Tyrant_Protocol

And the mystery is solved!

Speaking from experience as a game dev here, but also just hypothesizing as I know nothing about CoH's code base. Anyway, there is a term in software development called brittle code. This is where, for whatever reason, any attempts to upgrade or alter the code will break it. There are any number of reasons why this can happen, but a common one is when a piece of code is written for a singular specific case or a small set of cases, because the design never allowed for anything else.

Outside of game dev that isn't normally TOO bad. In game dev it can be very, very bad because design can shift so dramatically so quickly. From what I remember, stalking the forums and reading dev posts, there have been quite a few areas of the CoH code base that would probably be described as brittle, things they pine over and say "Man, if we could go back and do that over."

It's possible DoTs are just that. A case where, in early development, someone made the decision that the tech only needed to be used to do damage, ever. On the surface, the design of a HoT says "Take the DoT, reverse the damage." but there could be any number of events, triggers, etc. that need to be hooked in to the tech, and that could be one of the hurdles they had to jump. I have zero doubt in my mind that if they say they had to re-write some of the code, or even add new code to handle HoTs, that they're inflating the problem. I do hope though that in adding the new tech/rewriting the old tech that they did themselves a favor and tried to write malleable code that they can do rad stuff with in the future!

City of Heroes is a very old, very mature code base. Sadly, old and mature doesn't mean stable, efficient, or extensible. It usually means the opposite. The fact they've managed to teach this old dog so many new tricks in the last year or so is an inspiration to me and part of why I keep playing.

Now, excuse me, I need to get off this soap box before I fall down and hurt myself.

Say whaaaaat. I just respecced and need some of that in my build. What are the prices?

I think for something as visible as a gamer tag it's "acceptable" even if it's not a price tag I can REALLY get behind. In a game where I have, though I'm not proud to admit it, about a dozen characters that are at least half way to the level cap I find it harder to justify.

Also, a lower price would make it more of an impulse buy. At $10 I can't justify renaming the one character I REALLY want to rename. At $5 I could, and probably could justify renaming some other toons that I have better names for these days. At $2 I would probably end up renaming half my characters over the course of a month. I don't figure I'm the "average" case though.

Ideally, what I'd like to see, is that the server transfer tokens VIP users get become a general use token that could be redeemed for a server transfer or a rename. That'd be rad and more useful to me.

My mind? Blown. I haven't used any of my transfer tokens and had no plans to, guess I know what I'm using them for now!

Awesome, thanks for the heads up on that. They look really rad. Guess I need to start playing my level 50 again and do some Incarnate stuff..