MrNotorion

There's always two sides to a story but I'm inclined to side with the OP. Check me if I'm wrong but EVERYONE gets the option of selecting the title of "Helper". There is no test to qualify for this title. There is no obligation to help if you select it (for obvious reasons, just one of which has been voiced by the OP). At best it is an indicator that you MIGHT know the answer to a question that someone who selects the opposite title of "Help Me!" might ask. After all, selecting "Help Me!" doesn't mean that you're inviting everyone with the "Helper" title to tell you what to do whether you ask or not, does it? Announcing to the world that you are a "Helper" doesn't mean that you are now obliged to know all the answers nor that you respond immediately no matter the question, how it is put to you, or what you're doing when asked.

There is a dedicated channel marked "Help". I know, I know, it is generally full of cross-zone chatter and only infrequently used to ask and provide help. Yes, it's best to be willing, able, and to expect to provide help when you choose the title, but MY impression is that in addition to an answer to his question he needed to be told that declaring yourself a "Helper" doesn't make you anyones personal Encyclopedia COXica. Just because you send someone a tell doesn't mean that they see it, read it, and are able and willing to respond without delay even if it appears you're doing nothing. Must I remove my "Helper" title every time my home phone rings, I need to answer the door, step to the kitchen to make a sandwich or use the john? After all, some "Help Me!" newbie could ask me a simple direct question and if I'm not there to answer INSTANTLY (even with "Sorry, I don't know") then I'm actually a total jerk whose actively destroying the COX spirit of community. Right?

Other zone revamps:

Skyway City: The old meandering overpasses are torn down and rerouted - in the center of the zone is a massive new open-air sports stadium/convention center/community center which the new skyways provide access to. Skyway becomes a place to travel TO, not just THROUGH.

Kings Row: Greater architectural variety in the old brick apartment buildings, put something new and interesting into the dirt construction pit between the tram station and the police plaza where Blue Steel is at. Add some new LIGHT manufacturing facilities. Turn some of the old fabric plants into "abandoned" facilities/modern ruins.

Faultline: Advance the reconstruction a bit more.

Talos: I think we could lose the far NE chunk of the zone. It's just a lot of empty space - mostly water - and nothing there to do. I really dislike wasted space. A mile of open water with a few uninteresting islands and "street" mobs standing around waiting for something to happen in an area where nothing ever does. USE it or lose it.

Steel Canyon: I got the idea for an "Avenue of Heroes" down the middle of the zone - a row of giant statues lining a grand avenue. Instead of the big square pits of water give us a beautiful set of terraces up to the street along the war walls. Maybe a nice "scenic view" platform that projects out over it complete with those old quarter-operated binocular thingies - sort of someplace to pose your hero for photos.

I wish we could go "underwater" because there is a metric buttload of things you could start to do with zones and new critters and threats we could fight. I know it ain't ever gonna happen but I can dream.

"Be the ball Danny."

I read bios a LOT. Someone whose name or costume catches my eye. Teammates in a PUG whenever there's a lull in the action. In particular if a costume looks like something the player spent some time and effort putting together but doesn't "say" anything about the character just a short paragraph or two of bio will tie a concept together. I hang around Atlas looking at bios for incoming new characters (moreso if they have "Help Me!" tatooed above their heads) and if I find one I actually like I'll send them a tell that their effort has paid off, or even give them a fat enhancement they can sell for some early extra influence, even just a cheap rez inspiration is often welcome to newbies. I'd just fork over raw influence if the Trade Window weren't such an intrusion when all I want to do is GIVE IT AWAY. Unfortunately, these days you're lucky if 1 in 40 people has a bio and 1 in 40 of those has a bio of any real merit. Almost makes it the better to find a good one.

Well, it seems it's already LESS that it was sometime prior to I21. I've gone back recently to work on some of my character bio's and found that what I originally wrote will no longer fit. Maybe that has to do with doublespace=10 characters? I double-space after sentences by force of STRONG habit because that is how I learned on the typewriter. Maybe I'm imagining things.

Yeah, it's disappointing and I have always run up against the limit again and again with various bio's. I also desperately wish it behaved better just for purposes of entering and editing that text, but that is likely to be SO far down the list of priorities I hold almost no hope it will ever be addressed. I furthermore wonder just what orifice they pulled that particular character limit from.

However, I take it as a CHALLENGE to fit a description or bio into that meager space allotted - especially if I'm hitting the limit. What information do I NEED to put down? What can I leave out? How can I phrase this more efficiently without losing important pieces of what I want to say - or better yet fitting even more meaning into less space.

And for my characters it's NEVER (okay, almost never) just a dry, boring recitation of major events in the characters life story from birth. It appears as a page of entries from a journal; it's a police or government agency report excerpt; it's florid prose by the character himself; it's a few paragraphs describing the moment of the characters discovery of her mutation; it's a poem that fits the characters attitude; whatever. I try to exercise as much creativity with every bio I write - but hitting the limit only tells me I'm being too long-winded and need to re-write it, tighten it up, make it BETTER - not just longer.

The place to go on the boards for costume advice is:
The Costume (Re)Design Thread
People there live to tell you what they like/don't like about your costume and give you new variations of it.

And yes, the thing to remember about costume contests is that the judges are ALWAYS biased. The winner is what THEY think is the best costume. It's a matter of personal preferences and so you can't put too much faith in it as an OBJECTIVE measurement of whether your costume is actually good or bad.

Was running the Dr Kane tf for the 4th(?) time. First time through just took it as it comes and had fun. Decided I'd like to run another character through it so second time I joined up in a different team and had fun. Thought it might be fun to have the other badges for it and knew that one had to do with wearing a costume so made sure to get the random rewards to get a costume. Some roster changes and now was teamed with someone who seemed/purported to know how to get the zombie badge. Rather than slogging through the zombies in the house he suggested we should just run past them all to the end as it was otherwise just a waste of time. I did not have a particular problem with this. We run through the second part to the end and avoid all the "grind" in between. I did not have a particular problem with this.

We get to the graveyard and he says, "I'll tank the big guy, the rest of you just run around over the graves and drag the zombies back to me, I'll deal with them." I did not have a particular problem with this. Had NO idea what his plan really was but he seemed to be confident in what was needed and said nothing more than that.

So the three members of the team which were not him proceeded to run about doing not much and dying repeatedly doing it, while he appears to do handily tanking. So, I had a very slight problem with this. The game is long and I'm willing to put in the hours now and again. Debt is just NOT that big a deal. I frequently half-joke that debt is just another badge. But it needs to be for a REASON; if I'm enjoying myself I don't necessarily care that I have to die repeatedly to beat a tough mission or get through a task force or win that badge just for the sake of having the badge.

But then he starts in saying, "Faster! You/we have to do this faster!" I didn't really know what was supposed to be done faster but obviously for all the running about like a chicken with it's head cut off the total # of zombies defeated wasn't climbing very fast. I've been having a blast with my plant/poison controller in everything I've done in the game - right up to this point. I'm feeling quite ineffective at not being able to meaningfully contribute much to progress toward this badge and I'm dying repeatedly from the big monsters whatever-attacks when I try to lead zombies to our tank as was requested/suggested. The other two non-tanks are, I see, doing the death cycle as much or more than I and saying nothing. And the tank is just repeating, "Faster. Gotta do this faster."

NOW I'm having a problem because I've rapidly become frustrated and it's quite clear that nothing we're doing is making headway. I stop running around and state point blank, "Look, I got to admit I just don't know how it is we're supposed to be getting this badge." The response back from our tank sums up as, "You're not supposed to. You're all terrible for this because you suck at DPS. -LOL-"

Something about that was just the wrong attitude. I should have stopped him before we even started and asked, "Okay, what is your SPECIFIC plan to get this badge? What is it that we need to do and why?" But I didn't. It was clear that I wasn't going to get that information now and the whole effort just seemed a pointless waste of my time to proceed any further. There just didn't seem to be anything to discuss further so I said nothing. I just quit the team and logged.

I felt bad for the two others on the team now faced with this tedious impossible mission and a man short, but I was just so suddenly ticked off at the whole situation. It's been a LONG time since I rage-quit a team in COH. I've got my 7 years in so I've been in a LOT of PUGs and stuck it out through a LOT of seriously juvenile crap being perpetrated by others doing just what I did.

I guess if I have a question it would be just how much of a jerk WAS I?

Really there are a number of QOL improvements that can/should be made regarding enhancements. NAMING for one.

A "Zebulons Widget Implimenter" does WHAT? No, I can't tell just from subtle variations in color. I just want whatever the freakin' enhancement is that improves Immobilization (or whatever) and I would really like to find it without having to sort through 2 dozen other enhancements trying to find out which obscure verbal code I'm actually looking for. Is mouseover really that hard to impliment here?

Combining Enhancements. I can tell the game to stop reminding me whenever I'm slotting something of a lower level (I KNOW it's lower level - but this one is an SO, not a DO...) and other such tedious tics. Unless there's really significant coding reasons behind it - why shouldn't the combining be automatic foreevermore after I hit a little radio button that says, "Don't EVER remind me about this trivial crap again?"

Why should I have to examine the outside edge design of the enhancement to see if I can actually use it? Is the gearteeth technology origin or science? Is the wavy lines science or mutation? Is that one mutation or magic? If I can't use it why isn't its level just shown in RED the same as it is if it's outside my viable level range? Wouldn't that be an easier and obvious indicator? Why can't I mouseover it to see easily if I might want to send it to another of my own toons or give it to someone on my team who CAN use it?

Okay, I've played my solo, I'm jumping off the bandwagon now...

For my characters above level 10
Level, name, hours on patrol:

50, Mr. Notorion, 219
46, Superette, 81
39, Flicker Nik, 97
34, Fight Knight, 161
29, Boiler, 50
28, Medical Bill, 77
26, Cerebrawl, 40
25, Mighty Casey, 47
25, Cantessa, 94
25, Dr. Starkraven MD, 50
20, Mr. Stark, 48
17, Stormtossed, 16
16, Screaming Flea, 16

total: 996 hrs.

I think it might actually be double that in total time invested when adjusting for various characters I've played and then deleted or rebuilt. I don't know that there's a way to find the DATE a character was created, but that would be interesting.

Although I feel quite inadequate compared to y'all my low overall levels does demonstrate a couple interesting things to me (if the hours the game reports are indeed accurate). My two oldest characters are Mr. Notorion and Fight Knight. Their current iterations may actually date back to something like issue 6 or 7. Over 4 hours play for every level for those two. It shows the GRIND that was in place at the time.

Flicker Nik and Superette I don't think are THAT much more recent than those two but the numbers are dramatically different. I know I was running Superette through some AE farms for a brief while. A few of the other higher level characters also did somewhat less farming but mostly I've otherwise avoided AE farms (AE in general).

My two most recently created characters are obviously the lowest level ones there. Only about an hour per level. Course, that's still below 20th and I think levelling may still be a bit faster in that range but it still shows how much they've adjusted things. Patrol xp, double xp weekends, introduction and changes to inventions...

Edit: Come to think of it though, back in the day I used to just hang out in AP a LOT. Dr. Starkraven MD, for example, is a toon who almost certainly has spent more time just bouncing around under Atlas as actually levelling. I created him almost FOR that purpose. Still, makes for interesting comparison to ME of my characters.

Panorama City, Studio City - Los Angeles.
City Line - Brooklyn
City Island - Bronx
Lake City, Columbia City, Hillman City - Seattle
Center City, Martin City - Kansas City
Vine City - Atlanta
etc...

Pick any major American metropolitan area and you will likely find at least one neighborhood named "something City". Often they will have once been a seperate city now incorporated into a larger city. Some may still have distinct governmental hierarchy of their own, others none at all. This is a common phenomenon in the real world.

Neighborhoods named "something Park" may or may not HAVE a park, may or may not have BEEN a park.

Truth or Consequences, NM was renamed from Hot Springs when the TV show "Truth or Consequences" announced they would broadcast from the first place that named itself after the show.

Federal Way, WA took its name from the Federal Way school district - which had simply been named after Federal Highway US 99 (which is now State Route 99) as there was no actual municipality covering the area at the time. Skyway City is hardly a stretch and in fact is quite realistic and sensible.

Galaxy City, of course, takes its name from Galaxy Girl.

In all honesty? Nothing. My first toons always started in Atlas BECAUSE that's where everybody was. Later I started a few times in Galaxy and didn't care for it because there were fewer people and I was much less familiar with the zone. It seemed an unnecessary, redundant wanna-be of Atlas with nothing to REALLY distinguish between the two except that GC didn't have a direct connection to the Hollows - you had to go back through Atlas or Skyway by rail.

For starters, I'm of the opinion that 3 months is a reasonable time limit for EX subscribers to expect anything on an account to be there if/when they ever decide to resub. 6 months would be MORE than reasonable. It shouldn't really matter why you left the game and it shouldn't really matter why you want to return. I just don't see (personally) that anyone should have reason to believe that a single byte of information about characters they once had will remain. Now, that doesn't mean that any such hopes should be dashed just to make the point - only that anyone returning to the game after 6 months away ought not have any reasonable expectation that they can just pick up where they left off.

Even under ideal circumstances, the longer the span of time between having an account discontinued and anyone reactivating it the greater the chance that more than just the name would be unavailable. Costume parts can change or be removed. Powers are frequently altered both in unseen mathematical ways as well as animations and can even be renamed or removed. This is why when such changes are made accounts are granted respec and tailor tokens. And then of course there's what gets ADDED to the game... while it's still the same game it ever was in many ways, a player returning now from years ago will find boggling differences in gameplay.

T'seems to me, to make ANY kind of intelligent decision about freeing names you first would need data on the number of reactivated accounts and the amount of time they were inactive. Without that information we can only make BLIND guesses at the potential loss of business they might face from people who reactivate accounts - THEN find that their old characters names (and whatever else) are unavailable or have been changed - and AFTER THAT, and as a result of that, discontinue the account once again. Pretty sure that any subscription, ever, only grants you the opportunity to play not to have your characters stored for an indefinite period in any given condition should your account be discontinued. But without knowing specifically the frequency with which accounts are revived it's ALL pointless guessing. And even then that's just a STARTING point.

To really make an informed decision you'd further want to have surveyed the players of those reactivated accounts to find out how important, if at all, it was that their former characters and/or names were waiting for them. What HARD data is there on how many of them then immediately quit the game BECAUSE they no longer had the character names they used to, or the costume parts, or powers that they understood the function of and liked the look of, and how the game world looks and works, etc...?

Frankly, I say it's more important to keep the customers pleased who ARE paying you than to worry about the attitudes of customers who once did, but are not now paying you, -IF- they ever resubscribe AND immediately cancel again because the names of their old characters aren't there anymore.

While it would require additional customer service efforts I think there is a solution somewhere between the cries of "Never!", and "Do it NOW!" regarding freeing names. That is, if there is a name an ACTIVE subscriber wants that is unavailable they can submit a simple petition ASKING for that name to be freed. If a CSR finds the name assigned to an account that's been discontinued for x amount of time or more the name is given to the requesting party. Only names that are then desired by PAYING subscribers will then be lost by NONPAYING, theoretical REsubscribers.

But that's probably too cumbersome and expensive and unworkable for some technical reason. There should, however, be some established length of time that characters/names are kept after which they are automatically swept. Any further cancellations of accounts should come with the warning that character data WILL be swept after a give period in deferrence to the desires of PAYING customers.

JMNSHO

"After a time you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true." - Spock

I'll stand by that exactly as quoted.

Log out to Character Selection screen instead of all the way to Server Selection. I was asking for that YEARS before it was implemented - and I wasn't the first.

My very first was Mr. Notorion. Yeah the name was intentional. I just liked the sound of it better than "notorious". Except for the chest symbol (he didn't used to have one) his costume really hasn't changed a whit since day 1. He did, however, start out life as a rad/rad defender. He was rebuilt a couple of times until I finally found what he should have been in the first place as an energy/energy blaster.
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/5636/mrnotorion.png