Lothic

My opinion on new unique Origin powers/bonuses is the same as it's always been: If the Devs are going to start letting us respec our characters' Origins then I wouldn't have any problem with this idea. If we can't respec our Origins in response to this then HECK NO!

It's as simple as that.

I've lived without the Passport badge for like 5 years now. I think I can cope if it remains out of reach.

I only thing I don't like is when people come up with ideas for badges that have no basis in the precedence of this game. The Devs are far more likely to redefine the requirements for Passport after this server list merge than create a new "cloned" badge like the OP suggested. *shrugs*

No matter how bad people generally thought these movies were the literal "bottomline" is all that matters.
If these movies did in fact make a statistically significant profit they will be ripe rebooting/remaking sooner or later.

I assume you mean the Vet attack powers with this. They are balanced the way they are because they have to be "generic" powers regardless of AT or level used. As Xzero45 implied if they made them cost little or no END they'd probably be nerfed down to do so little damage they'd be worthless. *shrugs*

The intended way? You do realize that when Passport was first added to the game it was INTENDED to be a badge that anyone would get if they simply transferred from one server to another. It didn't have anything to do with NA to EU transfers.

When people first heard about that they complained that would mean we were basically just "paying for a badge" via the cost to move a character from one server to another. Based on that criticism the Devs decided to REDEFINE the Passport badge to be one you'd get if you made that one time server transfer from NA to EU years ago.

Bottomline the Passport badge was ALREADY changed once. There's really no reason why it can't be redefined to something else.

This is true. I have run across a few NA players who were granted Passport "by mistake" and the Devs never did anything to correct it. If some NA people have it already it would not be a big deal at all for others to have it as well.

There's nothing "exclusive" about Passport and there never was.

As I already said I knew this movie was just the first of a two parter so I did cut it some slack for that. When the last movie comes out I'm actually hoping I'll be able to watch them both back-to-back on the theory that as a combined experience it'll all "make sense".

But at this point if what you're telling me is that the TDH1 movie was actually an "improvement" over the book then I can almost guarantee I'll never get around to reading it. I still contend that as a movie-based experience it was one of the worst Potter movies for me. *shrugs*

I'd agree good spelling and grammar won't directly help you do those other things.
But it will make you look more intelligent and credible in a forum such as this.

When the typed word is all you have to go on in this arena there's no point in jumping in with a flawed arsenal at your disposal.

Working in a engineering/development environment always means having to balance doing the best job possible versus all of the costs/risks involved. Again all I'll say is that what the Devs are doing here with this server merge is not perfect, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it's the closest thing to "realistically perfect" that this situation will allow.

From a purely "software technology" point of view I have no doubt that this game could handle more than 5 costume slots per character. We not only have your point about VEATs having 6 but there's the ever-present example of Champions Online's ability to allow its players to have far more than 5 if they want them.

Now obviously I understand there would be coding involved to make this happen in CoH, and I'm even willing to suspect that the effort involved would not be trivial. If it were simple it probably would have happened years ago.

Still I want this added to the game not only because many people would have fun with it but on a certain level it actually bothers me that Champions Online does ANYTHING better than this game does and I believe in this area they are currently beating us. If I can motivate our Devs to do this as a matter of pride I'm more than willing to push that button.

I have a character who has done all the costume slot missions on both sides and did not get any more costume slots to open up. I did this on a Controller - if a VEAT is somehow "bugged" to allow more than 6 right now then I would be pleasantly amazed.

That's what I've been trying to tell people here. What the Devs are doing here IS the easiest and quickest way for them to do it. It's ALL for purely business reasons. There's nothing "flawed" about it.

Consider this: Let's assume for the sake of argument that there are two ways to accomplish this server merge task. Method #1 costs X amount of time and money but it will likely upset some people because of global name conflicts. Method #2 costs 2X amount of time and money but it has the advantage of not upsetting anyone because it manages to treat every account fairly on a case-by-case basis. Bottomline this game would LOSE more money if they go with Method #2 than they will if they go with Method #1 and potentially suffer a few people rage-quitting. Which method do you think our Devs will use. That's right, it'll be the method that's the CHEAPEST for them, period.

I understand the way the Devs are doing it here is not the "fairest" way to do it and I agree that the EU players that will be affected by this have a legitimate reason to be upset.

But from the "how would a group of Devs who have to live under a real world engineering situation handle this task?" point of view of I can at least look at what they are doing here and recognize that it's very likely a compromise between doing it the simplest way possible versus upsetting the least amount of people.

Is it perfect? Of course not.
Will some people be upset? Of course they will.

But unfortunately our Devs do not have the luxury of having all the time/money they need to do things perfectly. No software developer in the business of making profits ever has that kind of environment to work in. *shrugs*

Exactly. These people are running a BUSINESS after all. If it's cheaper for them to do it this way they'll do it, even if it comes with the risk of pissing a few people off here or there. It's not perfect or fair, but then again they aren't getting paid for perfect and fair. *shrugs*

No, I'm not proud of you because you obviously didn't consider that it's probably EASIER to merge a smaller group of players into a larger one from an account management/organization point of view. The simple-minded idea that it would either be X number of one or the other is just that, simple-minded.

I understand you are upset by this and that it may not be the "fairest" way to do it. But I can almost guarantee (as a software engineer with almost 20 years of professional experience) that the way the Devs are doing it here will be the easiest, least impactful way to do it from THEIR point of view. If there was a way they could COST-EFFECTIVELY do this that wouldn't upset anyone I'm sure they would do it. But guess what? In the real world there's no real way to do that within real world constraints of time/money.

Sorry to break that bit of obvious news to you...

Actually you and the others are wrong about this BrandX.

This is not just a simple-minded case of "either 500 NA people or 500 EU people". As Ironblade/Arcanaville pointed out there are other factors which make merging the smaller group of players into the larger one the EASIER way to do it. All things being equal the EASIEST way to do this merge will be the one the Devs use.

Now I absolutely agree the FAIREST way to do it would be to compare name conflicts for "who had the name longer and let that person keep the name". But apparently (and most likely) that would be way too hard to sort through. We are talking about many thousands of accounts here.

The Devs of this game are realistically going to take the path of least resistance on this. It's not going to be the "perfect" solution, but it will be the most expedient one.

I could believe a simple F2P, web-based MMO might be able to get away with a few developers but it's safe to say you're not going to run a WoW like that. But anyway in terms of "profitability" if you only have a few people on staff a niche game probably wouldn't have to make all that much money to keep going.

That figures. Usually Hollywood will take good books and turn them into bad movies but I guess there's not much they can do if they start with a big, boring book to begin with. I like the Potter story/concept in general but there's probably a reason I never bothered to finish the books. After like the fourth one I got the strong sense that I was just reading the same basic story over-and-over again. *shrugs*

I agree completely that throwing influence into this mix was probably a last-minute concession to the solo-zealots.

But since it's there I'm going to take a look at using it even if it's generally the "non-optimal" way to do things because heck, I've got the resource lying around unused already. What will it matter to me to "waste" influence on this when I'm in the relatively lucky position of having the influence to burn?

And my point is that I'm going to be spending time running Incarnate trials AND using my influence to the extent that it will be HELPFUL to me across multiple alts. No need to get too bent out of shape over how I'm going to be playing this game.

I already pretty much have many billions of influence on hand doing absolutely nothing else. I've already wasted multiple billions of it converting it to Prestige or buying all sorts of IOs. If what I have left will help me save any time advancing my secondary alts along the Incarnate path then I'll likely use it that way. If it won't it won't. No big deal either way so stop being so defensive about this. *shrugs*

Earlier I mentioned stockpiling a bit more influence in the coming months for I20 and I'm still going to do that regardless. It's not like I'm doing much else with it right now anyway. If it proves not to be useful for Incarnate stuff I'll use it for something else eventually...

I'm not saying the idea of "just run the trials to save the influence" is a bad one. As I implied I'm pretty much planning on doing that with my main character at the very least.

What I'm saying is that I might not choose to run that many trials for ALL of my alts that I'm currently working Incarnate content for. For my secondary alts I may choose to "waste" some INF on them just so I don't have to run a bunch of trials multiple times.

I have huge piles of influence I'm not doing anything else with. Might as well consider using some of it to save me a little extra time don't you think?