Themiscyra

I noticed the bug before and found it rather annoying, but now that I see what some people have done with it, I have to agree -- fix it if there's a performance issue, but if there's any way to restore the Magic Bolero + High Collar Cape option, please do!

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And NO SIGN of the Architect Edition.

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I know.

Meh. It's only five bucks, I don't feel like going out, and I want the pack NOW so I can show off my shiny new costume at the SG meeting tonight. I'm going in!

And SunBlaster, sorry I doubted you, but I WAS refreshing and it genuinely wasn't showing up for me. There had also been a fakeout earlier, which is why I was skeptical. Thank you to everyone who posted the direct link.

*sigh* No Architect online? Oh well.

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It"S UP FOR REAL!

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The next time someone posts this, there better be an authentic link attached, because dude, not funny.

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Yeah well lotta good it'll do ya. You get a code that's redeemable for one of the Booster packs.. if the pack ain't available.... *cries* I want it!!!!!!!!!

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Based on what the person who's picked up Architect Edition said, it sounds as though you get the Magic costume pieces as soon as you install it/redeem the code. I think the whole 'you can use the code for either one of the booster packs' thing may have been speculation, or there's some method of redeeming the code that bypasses the store and just lets you pick the Magic Booster straightaway.

Augh! Come on, NCSoft, I wanna buy this from you, don't make me go out on this nice...sunny day...

...

Okay, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

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Yeah, I know...I'll admit it I'm a costume fanatic and I'll buy it just like all the others. But when was the last time we got free costume pieces? All I can think of is the wedding pack, cyborg pack, valkarie pack and now this. It's been a long wile since we got anything free when it comes to costumes. (I think? I really can't remember any new costume pieces that were free since they started charging for it)

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We got the unlockable Roman armor in Issue 12, I believe the Pumpkin Head was a new addition to last year's Halloween event, and we got a bunch of new costume items geared toward secret identities with the advent of Day Jobs in Issue 13. Issue 14 didn't offer any new costumes, but then, I14 barely offered anything aside from Architect.

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*Also; No, the females won't get the "Wizard Beard"

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Dammit Jay, do you have any idea how long I've been waiting to roll out my Bearded Lady character concept?*

And by the way, going off the earlier post about free costume change animations -- just take teleport and keybind your costume changes. A simple "/bind [key or key+key2] cc [00 through 04]" should do it. (Without quotes or brackets, and come up with your own combos -- for example, I use Control+A for cc 00, which is the base costume, then Control+B for cc 01, and so on.) Then you just have to call up teleport, click a short distance away, trigger the keybind during the animation and poof! Your costume changes in a flash of light. It's a trick I already use on my main magic-themed character. Heck, you can even use it to duck out of sight and teleport to another location during the costume change to preserve your secret identity.

*I have no such concept. But now I'm thinking about it...maybe some kind of electric theme from the static generated by that bristly beard...

I keep telling myself I just have to wait six more days, but damn, I want this now!

Will probably be picking up Architect as well for the free month, assuming it's as cost effective as the Mac version + Valkyrie pack purchase. (Plus, hey, now if I ever switch to a Mac, I already have the client!)

Frankly, I don't see that giving players the option to buy veteran rewards -- in packs, through micropayments, whatever -- would be a bad thing, either. Don't sell the badges; vets still get those as a matter of pride. But the rest of it? If someone wants to shell out $9.95 for a Boxer Booster rather than wait, literally, years to earn it through the Vet Reward system, hell, let 'em. If they stay in the game, they'll have only spent more money in the long run.

Seems like it'd be the best solution, honestly. The vets still get all those rewards for their loyalty, plus badges that let them show off to everyone exactly how long they've been in this game; players who want wings or boxing gloves or powers NOW can put up the cash and pay for the privilege, and it's a bit of extra cash in NCSoft's pocket.

And as for the vet rewards being an 'incentive' that can't be taken away 'cause then people wouldn't have a reason to keep playing: really? I don't shell out fifteen bucks a month JUST so I can get the vet rewards. I shell out fifteen bucks a month because I enjoy logging in, spending time with my friends and bashing heads. If the day comes where City of Heroes is no longer fun for me, I don't much care if the 72-month reward is a solid gold statue of my hero for my SG's base or a power that turns Circle of Thorns mages into sheep, I'm just plain going to stop playing. I'm sure there are people shelling out fifteen bucks a month 'cause they 'gotta have 'em all,' but vet rewards aren't the only carrot keeping most players in the game, and they're not a very effective carrot at that.

I have to agree. The Vet Rewards are a neat idea, but speaking as someone who only got into the game a couple years ago -- because, up until then, I didn't have a computer that could run City of Heroes -- it's very frustrating to know that I'll have to wait three years for the newest rewards, particularly when a lot of the rewards seem like very basic costume sets and other items that should just be a part of the game from the beginning. Yeah, all right, the angel and demon wings are unique enough that perhaps they deserve to be a vet reward; the samurai armor is very unique; a lot of the veteran powers seem like appropriate rewards, though I admit I'd like 'em in the here and now. But the boxing set? Or the rewards that are nothing more than badges or merit rewards, essentially acting as 'filler' while we wait an extra three months for a reward we really want?

It'd be one thing if the veteran reward system worked on some kind of merit model -- i.e., for every month of play, you get so many merits, and you can spend them selectively on the rewards you want, rather than waiting through a bunch of rewards that aren't very interesting. But the way it's set up now...I appreciate what NCSoft is trying to do. I really do. But the current model seems more daunting than fun unless you were fortunate enough to be a part of the game from the beginning, and at this point, I'm honestly wondering if there'll still be a City of Heroes in three years, rather than a City of Heroes 2. I just think it's time that the distribution model was revisited and reconsidered.

That 60-month reward does look sweet, though.

...and yet people can already buy both the game itself and time cards with CASH, if they can find them, and that's even less traceable than PayPal, as the space lizards that control our New World Order government through the Illuminati haven't quite gotten around to installing the miniaturized tracking and recording devices into the eye on the pyramid on all our dollar bills yet. That's really not a very good argument either.

Additionally, PayPal doesn't allow you to apply the same bank account number, debit card or credit card to more than one account. You can't just create new PayPal accounts out of thin air every time you get banned and use them to hop back in and cause problems. It'd be more work than most griefers will actually do, and cost more money than most spammers are willing to spend.

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If someone pulls chargeback tricks with their subscription, they're expelled from the game.

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They already do this. Then they flag the account so it can't be used.

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Exactly. So I find it a bit silly that that's being used to support the argument that we couldn't buy game time using PayPal. Perhaps PP is biased toward the buyer, but I'm sure there are credit card companies out there that are similarly biased. You mess around with this sort of thing, you get banned, period. It shouldn't matter what payment method you use.

Solution: if someone pulls chargeback tricks with their subscription, they're expelled from the game. Honestly, if the whole 'intangible product' thing is the only reason why NCSoft isn't allowing this for game time yet, that's pretty weak sauce. They ARE allowing it for item packs and game downloads, which are by your own argument just as intangible.

But I'll reserve judgment on what NCSoft is thinking until I hear word from them. I'm hoping this is a pilot program and will lead to expanded payment options across the board very soon. It is, after all, in their interest to make everything they sell as accessible to their customers as possible.

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First you have a "because it doesn't affect me, why should I care" post, followed up by directly insulting another poster. Good show.

I would suggest in the future that when you "ask a question" that you should examine how you ask it. It came across as hostile at best, insulting at worst.

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Not that I'm excusing the tone of the second post, but hostility tends to beget hostility, and I'm not entirely sure how this:

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I don't have a checking account, a debit card or a credit card. I don't want one. I have a savings account and that's it. Don't need anything else. I also have no experience with PayPal. How do you pay....for PayPal? Credit card? Debit card linked to your PayPal account? Well, if you have a debit card, why do you even need PayPal? You can just have the monthly payment deducted from your debit card/checking account each month. I don't see how this is worth rejoicing - it seems more redundant to me.

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...warranted your initial hostility and accusations of USA-centrism. Honestly, it was a bit blunt, perhaps, but came off as honest confusion to me. I realize that the subtler nuances of conversation don't always carry over in text, but honestly, I found your initial post to be in far poorer taste than the other party's.

And even if it was meant as a flame, it's really only in Paragon City that it helps at all to fight fire with fire. Your point could have been made much more politely, and without lowering yourself to what you at least perceived to be his level.

In any event, to consolidate the information: PayPal can tap directly into a bank account, including a savings account, for those of us who don't want/can't have credit or debit cards for whatever reason (this is exactly what I do). It can also handle foreign currencies, making things a bit easier on those players who are abroad. It does in fact expand payment options significantly, and if coupled with an expansion of the products available through the PlayNC store, it could be quite beneficial for a lot of us. So, yeah, it's a pretty good thing. Yes, PayPal's a mixed bag, but if you don't like it, there's no one forcing you to use it, and it's helpful to those of us who rely on it exclusively for online shopping, as I personally do.

Hm -- the service in question seems to be the PayPal Plug-In...has anyone had any success using it for PlayNC purchases? I'm assuming it's no good for recurring payments, though, as it seems to generate one time use numbers.

Another vote for time card codes available online -- and if this could somehow be hooked up to character transfers/renames, that'd also be fantastic. I've managed to make arrangements with a friend who does have a credit card for that stuff, particularly as time cards have been harder to find in my area, but I'd like to just make the payments directly without using a credit card myself. (I don't use the buggers any longer.)

This is good news, but I already pretty much have everything I care about that I can now buy through PayPal.

Nice for those who want it, I guess, but it's mostly just going to be an annoyance for me. I don't like voice chat, I especially don't want to use it when playing characters for whom my voice wouldn't be appropriate, and I don't want to have to put up with endless pressure to turn voice chat on when I just plain don't want it. Hopefully most players will choose to be polite about it and respect other players' decisions to abstain, but it feels like this could just turn into one more excuse for some people to be jerks.

Agreed! Even with two thirds of my inflated membership gone, I got enough from the second grant to upgrade my plot and add a lecture hall and office space (as my SG is college-themed). Sure, I have to pay rent now, but 20,000 prestige every few weeks shouldn't be too difficult at all.

And I guess this'll teach me not to jump the gun on deleting alts if anything like this happens again!

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The way they are doing it now is still making the big SGs richer and the smaller SGs are going to fall because who wants to be a member of a SG with ONE teleporter, when they can be a member of an SG with a teleporter to every zone?

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With proper planning, you can stick in a Secure Teleport Bay with room for four teleporters and beacons for a total of eight zones. Sure, it's not a teleporter to every zone, but you can make it pretty convenient to travel to any point in Paragon if you pick the right zones to TP to.

And SGs aren't just about teleporters, either. There are a lot of other very convenient resources that can easily be offered through a small base. Res facilities which, coupled with the base portal, can drop you right back into a mission when you're healed up, instead of making you schlep back from the hospital. Enhancement and Inspiration storage. All kinds of stuff. Even if roleplaying is taken entirely out of the question (it very rarely is, for me), this will help a lot of small SGs get to a point where they have a lot more going for them. It's hardly a pittance.

According to ParagonWiki, rent is now based on plot size, not an assessment of the items in the base. So I expect that a lot of smaller SGs will do what I'm planning on doing and build a base heavy on resources but still sitting on the smallest plot size -- which doesn't incur any rent.

Just pointing that out. Those of you who have smaller SGs like mine are definitely advised to do what you can on the default plot rather than upgrading. Larger plots are going to get you into trouble unless you have a lot of very active members who don't mind running in SG mode a LOT, as Shayrd said.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Eden just lost the license at this point. They shelved their Buffy projects and lost that license while they were working on the City of Heroes RPG (which, I'll be honest, I felt was superfluous at best -- I really don't understand this whole 'pen and paper RPG based on MMORPG' trend at all, and I wasn't very impressed by the quickplay/demo), and now this. Honestly, the company's too damn small to handle major licenses, especially after the setbacks they've suffered in recent years. They should really just scale back their operations, focus on their core lines for a while and then expand once again.

Don't mind me, though. I'm still deeply bitter over the loss of Buffy (before such books as Welcome to Sunnydale, Tea & Crossbows and Military Monster Squad could come out, no less), and I'm honestly only as bitter as all that because they do produce a high-quality product when they manage to publish, and hire excellent writers who deserve better than their completely unpredictable release schedule and utter silence on such basic questions as 'When is the book coming out?' and 'When do I get my paycheck?' I get that it's not totally their fault, but the silence is especially aggravating.