Shadowe

Hmm... now what...

Well, if they close our EU accounts and grant us free US accounts, losing us our Vet Rewards, SGs and so forth in the process... I'll leave.

Anything that leaves me unable to play the characters I currently have will cause me to leave.

If they merge the server lists, I'll stay - it's win/win as far as I can see.

If they shift us wholesale onto one of the existing US servers, then I'll (probably) stay. Depends what characters, if any, I lose the names of.

If they just keep the EU servers open and separate from the US ones (which is possible, but not hugely likely in the long run), then I'll stay.

GR will very likely appear at some point over the next few days, as there are always administrative things to clear up, so I think we can safely say that while he may not be working in Brighton for much longer, he will be in to do his job and smooth the transition for a little while. I think we can expect to hear from him.

Don't expect him to be able to reveal everything relating to this change. Partly because it's doubtful that he knows everything, but also because he still has to toe the line as far as the company is concerned, and he simply might not want to discuss it. That's his choice.

So, my final thought regarding this - to Ghostraptor and everyone else at NC Brighton affected by this cutback: Best of luck for the future, wherever you end up.

Righty-ho. As promised, one phonecall later (I wasn't able to post last night due to not being at my 'puter).

A couple of caveats: I do not know for certain who is and isn't leaving. I have been specifically asked to not "stir things up".

Fact: The vast majority of staff at NC in Brighton have been laid off.

Fact: GR's job no longer exists in Brighton. (This does necessarily not mean that he is leaving NC, but to avoid doing so would require a relocation to the US, and I do not know if such an offer has even been made to him)

Fact: The EU are losing their dedicated QA and Customer Service staff. These roles are being folded into the US.

Fact: Some EU staff have been offered job roles in the US.

Any speculation regarding what this means for the EU servers of CoX is, at the moment, pretty much a waste of time. No one knows enough to say for sure.

I do not believe that we will get much in the way of official notifications over the next couple of days, but we'll have to wait and see.

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Can't blame them can you?

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Hell no.

I'll give them a call when I get out of the office, see how things are down there.

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Why does everthing seem determined to go to hell in handbasket on Wednesdays?

I pray you're wrong FFM, I really do.

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No one more than me wishes that I *am* wrong, trust me on that.

But if this IS all true, and it's looking like it is, I don't see how I will be, except maybe in the fine detail.

It could be worse... When they closed the Korean servers, they just gave them all US accounts; no character transfers at all.

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Well, that WOULD be easier on the databases...

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And would lose them a HUGE chunk of the EU player-base.

My personal preference would be for them to add the EU servers to the US serverlist, then allow paid-for transfers as normal. That would work out nicely for me. But losing everything I've worked 3+ years to achieve? No thanks.

We're not sure how long it will take, and there's some rather bad news coming out of NC's offices in Brighton today, so unfortunately you may not get a response as speedily as you would hope.

[Edit: Having said that, I don't necessarily mean it won't be done within a couple of days... but it might take a couple of days.]

I am not going to speculate on the basis of no official source of information.

However...

A reputable source has also reported this (and is probably in a position to know). At this time I have no reason to dispute their word.

Uh oh, indeed.

Actually, your newbie status is about the only reason they would do it. CoX Customer Service are extremely friendly and understanding, however messing around with accounts is a tricky business. It should just be a case of them freeing up the code again and applying it to your existing trial account... but since I don't work for NC, I can't guarantee it.

Since you've already /petitioned, you'll want to keep on top of any emails that support send you. As soon as you get the first (guaranteed to be automated) "Thank you for contacting...", use the link in that email to go to the support site and pretty much repeat everything you put in the original ticket. I'd recommend including the Trial Account code as well as the Retail account code, and very specifically asking that they apply the retail code to the trial account. Explain that you are new to the game and didn't know that it would create a separate account.

[Edit: Oh, and the odds are that you will lose ANY characters created on the retail account, but will get your trial account characters back. Don't get too attached to the ones you're about to lose.]

Welcome to the game and the forum!

They should be able to fix it, but the only tricky question is whether they will. Since you're a newbie, I hope they would be nice about it. So - find a post by GhostRaptor (announcements is a good place) and send a petition from the support page linked in his signature, alternatively, send him an email: ghostraptor (at) ncsoft (dot) com

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I think it a pity that they only look at the time it takes and not at the difficulty of the TF/SF. There are some that offer a good challenge and those should be worth a bit more.

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The original information from the devs about the merit awards stated that they do account for the difficulty of the foes being fought (a fudge-factor is applied depending on the difficulty faced), so while the awards presented give an indication of the median times to run the task, that is not necessarily the case. The devs know that time =/= difficulty.

IBTL

This topic has been discussed ad nauseum in the Comic/superhero Culture Forum. we don't need it in General Discussion, since... well, it's not really discussing City of Heroes, is it?

And from everything I've seen, CoX won't have a huge amount to worry about from CO, anyway. But we'll have to see.

JD - I read it the same way.

Well, on the subject of how different people handle movement...

I use W/S for forward/back; A/D for strafing; and the mouse with right-button depressed for rotating about my character's axis.

Each to their own, I say.

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we were over 200 in kr so your info is false

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Right, so... because I don't happen to know the precise numbers involved, the rest of my information is false?

Fact 1) Zones have a hard cap, over which the number of player characters in the zone may not increase. This number can vary between zones. (If you don't believe me, try taking 200 heroes into the Hive.)
Fact 2) Zones have a soft cap, over which the server creates a new instance of the zone. This soft cap can vary between zones.
Fact 3) The more entities the server has to control or keep track of, the more likely lag is to become an issue.
Fact 4) City zones have a number of extraneous entities that do not exist in some zones that are specifically designed to have large numbers of Player Characters in them.
Fact 5) One of the most significant causes of image-lag is that the client-side graphics card is trying to do too many things at once. Switching off all names actually makes a huge difference to this.

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Upgrade the servers so we can be more thatn 100 person in KR without npc´s teleporting and getting 3 minute powerlag please.

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That's not a server issue, that's a Design issue.

Each zone is designed to host a maximum capacity of player characters. For most zones the hard limit is (I believe) around 100. There is also a soft-cap around the 75 mark, at which point the server automatically creates a second instance of the zone.

Given that the game itself is hard-wired to only have around 100 player characters in a single zone, I don't find it even remotely surprising that inconsequential entities (NPCs) jump around, and it's not a great shock to me that there is power-lag - I remember Old Hami-raids, where the only entities on the entire map were Hami, the DE monsters and the PCs, and that was a NIGHTMARE of lag. Add in NPC entities, inconsequential particulates (those floating paper bags, letters out of mailboxes, falling leaves and the billion and one other things in the zone), and you have a recipe for lag.

The best hint I can give for a situation like that is switch off all names. It helps.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Demoediting, Techie. It's a nightmare.

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@Shadowe
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because there are those of us who understand that GR cannot tell us everything we want to know, because his contract expressly forbids him from doing so.


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Super-heroes'MMOs market is highly competitive, especially this year, I get that.
But if GR can't say anything without breaking his NDA, then why the teasing ? Nobody asked him to.

We've been teased for more than a year, and this busy-working-on-next-issue-hang-on-folks speech's getting boring.
I don't need anymore teases or hints, I would appreciate basic communication (should I say Customers relationship ?).

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Hazarding a rough guess on my part, and this is pure supposition on the basis of how things have gone in the past - we're going to find out something within the next few weeks. Something quite important. What that might be, I won't speculate on. But in the past it has not been unusual for the Rednames to tease us like that within a very short time before an official announcement. Sometimes it falls flat when things don't go to plan, but the teasing has historically been indicative of important stuff.

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Stop flogging that poor stillborn horse, Shockwave. Please. All it does is +1 your post count to absolutely no use at all - because there are those of us who understand that GR cannot tell us everything we want to know, because his contract expressly forbids him from doing so.

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I wasnt on about any NDC or GR breaking it, i was on about the fact that this event is the same old stuff from the past four years.

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In which case I apologise unreservedly - given that you were quoting GR basically saying "There's good stuff to come", I assumed (and assumption is the mother of all **** ups, as we know), that your post was directed at that, rather than the thread topic relating to no new content.

Having said that, though, while certainly no longer directed to yourself, my point still stands for anyone else who feels that revealing information is one of the most £$%^@*&! important things the devs should be doing.

Only thing I'm worried about? The Cupid minions will look like Spud-U-Like New Year.

As long as that doesn't happen, this gets a definitive /SIGNED from me.

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I'm going to look back at this thread at the end of the year and have a good giggle.

*ahem*

I can vouch for what Ex Libris has said with regards the dev team having too tight a schedule to put in any new content for Spring Fling 2009.

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Now that is a shock!!

Same old same old, why dont we just get yet another dead horse out and flog it abit more.

Poor horse is nothing but bone now after years of flogging

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Let me see... a professional working under a NDA. How likely is this person to want to lose their job?

Answer: Not very.

Demeaning comments and snide remarks only make you appear foolish.

In fact, the only person I see flogging a dead horse - more accurately a stillborn one - is you.

Do you really, really, REALLY think that NC are going to break their NDA just because you demand it? If you believe that to be the case, you've utterly lost the plot.

Yes, we all want more information. We're greedy players who want to know what's coming. I'm not saying that there's anyone here who wouldn't love it if GR let something slip. But the fact of the matter is that his job is undoubtedly worth more to him than the demands of someone who has no idea of the things that are coming.

Stop flogging that poor stillborn horse, Shockwave. Please. All it does is +1 your post count to absolutely no use at all - because there are those of us who understand that GR cannot tell us everything we want to know, because his contract expressly forbids him from doing so.

My suggestion, therefore, if you want to make your point to someone who can actually do something about it is for you to send an email to Positron, detailing your grievances and explaining why you are the only voice he should listen to regarding information release to players. But please, stop spamming the forum with the same request time and time and time again, when you know that it's not going to be listened to - oh, and it's not going to be listened to for one reason, and one reason only: Your choice of phrase and the comments you make about the developers and communication from NC absolutely guarantee that they won't pay the blindest bit of attention to you on any matter at all. So craft a polite request of Positron, explaining everything, and asking him, politely, like one human being to another, to escalate the information release. If you are successful, then you will have all the respect I can give. I doubt that means much to you, but it's all I can offer in this impersonal world of the internet. And frankly I, personally, would rather have the respect of other people than be known as someone who rants and rails uselessly and constantly for months at a time, when actually being civil might get a better response.

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I'm going to look back at this thread at the end of the year and have a good giggle.

*ahem*

I can vouch for what Ex Libris has said with regards the dev team having too tight a schedule to put in any new content for Spring Fling 2009.

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You.

Damn.

TEASE!

Ah, the old "what the heck is P123456781?" question.

P-numbers are internal game references. They point to text files. Text files are a lot easier to update than game code.

What happens is this: Due to some action taken by you, the game triggers an event. That event calls various pieces of code, one of which is a lookup to a particular P-string. That event-call then displays the text which is in the text file that corresponds to the P-string.

So, for example, every time you hit something in game, the chatlog says something like "Your power_name has hit target_name for power_damage!" the bit I've put in quotes is what's inside the P-string text file. Let's say this is P-string P123456781. What happens is, when you hit, the game calls P123456781 and prints it to screen. The devs could go into the P-string files, edit P123456781 to say "Wow! What a hit by your power_name! You just hit that target_name for power_damage! You're AMAZING!", and they wouldn't need to go into the code dealing with data calls in combat at all, because that's staying the same - it's still calling P123456781.

It doesn't say "account not in use" it says "account inactive".

That says to me that at some point one of the two accounts for which the pact exists was closed. The account was not paid for. It was impossible for the user to log into the game, because they had not paid subscription fees.

During that time, the other character levelled up, which effectively broke the pact, because the inactive account was not registering the earned XP (after all, if you can't earn XP because you're not paying for your account, should you still earn XP? Should you still penalise the character that is on a paid-for account by halving their XP, just because their friend has closed their account?

Sounds to me like WAI is only fair, actually, and if the pact was intended to be kept live, then the pacted character with the live game account should have played a different toon.

Heroside: Tankers. No idea why, but they just really don't appeal to me. I also struggle a little with controller concepts, so the only one I have tried I have found to be quite dull at the lower levels. I'm now determined to get the new version I have up past 33 to access the Tier 9 primary and get it slotted a bit. If I still don't like it, I think I'll delete the toon again. I'm not a huge fan of melee-based toons in this game, so that puts scrappers low on my list, as well.

Villainside: Stalkers. Sorry, they just don't sound like fun. They suffer from the "I don't like melee-based toons" thing, and a character whose entire concept is based around stealthily moving just doesn't really appeal. Brutes suffer for the same reasons I don't like tankers. MMs... I tried one and didn't really get on with it very well, so gave up fairly early on. I like my corrupter and my doms, though.

Is it sad that I spotted that, too, Standoff?

Anyway, while it doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know, and the screenies didn't have a huge amount of detail, it was a good read.

I'm going to wait for the release notes.