Peregrine_Falcon

Schön dich wieder hier zu sehen. (It's good to see that you're back again.)

Mach dich an die Arbeit! (Get to work!)

*cracks whip*

My limited experience with other MMOs has remained limited for all of the reasons you listed. It will remain so until someone makes an MMO that learns from the lessons CoH taught us 3 years ago. And that isn't set in yet another Tolkien rip-off world. I like swords-and-sorcery, but I'm getting tired of the same old thing.

Not only did I find myself agreeing with everything you wrote, but when I was done reading it I thought; "Man. I wish I'd said that." Excellent work sir.

I hope the devs read your post. After free beer and hookers I can't imagine a better Christmas gift for them than your post.

Edit: Typos

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Hey, Creole, did you know osme people have dozens, or even SCORES, of characters ... and to opt out "completely", you have to log into each and every single one?

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Well no one made you create that many characters so if it's so inconvenient for you to opt them all out then perhaps you shouldn't bother.

And perhaps you can explain to me what the fear is all about? What exactly are you afraid people are going to see? Are you afraid people will see your character? Seriously, is that the problem?

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I think the unintended consequences are unpleasant and bad for NCSoft though.

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May I ask what "unintended consequences" you are referring to? And just exactly how you feel they are bad for NCSoft?

See if a ton of people make up a ton of characters to pad their SGs then in the next quarterly report NCSoft gets to say; "The month immediately following our take over the number of active characters rose by 789,472. That's a 17% rise in player participation than under the old management. This is proof that the players are happy that we're in charge now and not Cryptic. This looks great for PR, and will be a great selling point next time we talk to any investors, stockholders, or potential clients."

And frankly I'm just not sure how us making a ton of padding characters is going to be "bad" for NCSoft in anyway. They obviously don't care that we're going to 'exploit' this little item. In fact Lighthouse all but came out and suggested that we do so.

Personally I like it the way it is. You want the full 3 million? Ok, but you gotta work for it baby! Too lazy to do that? Well then you get a smaller gift.

The default setting needs to be on.

90% of the players DO NOT read the forums and thus have no idea what's going on here. Many of that 90% don't bother to read the MotD either.

So if the default setting is off then something like 80% - 90% of the characters won't ever show up on the site. What would be the point behind even having the site to begin with?

And I'm still not getting it, really hoping someone will explain it to me in small words. What is the freak out about? ZOMG!!! Someone will see my character online!?!?!?! Oz Noez!! Ahhhhhh...

Yeah, just not understanding the fear... maybe I'm just too stupid to get it. Or maybe it's just that nothing on the internet scares me. I'm a bit older than most people on the net I think, so if it doesn't involve 10 guys with machineguns knocking on my door in the middle of the night I just have a real hard time working up any fear. My generation is kinda funny that way I guess.

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I don't really get the general freak-out at all.

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Yeah, gotta agree. I'm REALLY not getting this. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm being serious. Can someone please explain what the worry is? Because I'm really not understanding this.

First of all characters on an online game will be displayed online. So what????

Your name, Social Security Number, home address, and credit score are NOT going to be displayed online. Likewise wierdos are not going to come knocking on your door because they've managed to find your home address and slap you around because you ganked them in Siren's Call last week. Psychos and rapists are not going to sneak into your home and violate you because of the information they found on this website.

So what exactly is the problem again?

Boo hoo, someone might see my characters online...

And Lecxe:
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And how do you disable them on an inactive account, mmmh?

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If someone really doesn't want their characters to show up then they'll have to pay to have access to them again to change those options. If said person doesn't want to pay the $15 then they obviously don't care what happens to those characters.

It's good to see that you and the "new team" are doing so much stuff.

When I first started coming to the forums it seemed that every answer given by a Dev was always; "That'd be too much effort" or "Working as intended", like it was their motto or something. And don't even get me started on the rants I've heard about "Stateman's Vision" from several of my friends who've been playing this game since the begining.

Now NCSoft takes over and it seems like the Devs new motto is "Can do!"

And frankly I like it.

I'm looking forward to seeing what NCSoft will do with CoH/V. It could be good, it could be bad. I hope it will be good, only time will tell.

And as for the people whining about the free stuff...

C'mon! Are you kidding me? They're giving us free stuff? Ok, so maybe it's not exactly what you wanted, but at least they're doing something! When you open Grandma's Christmas gift do you whine; "But Grandma, this isn't what I wanted?"

Gift horse mouth open? Check! Looking all the way in! That's exactly what some of you are doing.

You do realize that they didn't have to do anything at all right? They could have simply said; "We want to thank you all for your business and hope you stay with us in the future." And no free stuff for you. Instead they give us a couple of free thingys to be nice and kinda say thanks and what do people do? "But Grandma that isn't what I wanted!!!!" Geez, and I thought I was a jerk...

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Only Positron can say something like this...

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After all of the stuff he's said in the past ("...ask the Defender to not heal your Blaster so that you can benefit from Defiance...") you're actually surprised?

Having tons of fun Trick-or-Treating!

Best vacation ever. Will send more postcards next week. Give Mom a hug for me.

- Eagle Agent Connors, Meta Forces - Longbow Liaison.

Your checklist rocks!

Flashback or not this is very helpful to someone who collects temp powers like myself. I'm not a badge-hunter, unless said badge involves a power. Not only have I downloaded this list, I know at least 4 other people in my SG who will too.

Thank you for the effort you put into this. I'm always sorry to see good people go. Hurry back.

I'm a long time AR/ player myself. I like your guide a lot and I think it will be very helpful to new players. I disagree with some of your slotting though.

Buckshot: This attack does more damage than either Burst or M30 Grenade. Why would you not slot it for Damage? I believe this is a mistake.

M30 Grenade: While this is one of the lowest damage attacks I believe that slotting 1 Damage Enhancement is a waste. In my opinion you should either 3 slot it for damage or not bother and spend that slot on a Range or Recharge Enhancement.

Beanbag: This is not something that you can use very often unless you have another Stun power to stack with it. Therefore my personal recommendation is to slot it with Range instead of Recharge.

Sniper Rifle: You really can't use this in the middle of combat unless you have Interrupts slotted. Therefore I recommend slotting Range instead of Recharge or Interrupts if you do want to try to use it in combat.

Flamethrower: I'd recommend slotting 1 Range and 1 Recharge. More range means bigger area of effect.

Ignite: You do realize that the recharge on this is 3 seconds right? Recharge is really not necessary, and since Targeting Drone won't affect its accuracy I recommend 2xAcc 3xDam.

In general I recommend against slotting Knockback. People already hate Energy Blasters because of too much knockback, and some dislike AR/ for the same reason. Unless you're able to take advantage of the knockback for some specific reason I always recommend slotting something else or saving the slots. YMMV.

Is this the thread where I'm supposed to post if I want to be in the Issue 11 closed Beta?

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Quite frankly there is a lot of goodwill being squandered here. I don't care if it is closed for a day or months, the excuse being given is not good enough.

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Worse, it's simply not true. Look what Lighthouse said:
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The closed beta gives us a smaller, more manageable group of public testers and a test environment that, because it is closed, we can iterate much faster on. This results in a higher level of polish to the features when we take things to open beta and ultimately a better experience when we go Live.

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Translation from "Marketing Speak" into simple English: "A small group tends to stay on topic and post less fluff. This lets us pay more attention to the posts, bugs, and suggestions. We can react to them faster, making the testing time shorter and the final product better."

The problem with that is that having been in closed testing for both Issue 9 and Issue 10 I can tell you that if your post doesn't say; "I killed a minion and it gave me 10 gillion XP. Is that a bug?" then the answer is always; "Sorry we don't have enough time to fix this before it goes live." So many times our posts were ignored, and when they weren't ignored we were basically told to [censored] off if we didn't like it.

So why would you even WANT to be in the closed test?

It's annoying to be spending what little game time I have playing on the test server, helping them for free, just so they can ignore my bug reports, posts, and suggestions. Don't get me wrong, when the test is open to everyone and they ignore my posts my thought is; "Hey, there's 100k+ people testing and submitting reports. They didn't respond to mine? Well, duh." But when I'm part of a small group of closed testers and they ignore not only my reports but the reports of dozens of people then I have to ask myself; "Why am I doing this testing thing again?"

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No player should be in two closed betas in a row.

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I definitely agree with you on this. They should spread the "fun" around a bit, if only so players don't get frustrated (this is the 15th closed Beta Test and I still didn't get invited!) AND because it prevents conspiracy theories from forming (the only way to get in on the test is if you kiss the devs [censored]). Personally I'd also flag some players to never get chosen (after they do something that warrants it, or they never send in a single bug report - if you're not testing why should they invite you to test?), I'd also flag some players to get chosen more often because of their proven track record of making useful suggestions (like Arcanaville, Evilgecko, and Ikona as examples just off the top of my head). I wouldn't do this out of favoritism, I'd do it because it will improve the quality of feedback and thus improve the testing process.

But then if it were me, I'd actually listen to my testers, so what do I know?

So now that you are admitting that credit card "issues" do happen, does this mean that you will reverse your draconian policy and allow Phantastic back into the game again?

Or will NCSoft continue with it's "One mistake and your account is locked forever" policy?

While I live in Seattle I will not being going to PAX.

What would be the point?

I'd probably just get into an argument with the Cryptic employees about why they seem incapable of fixing any of the 18 zillion bugs in this game. Then someone would call security.

Then I'd have to come up with bail money. I really can't afford bail money right now...

Zero Tolerance is great. When combined with action that is effective in actually combating the problem.

Frankly I just don't see the Powers That Be in CoH/CoV actually being able to combat this problem in an effective manner.

Every time I get one of these tells I /ignore AND /gignore the spammer AND I report it. I usually get another tell FROM THE SAME PERSON within just a few minutes. After I've ignored AND gignored the spammer.

These people are programmers and they can't even program the Global friends or Global ignore list to work. So I have Zero Confidence they'll be able to do anything effective against RMT spammers.

I really liked your artwork. I am really going to miss your site.

Incidents like this remind me of two important things about myself.

1) Always keep important things secure. I am habitual about this. Locks doors, backs up data, etc. I know saying this now isn't much of a help.

2) I hate people. I have a few friends, and I love them dearly, but I hate people in general. It just makes things so much easier.

I'm often critical of the way the devs have handled things, so in all fairness I felt I should say thank you for this.

Thank you for responding to the requests of your customers who want more Rikti zone events.

And thank you for publishing the schedule. So those who enjoy this event can plan their schedule so as not to miss it, and those who do not can plan their schedule so as to avoid it.

Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.

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what's the reasoning?

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I believe that Warshades (and possibly some other ATs) have a power that requires them to "draw energy from" enemies dead bodies.

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We would love to hear your feedback of Issue 10 Invasion.

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I really, really like all of the content in Issue 10. I really really hate the stupid lag.

And I wonder why you guys even bother asking us for feedback anymore.

1) I10 testing we complained about the big lag problem. And go live with the lag problem it did.

2) We complained about the admin spam. Here's a clue: Do you really think my Brute cares if Atlas Park is being invaded? I'm in the middle of a conversation with my friends and/teammates but that gets crowded out by the huge levels of spam that happens all at once. And it went live with the Admin spam anyway.

3) Complained about the numerous bugs and/or problems with Issue 9. Cause I really love the PuGs slowing down even further. When you only have 4 slots for recipes (or whatever low number) and people have to run empty their tray after every single mission it slows stuff down. This discourages teaming. "Oh but it's optional. You can just ignore it if you want to." And they went live with the tiny on character storage and tiny vault storage and the bugged sets and the ridiculously small bonuses and miniscule % costume drops and all the other problems that the testers had with it, but they just went ahead and went live with it anyway.

I could go on for a long time, but you get my point.

So my question is: Why bother asking these questions if you're not going to at least pretend to care about our answers?

My hope is that Issue 10 will go live on July 4th.

I have a great speech I want to give in Broadcast on that day.

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Is it just me or only "Fan Boy" Types excited over the i10 expansion?

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If you've ever read any of the large number of posts wherein I am highly critical of a number of decisions the devs have made you'll quickly come to the conclusion that I am not a dev "fan boy."

And I am excited about Issue 10.

You said what I said just before and right after the CoH MySpace page was started. But you said it a whole lot better than I did.

You are my hero Casual_Player!

Oh and BTW Ex, it's cool that you're having a ball with MySpace and all but how many new subscriptions has it brought to CoH?

Why don't you all update and add content to the official CoH page? Hmmmmmmm? What's that? Cause you're too busy dinking around with MySpace to actually add anything to the official page. Yeah, ok.

I am so looking forward to this!

It looks like the Devs may have really outdone themselves with this Issue.

You realize of course, this means... WAR!!!!!