Lothic

I think what's important here is proof of concept. Making this be a "non-combat pet" was just about the simplest thing the Devs could have done to get some kind of dog-shaped critter into the game. Once they have this working well enough they may build on it to create "combat pets" and then maybe even eventually new "player character body models" if we're very lucky.

So even if you don't specifically care about non-combat pets this is a good development for everyone.

Well the Devs aren't going to be able to make everyone happy with everything they give us. *shrugs*

TBH, the whole "buster sword" thing never really appealed to me either, but I might try one anyway if it's fun to play regardless.

I'm pretty sure that's what everyone -wants- to happen at any rate.

At this point I'm not expecting it by any date but it at least seems -possible- it might be here by next week sometime.
I'll basically believe it when I see it...

To be honest the whole anime/manga "buster sword" thing never really excited me in general. The whole "no way that could work in real life" thing usually ruined it for me.

But because this is a super-powers game I might break down and roll up a cliche "tiny-teenaged-anime-super-girl with hyper-huge sword" character just for fun anyway.

There are people out there who hate the whole concept of Halloween as a "holiday" and they probably hate all the badges associated with it in the game. The Devs had to draw the line somewhere and as far as they're concerned they don't see the use of "Malleus" for a badge as offensive. I suppose we all have to pick and choose what offends us - I happen to let that particular one slide. *shrugs*

Now I'll address the Devs in the voice of Philip J. Fry: "Shut up and give me my Murder of Crows CCE!"

Well just to be clear I'm not -against- suggestions like these myself, for whatever that's worth.

I actually realized that there was more to your suggestion than "I don't want to waste an extra minute traveling to a contact" for this.

But I also realize there's more to it than the "fourth wall" problem Captain_Photon was describing as well. It's pretty clear the Devs chose to make the difficulty settings something you have to go to a contact to change in order to make it very difficult (if not impossible) to exploit the system by being able to change difficulty levels while in the middle of a mission.

It's like it is in order to prevent any kind of difficulty exploit known or unknown. Sure it may be a crude metagamey way to do it, but as you've already concluded it's probably not going to be changed regardless.

And again all I'm saying is that the vast majority of your so-called "regular opportunities" to get these codes revolve around either ONE TIME events like the launch of CoH:Freedom, via forum handouts which, as I've already said, a vast majority of players never know about, or face-to-face meet-n-greets which very few people can physically travel to. It's one thing to gate content like the Roman costume items behind a TF that ALL players have the opportunity to get to. It's another thing when the only chance you have to get something is either being online at the right place at the right time or being able to buy a cross-country airline ticket.

I simply believe your definition of "regular opportunities" in this case is vastly askew from reality. I'm happy for you that you were able to get many of these codes for yourself, but trust me when I tell you that you are relatively unique in that regard. The fact that a few dozen people got these codes according to what you listed means nothing compared to the many thousands of people who play this game.

As far as the question of "exclusivity" goes this game has already shown us that almost nothing they offer is PERMANENTLY exclusive. Many of the things that used to be available only via pre-order deals are now more widely available to everyone. Heck, even many of what used to be called Vet badges are now effectively purchasable via buying points from the Paragon Market. I have no problem if they want to keep giving out the special codes for "free" as special promotional things and I wouldn't even mind if they had a policy that they'd wait like six months or a year before specific codes were released on the market. That'd still reserve far more "exclusivity" to these codes than many other things this game has retained thus far.

And we've seen how well those rebellious teenagers pay attention to all those pesky "rules".
This show is like a remedial course in Cliches 101.

I'll play Devil's Advocate and say maybe by 2149 all the dangerous animals on Earth are dead so these people aren't used to worrying about avoiding big critters that can eat them.

Anyway sometimes networks will shuffle the order of which episodes they air. They do it for all sorts of reasons. I don't think it happens to every show but it's not exactly rare either. I wouldn't read too much into it.

I understand many of the pros and cons that could come with virtual personalities. Even if you remove the "stupid human lifestyle" factors from the individual virtual stars you're still going to have to deal with the political circus of the people with the money/power who own/control these entities. And eventually when the AI gets advanced enough we're going to have to tackle dealing with these sentient "virtual" people the same way we deal with real people as far as laws, contracts and the like go. My guess is that they'll come up with their own version of the annoying lifestyle tendencies you're trying to eliminate.

While they might hand out a few of these special codes during contests and when the Devs make their infrequent appearances online I would hardly consider that to be a consistent or reliable source for the average player to get those codes. Your hyperbole that they "give them out all the time" is just about the equivalent of saying something like "people get struck by lightning all the time". Sure it happens, but it's hardly an "all the time" occurrence.

Also it's generally accepted that maybe at best 10% of the players of this game even read these forums much less post to them. Having codes that you can get via a few one-time handouts here a year or so ago is hardly a wide-spread distribution by any stretch of the imagination. I've been a fairly regular forum poster here for the last 7+ years and the handouts you spoke of happened maybe 2 or 3 times in total.

Anyway you didn't really offer any reason why these codes should not be something they could eventually sell in the Market. I think it would be a nice gesture for the 99.9% of the player population who would otherwise have no realistic chance to get these items.

I'm not quite sure that "most" celebrities will be virtual in as little as 5 years, but I'd agree that in the next several decades there will be many more of them out there.

As Father Xmas implied once the Technological Singularity approaches (some experts think that'll happen in as soon as 20 or 30 years) there will be legitimate AI at the heart of "actual" virtual personalities. What exists today are just semi-AI baby steps towards that goal.

It's nice that you host these player get-togethers and it's even nice that you offer special costume codes for people who attend them. But as is plainly clear from the people who've posted here so far it's fairly difficult (if not impossible) for most people to get a chance to attend these events.

Now that you have the Paragon Market up and running I would suggest that you think about offering the special costume codes you pass out during these meet-n-greets for sale on the market. The people who actually can attend the events would still get these codes for free, but selling them in market would provide an opportunity for other people to enjoy them as well. Besides it's basically a new source of extra money for you that you would not have otherwise had. It'd be a win-win for everyone.

This was basically the point I was indirectly trying to make: Being a VIP might help you in these situations now but it's not going to allow you to avoid queues entirely. Back before we even had the concept of VIPs and non-VIPs there were times when I still had to wait in queues. *shrugs*

Yep it'll be annoying if the queuing becomes an everyday occurrence but seeing it happen at least occasionally is a good indicator that the game is still pretty active.

Actually that thought did occur to me...

If you recall none of the female Halloween costume powers were available either. And there was a problem with the text of these powers which made it imply that these permanent powers you bought from the market only lasted two weeks.

I'm hoping that taking them offline will give them a chance to make sure all of these issues are sorted out.

Even if the Devs have made the "reduce griefing" rationale less important by the things you mentioned there's still the "it prevents people from whimsically changing their names every 5 minutes" theory that's probably just as significant as anything else.

The Devs have provided us a means to change our names because there is a player demand for that. But I suspect that for all intents and purposes they would rather -not- allow us to do that if they had their way about it. Bottomline I doubt the Devs of this, or any MMO, would ever make it trivially easy to change names because there's ultimately more problems with that than it's worth.

That may be possible. But honestly I'm not sure how much that might matter because in my 7.5 years of playing (mostly on Virtue) I've only been queued like that maybe 4 or 5 times and my waits never lasted more than a few minutes tops. I'd think the fact that I'm currently a VIPer now wouldn't matter that much either way for that. *shrugs*

The server is obviously now loaded enough that you have to queue to get in.
It happens.
I doubt VIPers get any priority as far as that's concerned.

I'm certainly no English professor and I've mentioned numerous times over the years that I don't nitpick spelling either in the forums or especially in chats. I can even forgive occasional typos in the game's text because after all no one's perfect.

But when the "occasional typo" gives way to dozens of errors that despite everyone's attempts to send in /bug reports for years never seem to get fixed then I think the Devs deserve to take a healthy dose of constructive criticism for that. At the very least allowing all the typos to linger as they do is unprofessionally sloppy and it speaks to the very real concern that if they are willing to let that much slide in this area then how much are they letting slide when it comes to the actual important code of the game?

It's not just for a single costume slot for all characters for an entire account (which could be dozens) it's also a PERMANENT slot for as long as you play the game. That could be for a number of years into the future. I factored in all those considerations when I bought mine. For what it's worth I love having brand new characters with 7 costume slots available (1 default + 5 extra + 1 Halloween).

As far as the current price being too much or not I fully expect that sooner or later the price will in fact be reduced. It's really just a matter of how long you want to wait for that. They might permanently lower the price next week but it might just as easily be a year or more before that happens. It's up to everyone to decide the trade-offs between waiting or not.