LightBlack

I would join the channel. I do have to ask though, what of the people who go from VIP to Premium and back?

Going back to the initial discussion, I think the probationary/ temporary suspension system would be more appropriate. If a player demonstrates an extensive pattern of copying trademarked materials, they should be more severely punished. Banning is the ultimate punishment the devs can dish out, but I don't know if I would say it's appropriate for two or three instances that are deemed as infringement.

If the method of unlocking names is as you say it is Bill (and obviously I really know how it occurs), I would then move to say that the devs should unlock names on a more regular basis at least.

I mean, if the last time they ran the script was in 2007 (again, I have no idea), the parameters for the script could and arguably should be changed, likely or not.

I just want to land on the darn thing! However, I don't feel that vehicles are really a concern considering how well our current selection of travel powers work. I know this isn't what you wanted at all, but what about a selection of vehicles we could keep in our SG bases?

Hmm, I think what Brain is referring to as a flat amount would more correctly be identified as a one time fee rather than the continuous subscription fee.

In regards to whether or not Brain's suggestion would work, I think the key issue (as many have alluded to) is the necessity of the reward merits. While useful, they are by no means necessary. You can already have a pretty substantial game experience without using them as a free player. Would it be more satisfying if you could use them? Certainly. And that's the enticement to move up the rewards ladder.

However, they can't exactly give away too much to the Freemium players because that would undermine the value of being a VIP player (as IBtT mentioned). There's a certain fine line that they have to balance on with the hybrid model.

The point of a continuous fee though is to slowly reel in customers, not give them everything immediately. While they could bring in more players by giving away more, the point isn't to bring in more players, it's to bring in more customers. They are running a business after all.

And tangentially, in response to Agent White, I believe they are changing some of the benefits that you get at lower tiers of the rewards ladder because they are kind of necessary to the game. I hope I'm not the only one here who has done this, but I have gotten frustrated with the constant stream of blind invites from Free players and at times essentially told them to send tells. Of course, Free players can't send tells so they're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place there. Hence, IMO the current changes that are being considered are likely to establish a better community for Free players to become customers in.

Thanks for the wishes guys. Regarding the name and Dark/ Dark, I would argue that the name was awesome before that, especially if you're interested in physics, radiation, and photonics. Regarding finding the person's global to send them a tell, I can't find the global in game and it's possible that the account itself has been inactive for a while (hence my call for a name reservation change policy over on the suggestions board).

Is there a name you want that is already taken? Why not ask for it to be released?

I'm going to start, I've always wanted the name BlackLight. If you have it and read this, please let me know if you would be willing to give it up! My global is @Daemonas.

Thanks!

Let's be clear here, the held assumption by most people against the suggested change is that players will return.

The fact of the matter is that not all players who leave the game will return. Furthermore, those who do "return" do not necessarily stay.

For those of us who haven't had problems finding names, I'm happy for you. However, simply because it hasn't been an issue for you doesn't make it an absolute non-issue. While I agree that there is always the opportunity to find a variation of a name, sometimes just that one name is the name for you.

As a short aside in response to Kitsune Knight, I think there's a big difference in losing your name while active and losing your name while inactive: if you're active, you're contributing to the game and its community; if you're inactive, you're not contributing to the game directly and you may be contributing to the community.

With any policy change such as what I'm suggesting, there will always be tradeoffs. I understand that most people are okay with the current name policy because, as many of you have implicitly demonstrated, it's not a major issue in our lives (but I would argue that that doesn't render it non-problematic). It's unlikely that current players will leave the game if they don't have the name they want. However, having players who have left the game return is also probability based, and really, I don't think any of us can identify what that probability is (I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong on this).

What we're weighing against current player satisfaction (and I believe this is a small amount of satisfaction) is potential returning player dissatisfaction (which would arguably possibly be a large amount of dissatisfaction). I think that the lack of contribution by potential returning players is ultimately outweighed by the contribution of current players, especially in an F2P game that has been F2P for a some amount of time.

I would argue that by the end of this year, Freedom will have been out long enough for the people who are likely to return to have returned by then.

My email grace period idea was going along with what Memphis Bill suggested. I realize that emails will change (I've changed mine multiple times during the time I've played CoX) and that people won't always be able to access their account emails (I had some problems when I was temporarily overseas). Additionally, I agree that email doesn't function correctly 100% of the time. Perhaps calling it a grace period would be wrong since it won't really be a "grace period," but that doesn't mean that simply because one solution doesn't work for everyone that we shouldn't pursue it.

For those who are likely to return, you say that people have popped in and out over the years during the free reactivation weekends. Well, now they can pop in whenever they want. It's not too much to ask that they log in once or twice a year to keep the names they want.

Furthermore, given that names are required to be unique in the game, the fact that we are continuously locking up names is problematic for players who are actually playing. What's happening is that the current system is preventing actual participants (some paying) from fully enjoying things for the possibility that some people will return.

The reason why I'm suggesting the change is that since my first day of playing over five years ago, I've wanted a specific name, which I would still like. Five years later, that name is still reserved, possibly by an account which has been inactive during all of that time. Should we really be locking up names for that long from people who are currently supporting the game for those who haven't supported the game in so long?

Certainly we'd want to get players to return. I guess since we're talking about emailing/ reaching out to those players, we could create a grace period following the implementation of the policy asking people to log on to keep whatever names they have reserved.

While I certainly think that a spell-checking device would be useful for many players (I would even say necessary for some), if something is implemented, players would have to have the opportunity to turn it off. My argument for this is that there are players who write accents and intonations into their character biographies. Also, character names aren't necessarily real words. I know that I don't want the game giving me the red squiggly every time I type in a friend's character's name.

I don't know if anyone has discussed this in a while, but I feel like with Freedom and the easy levels provided by certain in game tasks (DFB), it's time that we altered the name reservation system again.

To the best of my knowledge, our current name reservation system dates back to 2007. Any name held by a character over level five seems to basically be eternally reserved. With tasks such as DFB, it isn't that hard for players to level a character past twenty.

I have no idea if this is even possible, but I think we should have a tiered system for name reservation based on account activity. For example, if your account has been inactive for 90 days, the names of your characters up to level ten are up for grabs. If your account has been inactive for 180 days, then the names of characters up to level twenty-five are up for grabs. If your account has been inactive for over a year, then the names of all of your characters are up for grabs.

Since the game is now F2P, it's easy enough to log in at your leisure to make sure you keep your names. However, we have names locked away by people who haven't even played in multiple years. What are your thoughts on this?

I'm not too concerned about the unexpected downtime, I too have only experienced it a negligible number of times. However, I am curious about whether they'll be running these checks on a daily basis over the weekend.

So it's just today? Or is it everyday during double exp? Also, it seems at least one of the servers already went down earlier today (though without warning) ...

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...72#post4152872

Came up in Red Text. Since when did we go back to daily server maintenance?