TonyV

Okay, here's an idea. And since Z said there's not going to be a name purge anytime in the near future, I know it's totally moot, but oh well, here it is anyway. The goals are to 1) reward players who have been in the game a while, while 2) allowing even the newest of players to have an identity.

The idea is that the day you sign up, you get to designate one of your characters per server to be your "permanent" identity. That means that no one can take your name. By default, it will be the first character that you create, but if you make a second, third, fourth, or whateverth, you can change your "permanent token" to be attached to any of your other characters at any time. If you leave, quit, or whatever, that name is never released or purged.

For every month of paid subscription, you get credit for a month of unpaid subscription before your names are purged. So if you sign up for the game and keep your subscription active for 18 months and then unsubscribe, your non-permanent names will be purged 18 months after your subscription runs out. If you subscribe for nine months, then quit for five, then re-sign up for six months, you have a total credit of ten months without being purged (since you've used up five already) if you quit again.

For every year of paid subscription time played (i.e. it would work like Veteran Rewards, you get this after the time played, not immediately upon paying), you get another "permanent name" token on every server that, by default, gets assigned to your oldest character that doesn't have one. Of course, you can change that token to another character if you want. It's retroactive, so if you've been playing since launch, you will have eight names right now on every server (your original one, plus seven for the seven years you've been playing) reserved that can never be purged. Yes, it sounds like a lot, but if you've been playing the game for seven years, you've spent at least at least something like $1,300 on the game, quite possibly over $1,500 if you've bought all or most of the expansions, bonus packs, etc. As far as I'm concerned, you've earned that leeway.

Few minor little mop-up points: If you rename a permanent tokened character, the new name becomes reserved and the old name is released. If you move a permanent tokened character to another server, it is automatically "untokened." On the character's old server, the token automatically reverts to the oldest remaining character on that server. On the new server, you have to explicitly change a token to the moved character, unless you have enough tokens on that server to already cover him or her. Also, after a name purge each month, any supergroup that consists only of name-purged characters gets its name purged also. Trial accounts don't get any permanent tokens, but they do get a month of reservation time starting from when the trial account is created. If you haven't subscribed after a month, *purge!*.

Like I said, I realize that this is all just a thought experiment since apparently it's not going to happen any time soon. And yes, I know that some people still won't be happy on both sides--people who think that more names should be reservable, people who think that more should be purged. Still, I think it's a happy medium in trying to be fair to everyone.

I've always liked Galaxy City, and in particular, Galaxy Girl. Of all the city's heroes, she just strikes me as one of the most heroic. I'd love to see more about her and Dauntless at some point. The story of Dauntless's demise sounds particularly tragic, and both of their deaths just strike me as the height of heroism.

For what it's worth, I didn't say anything.

My company, by the way, uses Bluecoat web proxies. I think there might be load balancers involved too. Given how weirdly complex our setup is, I'm surprised I don't have more problems like this, but most sites seem to work without much trouble. I don't know if the make/model of the proxy has anything to do with it.

Also, it only seems to happen with lengthy posts. The longer the post, the more chance it has of failing. Also, the longer the post, the more times I have to hit refresh and resubmit before it will post correctly.

Rockin', Diellan! Nice job!

It will get easier once you're level shifted.

What is your malfunction? What difference does this make to you? Is there any particular reason you think you know better what is in the mind of TonyV, the exact level of concern for which I feel for this problem, than I do? Is there any particular reason you don't want this problem resolved?

Do I hope they resolve the issue? Of course, duh. Do I need technical assistance? No, the problem isn't on my end, I'm pretty sure it's on theirs. Even if it's on my end, since I don't have admin access to our proxy at work, I can't do anything about it anyway, but obviously other people are having the problem as well and I thought they'd want to know.

So to summarize, this is a technical issue. I put it out there for discussion. I don't particularly want to deal with technical support, and I don't personally need technical assistance. So how should I bring up the subject? If only there were, I don't know, maybe a forum where technical issues could be discussed, issues where you don't particularly need official support...

And the reason I offered assistance is because I've troubleshot problems like this myself; where someone says, "x is broken," you can't replicate it, and you have no starting point from which to fix it. I'm not offering to drive to Austin, Texas (where the servers are hosted) and fix it for them. I'm merely saying that if they need to coordinate with me to access the site so that they can narrow the bazillion of packets that don't have problems down to the 10 or 20 that do, let me know and I'll give them more info and I can access the site while they run a trace or something. How that got turned into some ulterior dark motive to, I don't know, make myself look better?, I haven't a clue.

And this thread has officially exceeded the amount of time and effort I wanted to spend on it by 28 minutes and 41 seconds. If you don't have anything constructive to add, I won't be responding.

I think it's been a couple of years ago or so. Although, even before that, it was different. They used to give little hints and tips, such as telling you that you could change your costume at Icon and such, things that now appear on the loading screens. Now, it's much more like normal random banter.

Okay, this has been irritating me for some time, so I thought I'd start a thread on it to see if it can get a little love and attention.

When I access the forums from home, I more-or-less don't have any problems. However, from work, where I access them from behind a proxy server, about half the time when I try to post something, I get the following error:

As for the OP, I just don't think a tablet version of CoH will ever be feasible. As others have mentioned, though, I most certainly do think that it would be worth their while to develop portable interfaces into the game for certain tasks. For example, imagine:

• Having a portable costume creator that not only lets you design costumes, but allows you to save them to the server. When you log on with the full client, those costumes are available to load onto your characters. Alternatively, you could edit costumes on your existing characters, like a portable Icon app.
• Being able to place bids, look up prices, place items in your market inventory up for sale, and so on with a portable market app.
• Being able to send and receive chat messages and e-mail to and from people in-game from a portable e-mail app.
• Being able to create and edit Mission Architect missions from a portable Architect Entertainment app.
• Being able to manage characters' inventories from a portable app. Stuff like shuffling inventory around, selling off enhancements at vendor prices, buying inspirations, etc.
• This might be kind of radical outside-the-box thinking, but how about using something like an Android or iOS device as an auxiliary input/output device?

For that last bullet point, let me explain. For example, you could have an app that you use to log in and talk directly to the game server(s) to serve up your mini-map. You could pan and zoom around, the game server could update it with your position to show you your character's, teammates', and leaguemates' icons, and so forth. You could enable gestures on the tablet so that, for example, a quick swipe to the right means, "burn a green!" When you're in respec or enhancement slotting mode, it could show you details about what can be slotted and what affects it will have. You could keep a Real Numbers window permanently open over there. And so on.

Now, having said all of that, there are also opportunities for community-created apps. Mids is the obvious one, but a while back, I was considering also putting together a task force tracker type app, where you could pick, for example, the Apex task force. It would tell you how many missions and of what type you have left to go, and let you check them off as you make progress so that at any given time you could have a rough estimate of how much longer you're in for. In fact, I've even pondered the possibility of trying to tie in some stuff we're seeing in Titan Sentinel to do some datamining of our own, so that you could get stats like, "Based on the average time of completion of this task force compared to how quickly you are progressing through it to this point, your estimated time to completion is 1 hour and 17 minutes."

I have to admit, I have a bias against iOS myself. When I applied for the developer program a while back, they really jerked me around bad and I ended up telling them to just forget it. If I do write an tablet app, it will most likely be an Android app or a web-based one.

I live in Atlanta, and we're losing our hockey team. From now on, instead of the Atlanta Thrashers, I'll have to cheer for the Winnipeg Atlanta Thrashers.

Ooh, something you WILL see in the Ustream. I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I did watch enough of it to see the part where Moderator 07 tried to hide out-of-frame. Ladies and gentlemen, I present a scoop! Notre nouvel ami français, the new Moderator 07 inadvertently revealed a preview of what we can expect in the future, maybe even with a torso, head, and legs attached at some point. Enjoy!





If I only had a CSI- or Bones-type lab, I could undoubtedly reconstruct the rest of his body and show you an entire picture of him. As it is, I guess we'll have to wait to see what this teaser will eventually reveal.

In fact, that gives me an idea for an avatar...

I would just stand there, transfixed in indecision, until either my nemesis got away or the building exploded. At that point, woot! No more moral quandary!