Night_Hornet

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soon eh?

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(tm)?

I'm interested in helping out and I did send you a PM a while ago.

I'm not a farmer and I haven't used MA to farm, I get real satisfaction from making 50s without that. Like others the constant spamming of farm teams have annoyed me along with boasts from people who have made 1-50 in a matter of hours, when mine took me weeks.

However surely the simple answer here is to draw a line now and say no more, sure they need to make more tweaks, but I don't see the sense in punishing players for exploiting something that their bad design and short-sightedness allowed to happen and that's from someone who kinda disapproves to a degree. That’s unless someone is profiting from this, perhaps PL sites or selling accounts.

Rather than make what could be deemed as a possible threat to users accounts, perhaps an apology would be more in keeping. This should be a time to consolidate rather than alienating players further.

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As Judgement Dave has said, Posi needs better PR so that his happy-joy-joy statements involving 'soon(tm)', 'cool(tm)' and 'fun(tm)' don't come off as fluffy non-speak, and also so that his RAWRCRUSH(tm by me from a different game) statements don't come off as signs of being a pompous prat who's annoyed at the players for not playing his game properly.

Public relations and programmers don't mix, usually, as they're just like us except they get paid to be geeks/nerds. This, however, is part of the problem, as the poor statements that go with their poor updates are only compounding our troubles, as MajorPain points out two posts above.

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I agree, I was in the training room on the 5th Anniversary and Posi did not come across well there either. For example when he was asked why the EU community was largely ignored his response was "well I'm here now aren't I!", not exactly PR gold I'm sure you'll agree.

Make War Witch the spokesperson, at least she seems in touch with us as gamers and customers.

Players that I spoke to last night were either a little concerned about their account or angry as a result of what Posi said.

Hi Psygon, I'd love a Night Hornet one, if you're not too swamped already.

NH Pic

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your back to the problem , is the game about leveling from 1 to 50 in five weeks , or is it about having fun ?

the fact that you CAN get to 50 and enjoy the scope of a 50 in just a few hours will appeal to some people ...what is wrong with that ?

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For me the game is about having fun or I wouldn't play it and I guess you're right, people will find fun in different things and players should be free to play how they want to.
I'm not trying to say that all players should play the same way and most definitely not my way.

Farming is not a new thing it's just that MA has made it easier and much more visible, so much so it's all over the broadcast channel all the time.

I care little about farming or farmers for that matter, it's just the impact on the game overall that I'm discussing.

Take this for a scenario, a new player farms all the AT's up to 50 in a week and gets a load of tickets in the process(quite possible with MA), they haven't even seen most of the game and will most likely think that's it, what else do I have to play for. I've actually seen this happen in my SG recently where players have joined played a lot of hours for a week, got a few 50s, then got bored and vanished.

Giving players a very visible potential to exploit for easy rewards is surely not a good way to keep them long term.

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I would hazard a guess that most people who have not been conditioned to level-based MMO game mechanics over the years would like to feel pretty powerful in a superhero/supervillain game quite soon after starting to play it.

I think the deisgn flaw is rather that the time that would normally have been necessary for learning enough powers is too long and that they game is not necessarily helping people learning their powers.

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True enough, the game currently doesn't offer any real tutorial for AT's. However you could equally argue that's part of the fun, if the player takes to time to learn about the power sets and plays them the way they want to.

Although it can be a grind to get to 50 (without farming), isn't this one of the game mechanics to keep the players subscribing and also master their toon?

Surely no-one agrees that getting a toon from 1 – 50 in 6-8 hours is good for the game?

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You never know how he got to 50.

Friend i met on the US was always lvling with his family, his dad being the 'big tank' and he was just around to wack mobs. I loved mace, wich is tank only, and played it as it was a scrapper.

Or, he could have been told certain tank sets done need taunt, like a ice/fire with such trashload of AoE's, little chance you need to go use taunt on fairly solid teams.

But most of the time its easier to link it to the 'big problem of the day'. I care little how he got there, why he dont know, i'm willing to help him if he needs some advice. But i play my toon, he plays his, if we team up we need to make the best of it.

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Actually I know as I asked him, he got to 50 in 8 hours or so using MA so I’m not just jumping on the bandwagon. Also it was his first toon.

Don't get me wrong I agree, "let him play his toon, I'll play mine". The point was two fold:

1 )The team dynamics meant we were looking to the tank to lead the charge, this didn't happen (as the guy didn't understand this), meaning the team waited nervously at every mob waiting for someone to do something, causing lots of team wipes , causing grief for the guy and some bad feeling – meaning perhaps he won’t stay with the game. Sure I know, I didn't have to stay with the team.

2) The main point. Surely any game that allows you to reach the level cap without any real learning curve is ultimately flawed?

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For example - I teamed with some 50s on Wednesday and was surprised that the tank wasn't charging into mobs taunting and drawing aggro as most of the team were trollers and blasties. So I politely said "why aren't you taunting them?", his reply was......what’s taunting?

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Frankly, this mainly means that the person perhaps have not played MMOs before where taunting is used or have rarely teamed in MMOs that do have that where he might have picked up info about the mechanic.

So you have hopefully now given him something more to think about when playing his character, which is a good thing.

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Well to be fair I did give him some advice which he was very happy to listen to, I always try to help new players and I hope it will help him get more out of the game. It's just a level 50 tank who doesn't know what taunt is, perhaps that's a sign of the times. It took me weeks/months to get my tank to 50 and yes my taunt button needed replacing serveral times

The thing is soon, if not already we will have a load of 50s running around without a clue how their powers work.This isn't a new thing but it's now on the increase.

For example - I teamed with some 50s on Wednesday and was surprised that the tank wasn't charging into mobs taunting and drawing aggro as most of the team were trollers and blasties. So I politely said "why aren't you taunting them?", his reply was......what’s taunting?

Farming has always been here, but lately this is just getting stupid, on Defiant the broadcast channel is full of "LF MA farm tm" messages.

I'll never ever understand farming and I've worked at and enjoyed getting my 50s, I can't see how anyone could enjoy it, unless your a kid who just wants to boast about how many 50s you have.

Great idea /signed

Like some I am a little disappointed with recent events, however for me this is because of my love for the game and a desire for it to be the best and knock the competition out of the park.

Leave...nah, I have too many good friends in-game for that to happen anytime soon.

Good luck GR, best wishes for the future.

Nice speech War Witch (Posi take note ), great to see you on these boards and in PD yesterday.

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Possibly, but regardless ... what was there in what Positron did say that's worth liking? He didn't exactly go overboard on the talking, good or bad.

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I hung about in the training room for a fair bit of time yesterday, I thought War Witch, Avatea & GR were all great fun and seemed to understand us as players (and customers), however Positron seemed IMO to lack people skills and come across as a little arrogant and didn't seem to want to listen to anything that was being said. He gave a kind of "don't care, take it or leave it" impression. Perhaps another reason why there are a few leavers threads today

Lets hope they more to it than that, as it doesn't sound like much currently.

MA now seems to have stretched across 3 issues - delayed from i13, implimented in i14, upgraded in i15.

Happy Birthday COH!

hehe, now that would be a good emote

Oooo nice prizes.../starts to dust off his arcs

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the sky shifting to that of the shadow shard and floaty rocks appearing.

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A shiny herald swoops down as a godlike being gets ready to devour Paragon City

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My impression -- and this is based by nothing but my gut feeling and is both over-generalised and probably quite unfair -- but my impression is that under Emmet the developers left features only half-implemented before hasting on to the next one, but the game had direction: it was going somewhere, although with only three wheels, a broken clutch and misaligned spark plugs.

Under Miller, new features are [/i]completed[/i] properly, but the game is floundering with new features added piecemeal and somewhat thoughtless: they've got all four wheels and fixed the clutch, but they're just driving around at random on the backroads trying to get somewhere, but not knowing where.

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For me that sums it up well, I hate to say it as I love the game but I think the game has lost direction.

Looking back at the last couple of issues:

Cimerora - I don't bother much with it and on ITF lag hill gets on my nerves.What does it add to the cox backstory?
Day Jobs - Again I don't really bother too much.
Merit Rewards - Can't say it really adds much for me.

As for i14, I love MA but in some ways I can't help but think it's a result of the dev's running out of ideas - lets allow the players to do it, instead of coming up with new content. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying we shouldn't have MA, far from it, as it can be a lot of fun, but the game needs new proper content badly.

I guess the problem is trying to please everyone, as players want different things from the game. For example I am a lifelong comic book fan and I just love making toons, playing the game with friends and enjoying storylines, I don't really care about badges and I'm not overly fussy about my slotting. However there are people who farm and care for nothing other than getting to 50 quicky, I know some build fanatics and of course some people just live for badges.

Now I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with any of those things, I'm just illustrating that players want different things from the game.

The superboosters work I guess and make a profit I'm sure, I don't mind paying a bit extra for them as they are not core to the gameplay. However they are just toys, MA could also be regarded as a bit of a toy too. To continue in the long term, it's starting to feel like this game needs a bit of a quantum leap somewhere - oh boy!

For me, I'd say you need to give us something new and interesting to do, not just a tool or a rehash of something. MA isn't in some ways new, it still follows the mission structure we all know. No ideas? Well to start with there are over 70 years of comics to dip into (this is a superhero game)- also you have a great community, have a fans forum, I'd bet they have more ideas than the devs could handle On these boards alone I'd bet there are people with some truely great workable ideas.....but hey when was the last time the dev's were on these boards.......

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Just one question though, been told I am getting refunded, but how come it doesn't just go right back on your card right away?

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Generally this is the case because:

When you purchase an authorisation code is obtained from your bank, thus allowing the funds to be taken as quickly as the merchants system will allow and most new sites have systems that validate orders immediately at the point of order confirmation.

Refunds are different because there is no auth code it is a matter of transfering funds between banks, the speed at which this happens is down to what timescale and method the merchant uses to send its batches over and how long some banks take to process them and transfer funds.

In other words they work in different ways.

Interesting post.

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1) Listen to the players a bit more. They are your greatest assets. We know you can because you have, but it seems like you've stopped recently.

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Agreed and even more importantly we are.......the paying customers


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2) Communicate More! Generally speaking the devs are good at talking to the media and the US forums, but when it comes to talking to the EU they are as much use as a rubber duck in the sahara. We do deserve better comms from you guys.

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I could not agree more! However other than the forum rep we have I don't see this changing in a hurry, what can be done other than the mighty DOOM of a forum merge?


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3) When we say something's broken (such as PVP) it's not out of pure bloody mindedness. Sure you can't do everything we want in one fell swoop but there are areas of the game that need a LOT of attention: PVP, Boomtown & Dark Astoria are all potentially excellent resources for the game but are woefully under-used and yet could be very cost-effectively turned into shinies for the players and we've been saying it for bloody years! See point 1.


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As posted above, I'm not sure what can be done with PvP. However you are right, Boomtown & Dark Astoria both are way under-used, I'm interested in what you think could be done with them? I've often thought that Boomtown would make a great event zone something like the RWZ idea but of course a different concept and perhaps for heroes only.

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Sorry Horrnet that post wasent really aimed at you or any one in particular for that matter it was more general rant.

and your right the comunication could have been better tho at the same time if there drowning under a hail of tickets probbaly processing those tickets (rightly or wrongly) takes priorety over keeping the customer updated.

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Nps Mess

I agree that raising multiple tickets helps nobody, this only drives up the amount of backlog that teams have to deal with. I only raised one and left it with support (I did not chase it either), however some people will not really get it and being overcharged is generally an emotive thing for consumers especially if no apology or eta is given, it's a double edged sword really - you want to clear up the errors quickly so this can impact communications, communicate and you may buy yourself a bit of time, you just have to try and make the best business decision.I will say this, even if they didn't have the time to update every customer, surely somekind of proper statement in a post on here would have managed some expectations?

Also I agree with Standoff, it wouldn't have happened if the site had been ok.

Anyway looks like they are getting there now and in terms of timescale, as someone said earlier it's not the worst turnaround.

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so you think all of us trying to purchase the pack at the same time and constantly hitting refresh for the hours before its release had no contribution to the web site having a wobbly

Or the fact amongst those that were over charged there would have been those that tried clicking the button twice (yes i know it greyed out after clicking but who's to say it still didn't register a click) or those that tried refreshing when the page stopped responding had nothing to do with compounding the problem

or hows about those people who sent multiple tickets because they didn't get a response to there first one quick anuff I'm sure having multiple tickets from the same player concerning the same transaction helped matters no end

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Mess, I think you may be mis-reading my post, I'm not saying that those things didn't contribute to what happened, I'm saying that the site should be designed well enough to cope with these factors, as running the risk of double or treble charging customers should not be acceptable in any circumstances.It is possible to have a process flow to restrict this activity.

Also as I posted much earlier in this thread, the poor communication regarding the release/timing of the pack only helped to cause this, as people had been waiting for hours to buy it, this practicually ensured that the site was "bombarded", also this was compounded by it being released in the Easter holidays where a lot of people were off work/school etc.

For my part I did not refresh at all, I just tried to complete the transaction, as I understand about basket sessions for some sites. Indeed as you rightly put in your post - hopefully NCsoft will learn lessons from this and get it right next time.