global name and are just going to blindly ignore someone because their friends tell them to, altering the naming system won't change that either way.


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If you blindly add people to your ignore list just because your friend told you to, your problem is bigger than the game allowing duplicate names.

As in your example, TODAY with no change to the system, Hyperstrike could tell you and everyone in your global channel that anyone was a jerk with no evidence and he could even specify a Global name just because he has a grudge against a guy he teamed with. The end result would be the same.

That means the flaw isn't with the nameing system, or even the ignore system, the flaw is with you and your friends not thinking critically for yourselves. Changing the name system won't change that either way. It would be no different than it is now.

And frankly, if they are that sheep-like and gullible, I doubt I'd mind being on their ignore list.



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