Kosmos

They managed to sucker me into buying $15 worth of points because I wasn't patient enough to wait until the 28th to respec my Stone Tanker and I wanted to use 25 Enh Boosters for that. Four days after the purchase, and just two after I actually did the respec, I got my vet token. So I wont be spending any more money in the Market for quite some time.

As for the number of tokens. Here's a summary of their accounting as I understand it (NOTE: I'm not endorsing this accounting, just listing what I think it is):

1. One token for every 3 complete months of Veteran time on the date of Head Start launch (Sept 13th).
2. One token for every complete year of Veteran time.
3. One token for having at least one boxed set. (Prior to I21 Head Start only?)
4. One token for having an active account at Head Start launch. This token is for Vet time and was awarded early with Head Start launch. The early award is what is causing many people to go more than a month without receiving another Vet time token.
5. One token at the end of every complete month of active account time since Sept 23rd. (I list it as the 23rd here, rather than I21 launch because of the recent token awards on Oct 23rd.)
6. One token for any account created after I21 launch.
7. One token for the first purchase in the Paragon Market.
8. One token for every 1200 points purchased in the Paragon Market.

Points D, E and F are the confusing ones.

D and E because of the difficult to understand timings; both getting the token at the end of the paid period instead of when you pay (as many of us expected), and even more so because the award dates aren't matching up with any previously meaningful date (i.e. Veteran time, billing dates, or launch dates).

F is confusing because I think many people assumed it to be "One token for every account". This latter assumption has led most of those I know to count a token from F and therefore conclude they are short a token from D or E. [Edit:] This assumption is also very easy to understand: given that F2P accounts get the first token merely for existing, presuming all accounts would get a token before even starting to consider vet time and boxed sets is, in my opinion, quite natural. I only concluded it wasn't the case after my discussion with the Game Support.

After reading this I logged in to check and I received a token today too. They had said "approximately" Oct 28th but I can't come up with any reasonable explanation as to why I'd get a token on the 23rd. At this point I have to conclude that even NCSoft Customer Service doesn't have a firm grasp of the facts regarding this, and whoever is in charge of implementing the rewards system is likely to blame for that.

I should have said the token due for a period encompassing Sept 28th was awarded on or before Sept 28th. Most were actually awarded with the Head Start.

I wasn't sure whether that initial active account token was intended to be a bonus or the September token myself. At first I thought the latter, but as I totaled up my tokens for the support request, I too noted that every account, even F2P, got one token, so I had some doubts and thought I might actually be 2 tokens short. However, customer service definitely stated that we got the Sept token early, so that active account token seems to have been considered the Sept token for non-F2P players and I was down to 1 token short. And then they stated that VIP Reward Tokens are to be awarded at the end of our paid month, not when we pay for it. So while I am going to get one more token even if I let my account lapse, by their policy, I'm not owed it until the 28th.

Like both of you, Selina and Morgan, I have some concern that VIPs and Premiums apparently didn't get a token just for having an account, active or not, as F2P did. But Paragon Studios was pretty generous in their token awards at launch, so I'm not going to complain about it.


It's just this sort of confusion - caused by NCSoft's policy and contradictory statements (presumably due to technical problems) - that leads me to believe that they're going to continue to get customer service requests until they change the policy. Everyone I know expected to get a token on their bill date this month - as they were initially told they would - not on the 28th. And all thought they were going to be short a token for the intervening period, not that they had an extra from their previous bill date until Sept 28th.

I'm not 100% sure on that one, but probably not, as by their accounting method you'd only have 18 days of account time towards the next month's token. If you reupped later you should then get the next token after only around 12 days instead of a full month however.

Let me reiterate that in their accounting they moved up the reward dates to the 28th, not back, by giving the token due for any paid monthly period encompassing Sept 28th on the 28th instead of at the end of the period. So you actually got the token you were due Oct 15th on Sept 28th and will get the one you would have been due on Nov 15th on Oct 28th and so on. So understand that you aren't getting shorted a token. With their accounting you get all the tokens you should plus, in your case, 18 days towards an extra.

My peeve is when you get them, not how many. As I told customer support, no reasonable assessment of what I got in the way of tokens could lead me to believe I've been cheated. If I treat Inner Inspiration as my last VR (which I was to earn Sept 1st) then I still got the entire Celestial Armor set as a free bonus. And then received a token I used for 25 Enhancement Boosters on Sept 28th instead of Oct 1st, when I would have been due that token under the old accounting. And that leaves out all the added charges of Experienced and so on. That part of the new Paragon Rewards Plan was great and any vet complaining about that is, in my opinion, off base.

My quibble is one of principle regarding their policy of when to award "vet" tokens. Since they've essentially told me they're going to give me a reward for being a loyal customer, why do I have to wait for it when I've already proven that loyalty? I paid for a month on Oct 6th and there is no practical scenario in which I won't get a token on Oct 28th (approximately). Since I'm already guaranteed to be a loyal customer to that date and beyond why are they withholding the token? I hope it's not because someone is confused about what constitutes the critical expression of customer loyalty: I21: Freedom should make it quite clear to anyone that it is the paying, not the playing.

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that technical difficulties must play the principal role in their decisions regarding this.

It seems everyone is getting the same response, perhaps even a form letter like response.

When they wrote "a calendar month later" to me it was poorly worded and the literal interpretation would have meant Nov 28th. However, everything else they wrote implied that they actually meant that you receive your Paragon Reward Token for being a VIP a calendar month after your bill date except for those with active accounts on or before Sept 28th. Those players receive their token as if Sept 28th was their bill date. So those of us with active accounts at that time have had our VR date reset to the 28th of the month.

The one token given for an active account at launch was considered to be an early award of the Sept 28th token for those that had active accounts. So that, for example, my having a bill date of Oct 6th means, to them, that I'm now actually getting my tokens about a week earlier than I was due. Personally, I still think I'm getting them 22 days late, as I consider having to wait to get a token I earned when I paid a lame practice. Once I've paid I will get the token eventually, so they're holding back for a month something they know they will eventually give me.

I hope the only reason they're doing it is because of technical considerations and not because some woolly policy maker thinks of it as a new type of Veteran Reward. Given that they originally said all tokens associated with a multi-month subscription would be awarded up front leads me to believe that it is indeed a technical limitation and not just some fuzzy thinking. Hopefully someone at Paragon Studios is already working to implement the original plan of up front awards.

They are treating Reward Tokens as rewards for two separate situations, presumably due to having two different software systems handling the awards. You get tokens in these ways:

1. For purchases in the Paragon Market. Here, if you make a purchase that qualifies for a token reward you get it as soon as their software is able to process the award.
   
2. For a replacement of the old Veteran Rewards. In this case you don't get the token when you pay - even though you are supposedly guaranteed that you will eventually get it once you have paid - but only after actually playing out the month you paid for. I suspect that they may be using the old VR software to handle this, and that's why it is only awarded at the end of the month. In my opinion, if that's the case, then they need to ditch that software ASAP so that VIPs don't have "to sing for their supper" for a month to get the token, given that we supported CoH with a $15 purchase just as the Premiums did. I suspect that they may actually have intended to do this and had technical difficulties that have resulted in the current situation, but Customer Service certainly isn't singing that tune. They gave me a clear-cut response that I'll get the token on the 28th. Which I took to mean that they're rewarding the tokens to VIPs exactly as they did VRs with the initial date being Sept 28th with delays from that date if you're account has lapsed in the mean time.

Sorry Z, but the only thing I can think of to reduce bloat without making things more opaque rather than less is to add an additional layer of menus where useful, as has been suggested by others.

One thing I do see a lot of confusion over however is the "Development -> Gameplay / Technical Issues & Bugs" forum. In my opinion this should be changed to "Bug Reports" only, with the rest of the threads/posts moved to Player Questions. Adding a link to the official NCSoft Technical Support site somewhere prominent on the forums would be a nice addition as well. Player Questions might also benefit from being broken up into subforums.

Simplifying by removing useful detail does not make things easier to understand, but rather harder. It becomes obfuscation instead of clarification. Grouping ATs with vastly dissimilar play styles such as Controllers, Defenders and Masterminds under a single heading is a perfect example of this. The distinction between those ATs is NOT clutter, it's information.

Even arbitrary groupings can be bad, such as that of Brutes with Tankers instead of with Scrappers. Personally, I find the Brute forum posters to have more in common with Scrapper forum denizens than Tanker forumites. So arbitrarily combining forums just means those Brute/Scrapper types now have to sort through two forums that include significant amounts of data that doesn't interest them instead of having just two forums largely in line with their interests

In my opinion the one AT, one forum approach is in fact the simplest and easiest to understand. I can see ATs that share both powerset classes being grouped, such as Corruptors and Defenders and all four Melee ATs (however, in this latter case, I think the clutter in the one combined forum may be worse than the trouble of having four separate ones), but beyond that you're definitely making things worse rather than better.

Well, Blasters don't have as direct a comparison to the other two. They're pure damage and easily outpace either solo and duo (in the general case). On teams the gap in damage isn't so wide as the Corr and Def can multiply the damage output of teammates. So on big teams a Def can effectively add more damage to the team than a Blaster can. Consider this simple scenario:

We have a team of 7 doing 1000 DPS (just to pick a round number - and counting multiple targets hit by AoEs). The team can either add a Blaster that does 250 DPS or a Rad Def that does 100 DPS and can keep AM and EF up for effectively 50% coverage. Call the AM a 5% buff (25% of base, but up only half the time and assuming people are already at 150% of base due to enhancements and other buffs) to team damage output and EF a net 15% buff to damage taken by foes. You get (1000 + 100) * 1.05 * 1.15 = 1328 > 1250 = 1000 + 250.

And the Blaster brings not much beyond the damage output while the Def - or Corr - would bring a lot more besides damage. However, I should add that most 7 man teams already have everything covered, so it may not matter much. That's part of what keeps Defs from being over-powered: Their individual power is greatest in just those situations where their specific contribution is likely to matter the least. While the reverse is true of Blasters: Their contribution is at it lowest in those situations where an individual's specific contribution matters the least.


Now, to the more direct comparison: Corruptors are generally better than Defenders for damage on teams and solo versus hard targets. Defenders are better for buffs/debuffs in all situations. This is a generalization of course. For example, Sonic Blast Defenders tend to do as much damage as Sonic Blast Corrs in most situations because of the higher -Res values, meaning that if you're picking Sonic Blast you're likely to be better off making a Def.

For the specific build you're looking at I can recommend the Fire/Dark Corr. Mine is sitting at 44 right now and will be my next 50. If I had the option to make a Def instead - as will now be the case in I21 - I might have, but probably not (especially since Defs are getting the 1.67s cast time version of Fire Blast with the half-second pause at the end that annoys the heck out of me). The main advantage of the Def is just better -ToHit, and I think a Corr has plenty with Darknest Night, Fearsome Stare and Dark Servant. The key being that Tar Patch is the same for both ATs. So I'd probably stick with the Corr if I had to do it over again, even though I generally prefer Defs.

For anything but SR it's good to have a little bit extra as protection against cascading failure from -Def. SR has such high DDR it laughs at -Def. Pretty much everything else can use that margin of safety against -Def so that a single -Def attack sneaking through doesn't double the chance of the next one hitting and so on.

That's not the staged download. The new character creator enforces the 4:3 ratio no matter what.

Same, on both my Dom and Controller.

For a bit there he was very indiscrete, being a mere smear on the wall.

(Sorry, couldn't resist the lame math/spelling joke - my fingers insist on typing "discrete" almost every time I really mean "discreet".)

(Emphasis added)

Neonates? Are there lots of newborns casting divination spells in Paragon City these days? You didn't by any chance mean "neophytes" did you?

If it's not working in pets then it's a bug. I'll try to remember to test it out next time I'm on Beta (I don't have anyone with Gravitic on live).

The secondary effect debuff lowers mobs' Status Protection (including KB prot) causing Knockdown to turn into Knockback. I think it normally takes 2 applications to cause this to happen versus evens. However, nothing will turn Knockup into Knockback; higher final mag KU just means higher sailing foes.

He might have meant you can get the helmets at level 20 (it used to be 50) when you unlock the Villain Epic Archetypes. But in that case you can only use them on the appropriate Archetype's Arachnos costumes (Wolf and Mystic helms with Wolf Spider costumes, Bane helm with Bane Spider costume and Blood Widow/Fortunata with Widows).

Yeah, I actually bugged the implementation in beta because of this not so intuitive design. What I didn't like is that there is no border between the rightmost two of the three panes in the window (the three panes are the menu, tree and recipe list), making it seem like there are only two panes. And the scroll wheel only works the scroll bar if focus is on the right-most pane. So my first experience was to hover the mouse cursor over what I thought was the right panel (but was actually a middle pane) and scroll. Which did nothing, making me think there was nothing to scroll.