Mysteron

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So uh, what AT is the OP again? If you're any of the ATs that weren't designmed specifically for soloing (Defender, Controller, and to some extent, Blaster), then you're meant to have trouble, even find it near-impossible to beat an even boss. Even Tanks and Scrapper should find them a challenge. That's the point of the "Boss" class.

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It is a shame this was not the case (or at least not made clear) when I made my blaster shortly after the game launched. I'm a soloer by nature. Often I can login for 20 mins to an hour, then I will have to go and do something else which obviously does not make me a good group member. Before issue 3 this was not a problem. I am proud of having done every story arc and almost every normal mission available to me so far in the game, much of it solo.

Now at level 33 I find I am virtually excluded from all story arcs and many normal missions when I solo, vastly restricting my available choices on what to do. I was already missing out on all the cool task forces, and trials. I'm not going to spend the months I would need to level a scrapper alt to where I am now and due to real life I am unable to play more or for longer periods.

For me, this is not fun. I'll keep at it for a bit in the hope that an imminent patch will make things better. If it doesn't I will be looking at WoW far more seriously than I have been so far.

If a player wants a challenge then they should slot their powers in a sub-optimal way, or they should avoid taking the fitness power pool, or they should use the difficulty slider to make things harder. No-one should have the challenge forced upon them.

The boss changes in I3 have moved the games default difficulty to 'very hard'. The difficulty slider gives me the possibility to make it 'downright suicidal', but no way to make it easier. Please give me a 'wimp' setting on the difficulty slider to put things back to how they were, and thereby make all the boss missions accessible to me again.

(Edited to remove an erroneous 'not' which completely changed what I was trying to say).

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Let's face it: there are certain things NCsoft will tell you... and there are certain things they won't. Ever. No matter how much you ask. So here's my advice: wise up and stop bloody asking.

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Then they should say "we won't/can't tell you" and stop fudging the issue. As for your advice, I'll give it the weight it deserves. Should everyone else "just wise up and stop bloody asking" about everything else? Should people not mention overpowered 'flavour of the month' builds and just assume that everything will be alright in the end? Should people pretend that no problems exist in the game? If we did that then (a) nothing would ever change, and (b) there would be no point in having these discussion forums.

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Here's an alternative plan for you: sit back and just wait. Enjoy the game. And calm the **** down. Things will happen, and we'll all wait and see what happens when they do.

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I'm calm, I'm enjoying the game, but I'm not sitting back and ignoring this issue. Why keep quiet and not ask any questions until after it is too late to do anything about them? Cryptic/NCSoft are free to completely ignore our concerns as they want (and as I expect they will). Segregation of players into two (or more) different markets is a big deal to some people and we should be able to ask questions about whatever concerns us about the game.

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BTW, those of you talking about subscription prices... Lineage II got launched in Europe recently. Have you thought of checking out the prices for that?

Or would you prefer to just keep asking over and over and over and over and over, so someone who's taken time out of their day to respond to your questions can do that again - when perhaps, just perhaps, they should be busy doing other things, like, say, launching a website?

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If we are asking the same question again and again, then it is probably because we want to know the answer (and thanks to Bridger we have an answer to the specific question of prices - they are not finalised yet). Personally, I would question why they are using resources building a new website when they have a perfectly good one right here. What is so different about the EU version of the game that makes a new website necessary? I could understand having French/German/other language translations of the site, but for the UK it seems a bit superfluous and reminds me once again of DAoC (where in my opinion the US/EU segregation went so horribly wrong).

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Reading this thread is just getting tedious and annoying for me. You're asking the same things and never getting answers. Why not ask something, y'know, interesting for once?

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Then don't read it, go and ask (or respond to) something interesting instead. No-one is forcing you to read something that doesn't interest you, but for some of us these are important issues.

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I'm saying there are good reasons to have European servers, and there are good reasons why those servers will be seperate to the US ones.

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I agree, there are good reasons to have Euro servers. Depending on what you mean by "separate" I may or may not agree with the second part of that statement. If "separate" means "not sharing space on the same hardware" then I agree. If it means "not located in the same country" I agree. If it means that "one version of the game will not let you play on both sets of servers" then I completely and 100% disagree.

If there really is a good reason for segregating your player base, then just tell us what the reason is. If it really is a good reason then many of us will accept it and will stop banging on about this topic. If it isn't a good reason then (obviously) we quite possibly won't.

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Exactly the same reasons as for the French and German language servers, apart from the languages - dedicated customer and billing support, websites, message boards, community teams, competitions, events and more at peak European times. Once again, though, if you're already playing on the US servers and are happy, by all means stay there.


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I would like to reiterate that the "dedicated customer and billing support, websites, message boards, community teams, competitions, events and more at peak European times" can and should happen regardless of whether there is an artificial segregation of the player base enforced.

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Mysteron said:
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quite honestly I don't want you wasting my ssubscription on translating your version of English to mine as there is no benefit at all for this

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I completely agree - although it's not 'my' version of English. I'm from Essex


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I apologise for not only the poor phrasing, but also the poor spelling in my post. I mentioned this as I was remembering DAoC's amazing ability to take what felt like years to translate from American into English.

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The game will be available in Poland. It'll also be available for download. The language you play in will be determined by which server you choose, and all European players will be able to select any of the European servers.


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The game is already available for download. That is how a lot of us international players got hold of the game in the first place. (Interestingly US players found that they could often not get to the download, presumably due to some location based IP filtering).

If the powers that be are going to persist with this segregation plan, will the US version still be available for download? Will it be the same download for the US version as for the Euro version? How will players be able to tell the difference and which version they want? Will location based IP blocking be used to determine who can and cannot download it, as for the US version (and if so, who will be blocked)? Will US players be able to download the Euro version?

Finally, I know a lot of us are still waiting for news about transferring characters from US servers to Euro servers: is it possible and is it free? (If you are trying to make me buy the game again, the transfer had better be not only possible, but implemented at launch, fast, easy to use, bug free and cost free! I expect nothing less after being forced to buy the same product again.)

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but to cause all this trouble for the existing customers seems to be a really bad idea.

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What trouble exactly?

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In simple terms these are my concerns:
- fewer servers available = fewer slots for alts
- potential delays in getting updates due to translation issues *
- potential delays in getting urgent bugixes subsequent to patches *
- loss of access to the US forums, and therefore to the devs
- having to buy 'Euro' edition = additional cost
- potentially not being able to transfer characters
- loss of friends on US server if we transfer to euro servers
- dwindling population on US servers in Euro peak times if we don't transfer

The two I marked with a * may be more applicable to the localisation effort that has to go in to translate the game, rather than the segregation into EU and US playerbases. These are probably unavoidable risks no matter what happens.

Now someone took a look at this issue, presumably looked at the risks and benefits, and seems to think that segregation is the way to go. Personally, I just can't see any benefits from the players perspective. Someone please point out what I'm missing?

I have to add my voice to the chorus against the segregation plan. Its a bad idea from the very start and will weaken the game for no benefit.

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We'll have to wait and see if character transfer is even going to be technically possible before we can start working on things like that, I'm afraid.


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It was a while ago now, and has no doubt been erased by the boards automated forgetfulness, but another red name (Positron I think) responded to a previous thread asking about server transfers (in particular to the euro servers when they are launched). As I remember it, his response implied that a transfer was definitely possible and that internally he was "pushing to make sure the transfer would be free of charge" for players migrating to euro servers.

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We're not going to do localisation in a couple of days. But we don't have to wait for a patch or update to be ready for release before we translate the text - we can start before the code even enters internal testing. As a result, if there's any delay in patches or updates between the US and Europe, it will only be a matter of days.


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Well for a start, any delay is too long, even if it is only a few days. We gamers are an impatient group, but you know that. I'll accept that translation to foreign languages are hard and delays may happen here though. Whatever happens though, do not delay patching servers for one language because of translation issues in a different language - this was another of the DAoC problems that drove me nuts.

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I know a lot of gamers got burned by the European version of DAoC - I was one of them. We're going to do better. DAoC started six months behind and said they would 'catch up'. We're starting up to date and are going to stay that way.


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Quite frankly, I have trouble believeing this. I too got burned by DAoC and this was one of the reasons I gave up on it and quit. You'll be starting with an initial US version and translating it - lets call this version 1 for simplicity. By the time it is translated into the various languages, the US will already be running version 2 (or 3, or whatever), so you are already a patch behind. How do you actually catch up from the start, without 'pausing' the US development?

Now what happens when the a new language version is QA'd and problems are found with the translation - potentially more delays.

To further complicate things, what happens when you get a language specific gameplay bug (these things can happen)? E.g. somehow the German version crashes in a particular situation where the US version doesn't. I very much doubt we going to have European devs to sort issues like this out, so back to the US it goes.

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That really depends on whether you feel that localised versions of the game complete with dedicated customer and billing support, websites, message boards and community teams in those languages and at peak European times offer any benefits...


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As others have said you can do all of that (with the possible exception of the fully localised game) right now, on the US servers, simply by hiring some staff who speak the right languages. All of the 'supporting services' are completely unrelated to segregating the US and Euro servers and can be implemented in any case. With this new-fangled internet thing, the employees don't even have to be in the same country as the servers they are supporting (as long as you have a sysadmin near the servers you can wake up in the direst of emergancies).


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No one will be forced to buy the game again. If you are happy playing on the US servers, you are welcome to continue doing so.


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Just remember that new Euro players will be playing on new Euro servers, not the US server you are currently using. Over time the population on your US server during Eueo peak time will dwindle and no replacements will he heading your way...

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Likewise, no one with an active subscription to the US version of CoH will be locked out of these boards (unless you get yourself banned, of course).


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What about those with only an active subscription to the EU version? Are they only allowed to talk on the EU boards? If so, why? No offence bridger, a European Community Coordinator is a great thing to have, but sometimes I want to bring things to the attention of the Devs, and I bet they won't be reading the EU boards as much as the US ones.

Simply put everything into a single package and let the users choose which server they want to play on in that particualr session. If that is an EU/French server they play in French, if it is an US/English server they play in US English, and if it is EU/English then they play in US English as well (because quite honestly I don't want you wasting my ssubscription on translating your version of English to mine as there is no benefit at all for this).