Lothic

[ QUOTE ]
They redesigned the way the Gladiator costume part looks. If you want to keep the pre-I15 Legacy version, you can never edit any costume using it again.

We REALLY need a Legacy mode for costumes... let us use Legacy parts, and the parts they work with... *sigh*

[/ QUOTE ]
The Devs have this nasty habit of "redesigning" items that have been in the game for YEARS and giving us no choice but to accept the new version of the item or never edit our costume slots again.

I know in a few cases the Devs think they are fixing some kind of clipping issue and that the old version of the item is to be considered "broken". But how can you really call a legacy version of an item "broken" if it's been in the game for years?

Ultimately I think unless a legacy version of a costume item actually crashes the game or some such that whenever a new version of item X is introduced that the Devs should also keep the old item in the game and rename it to "Legacy X" or the like.

Bottomline there's effectively no reason items should ever be outright REPLACED. At best new versions of items should be added (like the Wedding Pack items were) instead of being used to replace old items beyond our control.

Yeah I guess it's ultimately hard to say just how "nerfed" any future badges are going to be.
Maybe the Going Rogue expansion will be our next best hope for a big group of new badges.

Issue 15 badges. Lists them and also provides info as to what they are for and what they provide.

Actually it turns out the folks who contribute to our wiki manage to update it fairly instantly.
Looking forward to working on my CC emote binds myself.

*heavy sigh*

Hopefully it'll only take another Issue or two to get us back up to the numbers we were just at.

[ QUOTE ]
Yay time to see my guys badges go to 220 to 160 or so and there getting rid of my favorite badge

All the rest look good though

[/ QUOTE ]
Good thing I already got my screen caps so that I can prove I had more badges yesterday than I guess I'll have today. Oh well...

[ QUOTE ]
The front page says Issue 15 is going to live servers...

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/new..._releases.html

[/ QUOTE ]
The date on that link says June 26.
Makes me wonder if they really originally planned to fire this off on a Friday.
Didn't that really blow up in their faces like back during Issue 1?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Also... correct me if I am wrong but, to the best of my memory, new issue patches have never been announced beforehand

[/ QUOTE ]

Most of the last several have been. At least a day or two ahead of time.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah the Devs usually "heavily hint/imply" when a new Issue is about to be pushed live if not outright tell us.
Most of the time we have a few days "warning" of it.

Based on what I've seen I was pretty much expecting it this Tuesday (or next Tuesday). It'll be unusual if this thing today actually stands, but again it wouldn't be impossible to believe. As someone earlier mentioned they could be trying to get a jump on the 4th of July holiday weekend.

[ QUOTE ]
I think it would be kind of NCSoft to give the Australians as much game time as they can right now... since their government is frothing to ban all online games because of the "experiences may change during play" aspect of them... or so I read.

It seems unlikely to go through, but who knows...

[/ QUOTE ]
Ironically having an Australian complain (overreact?) here about unannounced server issues of an "evil overseas" game would probably actually lend more support for any online banning initiative the Australian government may be thinking about.

Again I can understand why the OP is frustrated by this one situation. But it'd be sad to think he/she might be indirectly helping people to legislate access to this game completely away from all Australians...

Farming the STF is probably the most efficient non-PvP zone way for a bluesider to do it now.

Another option that doesn't involve Faultline, PvP zones or needing a team is the RWZ south of the Vanguard base. Both TT's and Mu Guardians can be found there. It's relatively boring there, but at least it can be done solo if that's a concern.

While sneaking an Issue out on a Monday without announcement is unconventional it's not completely inconceivable.

Issue 15 has been on Test for weeks now and the last few patches for it have been fairly minor. They even had time to test the next Booster Pack last week so clearly there is not that much to "test" in this Issue. Even the last patch that went out without notes tells us the tweaks in it were so minor as to not even really need to tell us what they were.

While I would have expected this Issue to come out on Tuesday like most of the others have I don't really think it'd be that "horrible" to have this Issue pushed ASAP at this point.

[ QUOTE ]
Dang, can I have all your badges? You have some purty ones!

[/ QUOTE ]
You can have all the MA badges I'm about to lose in I15.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The stated server down time is 9 am to 11 am EST. This happened before hand, and it was unannounced. I see where the OP is coming from. Also seeing it as a patch (I15) and still unannounced makes it even worse.

[/ QUOTE ]
And just -how- often do we have new Issues pushed to the live servers, either on purpose or not?
My point still stands...

[/ QUOTE ]
What point is that, that still stands?

[/ QUOTE ]
That because this kind of thing so rarely happens that people like the OP tend to blow them out of proportion. Losing a few hours of playtime every YEAR or so for this kind of thing is hardly worth getting that mad at the Devs about.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure your point does stand, to be honest. It's not about the lost playtime, it's about the fact that the customer service team told us (as far as I know) that they would be giving us more and timelier notice, and they haven't. Again, they said one thing and did another, as usual. It's the principle of the thing.

I think the OP is probably inflated, he seems more put out than I would be or would think is reasonable, but I'm not in his head so I can't know his situation. What I can say, though, is that his complaint seems valid, even if you don't agree that it's as big a deal as the OP is making it, it's still a valid thing to complain about.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think my ultimate point is that we all have to choose our battles.
This is a "battle" the OP is not going to win.

Sure the Devs could do a better job with the announcements.
But that's not something so critical that it's worth our effort worrying about it in the long run.

I guess if ranting about it made the OP feel better that's fine.
I just hope he/she doesn't really expect anything to come of it...

[ QUOTE ]
Ah, well I don't care about losing playing time much. My big beef is with the unannounced major server update that is taking place.

[/ QUOTE ]
As I said I'd love more announcements just like everyone else.
Bet even that isn't worth getting that upset about.

I just assumed the OP had to vent a bit about being screwed by the normal maintenance times and then having this one time event placed on top of that. *shrugs*

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The stated server down time is 9 am to 11 am EST. This happened before hand, and it was unannounced. I see where the OP is coming from. Also seeing it as a patch (I15) and still unannounced makes it even worse.

[/ QUOTE ]
And just -how- often do we have new Issues pushed to the live servers, either on purpose or not?
My point still stands...

[/ QUOTE ]Translation: I'm at work and can't play anyway, so the rest of you can sod off.

[/ QUOTE ]
You obviously didn't read any of my previous posts on this thread.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The stated server down time is 9 am to 11 am EST. This happened before hand, and it was unannounced. I see where the OP is coming from. Also seeing it as a patch (I15) and still unannounced makes it even worse.

[/ QUOTE ]
And just -how- often do we have new Issues pushed to the live servers, either on purpose or not?
My point still stands...

[/ QUOTE ]
What point is that, that still stands?

[/ QUOTE ]
That because this kind of thing so rarely happens that people like the OP tend to blow them out of proportion. Losing a few hours of playtime every YEAR or so for this kind of thing is hardly worth getting that mad at the Devs about.

[ QUOTE ]
The stated server down time is 9 am to 11 am EST. This happened before hand, and it was unannounced. I see where the OP is coming from. Also seeing it as a patch (I15) and still unannounced makes it even worse.

[/ QUOTE ]
And just -how- often do we have new Issues pushed to the live servers, either on purpose or not?
My point still stands...

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not going to fight the OP fight for him, but he's not complaining (well, not this thread anyway) about scheduled maintenance; he's complaining they just shut down the servers for a patch they knew they were going to apply without telling the people who were on the servers playing the game.

If you were playing, knowing the servers were going down in two hours for maintenance you're used to seeing, had events planned out accordingly (or was finishing a task force or whatever) and then you get a five minute message saying the servers were going down... Come on. That would suck. And there's no reason for it. It's not like the patch team woke up this morning and just noticed there was a patch to push down. They've probably know about this for at least a week. They could have given an a couple hours warning in game and on the boards. That's all it would have taken (for me at least).

And what I think makes it worse is they do keep saying, "Um, sorry. We'll do better next time" without doing better next time. It's something that seems so simple from our side of the fence, it's hard to understand why it isn't getting done. I work with big corporate servers. We have to give two weeks notice for planned outages to all our clients. I'm not asking for two weeks, but a couple hours would be nice.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not suggesting that having advanced warnings about servers going down wouldn't be nice.

But again I'll stress the point I made with my first post on this thread: The servers going down unexpectedly in this game simply doesn't happen -that- often to get -that- upset about it. Again if this kind of thing happened every 3 days we'd all be used to it. But when this kind of thing effectively never happens the times they do seem very disruptive and bad.

I simply think the OP is blowing things out of proportion here...

[ QUOTE ]
When I played EQ years ago I was on a night shift, and they used to do maintenance EVERY morning during the week. It got really old.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure it did but you still have to look at it the way the people who run these games do. They are always going to do maintenance at the times which affect the -least- amount of people. The people who are in the minority in that case are -always- going to suffer. Whining about it may allow you to vent, but it's not going to change a thing.

I'm not completely unsympathetic to the OP here. I live on the East Coast of the US but I travel to places like Japan and Singapore often. When I'm over there I get affected by these "crummy" maintenance times too. But it not like there's really much that can be done unless a game ever gets big enough to have servers sprinkled all around the world. *shrugs*

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The irony of this particular rant is that you're complaining about one of the very -few- times the servers are down for an unscheduled, unannounced maintenance.


[/ QUOTE ]

They are pushing out a large patch. Its scheculed, just unannounced.

[/ QUOTE ]
My point still stands regardless.

The irony of this particular rant is that you're complaining about one of the very -few- times the servers are down for an unscheduled, unannounced maintenance.

If the game servers for this game were only up say half the time then no one would whine when it was down because it'd be considered situation normal. But because the game servers here are usually so perfectly reliable that the once in a blue moon they actually go down unexpectedly people scream bloody murder.

Turns out it would seem NcSoft/Paragon Studios are a victim of their own success in this case.

As for the issue about it being during your primetime well, yeah that does suck. But as been pointed out these things are going to happen during "somebody's" primetime. Next time they physically base a game's servers on your side of the planet then I guess we can deal with that. *shrugs*

It's funny but a couple of days ago I decided to play Devil's Advocate when discusing the new body type change feature and having to pay extra for it in a Booster Pack. In that post I talked about reasons why people, just like you, would get upset about this feature:

[ QUOTE ]
Another reason which is a bit less obvious but significant is that there are strange people out there who actually get their panties in a bunch over the idea of "sex changes" in a game like this. Even though body/sex changes are a classic comic book staple there are people who think that kind of thing is "creepy" or "sinful" or whatever hang-up they are using to rationalize that it should be avoided at all costs. The beauty of the "you have to pay extra for it to get it" system is that if you're one of those kinds of people who'd rather not deal with it then you don't have to buy it, thus keeping yourself safe from the temptation or whatever. If the feature was freely given to everyone then I'd bet you'd have some people all bent out of shape over it. *shrugs*

[/ QUOTE ]
I guess I called it 100%. Since you actually seem to be one of the hypothetical uptight people I mentioned I suppose you can "protest" this by not buying it and move on to let the vast majority, who do not have a problem with it, enjoy it.

Sorry your misconceptions have allowed you to have a problem with this new feature.
Ultimately that's your problem to deal with, not anyone else's.

I think the Devs have always had a concern about fostering an environment where lower level characters could significantly contribute to the Prestige generation of a SG. I have nothing against that fundamental concern.

But by the same token I think the protectionist mindset that lowbies ought to be able to generate the "equivalent" amount of Prestige that a level 50 can is a bit too utopian and idealistic. Level 50 characters are undeniably more capable than level 1 characters and rigging the system to force them to have the equivalent earning potential for a resource like Prestige is downright Marxist in nature.

Ultimately the system should be calibrated so that level 50s can earn more Prestige than level 1s can, but not by an incredibly huge margin to make level 1s be completely pointless to an SG. It's all about reasonable moderation.

Like you I would never argue for an INF to Prestige conversion rate to be as good as 1:1 because that would grossly unbalance the differences between level 1s and 50s and make the whole "SG mode" concept pointless. Basically a rate of 1:1 would be as far too liberal as the current rate of 500:1 is far too conservative.

Thus my compromise suggestion is making the conversion rate be 100:1. This would encourage people to want to make use of that conversion while at the same time preserving the "point" behind having to make a strategic decision between playing in SG mode or not. A rate of 100:1 would make a level 50 a more efficient earner of Prestige for a SG than a level 1, but not by a wide enough margin to create a fear of prejudice against inviting lowbies to SGs. People who only allow active level 50s in their SGs to maximize Prestige earning are already prejudiced against lowbies today. That practice is not likely to -increase- with a conversion ratio shift at this point. Considering the massive lowering of base Prestige costs the motivation to min/max a SG's Prestige earning potential simply doesn't exist anymore regardless.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Maybe the word "Fair" was the wrong one to use. "Acceptable" maybe?

[/ QUOTE ]
While acceptable might be the better word, I doubt (and this is not your fault) that most base builders would find a 500% increase "acceptable". After all back when it was 100:1 for defeating foes/completing missions it was still a 500% increase to convert through the registrars. We've been after the developers to change it since Issue 6 with no success. The fact that it is now over 1,000% should be a reality-check for the developers.

[ QUOTE ]
With the existence of the markets, inf and time have sort of decoupled, while prestige and time are relatively fixed.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is the exact reasoning we were given by the developers as to why the conversion really, really sucks. It was to block those with tons of Inf from buying a fully built base in a very short time frame. The reasoning actually has remained the same even with the markets.

[/ QUOTE ]
The INF to Prestige conversion rate has been stubbornly fixed at 500:1 since I6, regardless of the multitude of changes to the game since then.

I understand the original intent behind the rate was to prevent people from building "instant-huge" bases, especially blueside bases which would've had an unfair advantage over the brand new redside bases at the time. But that consideration was also largely dependant on the PvP focus of SG bases which, as we all know, basically didn't materialize.

You make valid points about how XP/INF smoothing and the "50% cap on Inf lost while in group mode" updates have changed the dynamic of what players can expect to earn per unit time. Like you say 50:1 is probably a reasonable estimate now-a-days. But in addition to that I would argue ever since the latest rescaling of base construction costs, which massively reduced the Prestige costs of most everything involved with bases, that the Devs are effectively no longer concerned with the idea regulating the typical base size.

Put another way: If almost any SG can now have a super huge base with comparatively little effort why does it matter that much if there are still people out there who can "buy" that kind of base with a horde of INF? I know a number of SGs which now have bases with every conceivable toy/upgrade they can get for them and still have millions of Prestige lying around unspent. The idea that we still need a conversion rate to keep people from getting that kind of thing "instantly" is almost laughable at this point.

It has been years since the redside has had a chance to catch up to the blueside as far as hording INF and it has been years since people have made or blown fortunes of INF in the markets. Considering the amount of time that has passed and the major restructuring of base costs over the years I feel the 500:1 conversion ratio is out of date for all sorts of reasons now.

P.S. Besides like I implied before if the Devs actually made that conversion rate reasonable more people would do what Fulmens apparently wants by sinking their own INF out of the economy.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Anyway I usually end up having to waste time "wordsmithing" my descriptions to try to say what I want to say with several words less. I always manage to do it, but I imagine over the last several years I've probably spent at least a few hours total in the process tinkering with many different descriptions just for this.


[/ QUOTE ]

Self-editing is never a bad thing, nor a waste of time for those who have to read the descriptions. I haven't come across a bio yet that couldn't stand to be edited here and there, and still get the point across.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not suggesting self-editing is a bad thing. I would probably do it regardless.
In fact when I write my descriptions offline I edit them quite a bit to produce what I call my "first" drafts.

I just don't want to have to work at it -additional- amounts of time because of an arbitrary game design that has nothing to do with the quality or content of what I'm writing. Our set limit of 1023 characters is a hardwired software limit (which happens to be a nice round kibibyte worth of characters) not a perfect number of characters determined by general writing experts.