hedgehog_NA

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You apparently missed Castle's and Ex's posts, but they are working on bases. Try and keep up ok?

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They are working on COP too.

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I dont agree with the sg thing. If I invite a friend to try a trial account, i cant bring them into my sg to kinda make them a part of the group to encourage them to stay. Do the RMTers actually use some part of a sg to spam? It isnt like we invite rmters into our sg's and have a problem with "$49.99 for 5 mill! pst to new sg member!!!!!" he wouldnt be in the sg more than 30 seconds longer lol.

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Blame the people who made trial accounts and filled up their SGs just before prestige grants for that one.

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was that really a problem? so they have enough prestige to make a nice base? how does that hurt anyone.

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Well I don't know about how bad WoW gets the RMT but I know back in the day I would get at least 5 RMT tells and would occasionally log in a toon and find 30 RMT e-mails in it's in-box.

So while this is screwing over the legitimate trial account users and I can sympathize, I feel that the gain from not getting all the tells and e-mails to be quite worth it. It was getting really really REALLY annoying.

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wow, they must not like me. Dont get anywhere near that myself.

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Trial Accounts[LIST][*] Added a message specific to trial accounts explaining why they can't send emails.[*] Trial Account restrictions implemented:[*] Trial Accounts cannot email other players[*] Trial Accounts may not level past 13[*] Trial Accounts can only have 50k influence [*] Trial Accounts can only speak in
[1] /local
[2] /help
[3] /team [*] Trial Accounts cannot invite players to team
[1] Trial Accounts may join teams, but not invite other players
[2] Trial Accounts may not join SuperGroups.


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AMEN!

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I whole-heartedly agree!!

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I dont agree with the sg thing. If I invite a friend to try a trial account, i cant bring them into my sg to kinda make them a part of the group to encourage them to stay. Do the RMTers actually use some part of a sg to spam? It isnt like we invite rmters into our sg's and have a problem with "$49.99 for 5 mill! pst to new sg member!!!!!" he wouldnt be in the sg more than 30 seconds longer lol.

Rikti taste like chicken. How would you like your chicken dinner cooked?

As far as 1 off events, as long as they tie an accolade into it, they have to make it available.

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Side note: A "finger"-type command (show user last on data) for name searches wouldn't be terribly hard to add (since we know the functionality exists due to SG-last on display) and might allow a nice way to free up names.

If I finger "Lord Soth" and find out that it hasn't been logged in for 30 months, I can petition to have the name released.

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Which is very similar to what I've been saying. Petition on a name-by-name basis. Sheesh. It's like people want to think I'm stealing babies, when what I said was, "let's give people a chance to get a name that by all appearances will never be used by its original owner again."

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All snarkiness aside, thats exactly what you are doing. Many of these toon are their creators babies, they have leveled them up and played them over many years. You come along and want to gut them.
You will not see many of the older players online. Many stay in hide on purpose. Many have so many tells and emails from friends that they delete anything from an idiot that wants their name. I would really like to see your list of awesome names. And wonder how many you cant get because they are copyrighted. or banned due to other issues.

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Again, that is just combinations of letters. I am not calling my character asdfdsepk.

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I know him! he tried to sell me inf the other night.

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But a LOT of times, those names ARE NOT taken by active accounts...

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How do you know this?

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1) Send e-mails to the character.
2) Friend the character, see if they come online.
3) Ask around, find the character's global, try to friend the global, send global tells, etc.


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1) May be ignoring you because you annoy him.
2)may no be on when you are. may not play that toon but plays others on a daily basis.
3) may have globally ignored you due to your stalking attempts.

You have no idea if he plays, how long it is since he played that toon, or anything else of importance. You just know you want his name and are looking for the devs to take it away from him. I have toons on a couple of servers that I havent logged in on in over a year. The attitude expressed by this idea has no problem snitching the names from them. New players dont know how to search out someones global, once they have enough experience to know they arent new any longer. They will either continue to play on their toons with the names they picked or they will leave. If they leave, they were lousy customers anyway.

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If a member of my sg suddenly had a toon change to genericxxxx it would show up in my sg window.

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You have members of your SG that haven't logged in for over a year and you haven't kicked them?

That sounds... just flat out stupid.

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You dont have many friends, do you? I haven't sen some of my RL friends in years, yet they are still friends. One is on his 3rd trip to Iraq. Just because I haven't talked to him in a while, doesn't make him not my friend.

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ive owned 2 businesses that I sold at a profit, I know more about it than you think. Why would any new player assime anything other than that a name is in use by another current player? you have an agenda that wants somones name. you have thought out a concept to get it. Dont try to cloak i as being "in the best interests of the game"

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I have over 150 names that you'd never, in your freaking life, be able to name. I'm not "after" anyone's names. I am 'after' allowing people who REALLY WANT a name, which they do not know is 'abandoned' or not, to be able to FIND OUT whether they can use it or not, based on simply "thinking about their customer base".

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then why is is so important to you? I dont have to know their names, I dont want to steal them. You are claiming this is for new players. most of which have no idea whether th name is on a toon the plays 3 times a week or 3 times a year. or decade.

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Hedgehog.... You're just being ignorant of how real businesses work (as is the other who I am not replying to directly).

I've already pointed out, from a business standpoint, my *actual experience* with customers who are *not worth trying to keep*.

The ones who don't come back, the ones who are tempted *only* by the freebies? They are *not worth trying to keep*. Period.

They are worth dangling every once in a while, but they are not worth the *effort* of allowing their long-dusty characters to remain named. Remember: they're not deleting the *characters*. They are removing the names. And plenty - PLENTY of them - already have been. Haven't yet heard an actual reply by someone who came in, found that and because of it *didn't pay*. The intimation from someone else that their friend had that happen - their friend wasn't going to pay for the game *anyway*, I would put money on that.

Seriously, from a business standpoint, *giving the people here who do pay* what they want *IS* more important than the extremely elusive "well they MIGHT want to come back for a month or two" audience. It's FAR outweighed by the demands that an actually-paying audience has. Having managed a store for 13 years? I can tell when people have never experieneced "ordering for the masses".

You HAVE to go with what the bulk of the buyership will want. And when you know you've got one or two people who only come in for the sales? They can be skipped. They are *not* who's important. Getting that last 2% audience? Is not anywhere near as important as *keeping the 98% happy*.

The people who have already stopped paying *are no longer customers at all* - they made that choice already. They should not have a say in what happens to their characters, unless they choose to *pay* for it.

And once more: if they are not paying, they are not a customer. Period. They do not have the right or privelege to complain if, 25 months down the way suddenly their lowbie characters are missing their names.

And also again: it's why it would be important to have a feedback generator for *why you are not paying*.

Hedgehog: how many names can you think of that anyone you know has *quit the game* are ones which other people who are *paying to play the game and actively doing so* want?

How many names on inactive accounts *do you even know*?

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ive owned 2 businesses that I sold at a profit, I know more about it than you think. Why would any new player assime anything other than that a name is in use by another current player? you have an agenda that wants somones name. you have thought out a concept to get it. Dont try to cloak i as being "in the best interests of the game"

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they have the names, you want to take them without their permission. that is stealing.

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Sorry if this has already been pointed out, but it can't be stealing. NCSoft owns everything we do in this game, including character names. If the person doesn't own the name, it can't be stolen from them. All that is being done in this case is NCSoft taking back what is theirs from someone who isn't using it, and letting someone else borrow it.

Get over the idea that you "own" your character names. You don't. From the user agreement, section 4b, which you click "I agree" to every time you log in:

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By agreeing to the User Agreement, you agree that you do not own either the master account or game account (collectively, the "Account") you use to access the service, the characters created on the Account and that NC Interactive stores on NC Interactive servers, the items stored on these servers, or any other data from which the servers and accounts are comprised.

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Emphasis mine.

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In that case you wont have a problem when ncsoft ignores your demand and you dont get that spcial name you want.

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No, seriously. No one is trying to "steal" anything here.

If a person *is not playing the game*, they *won't care*.

Some of those who had their character names revoked with the first purge: IF they came back, did they not also get a namechange token? HOW MANY of those names which HAVE been revoked, are ACTUALLY in use?

I'd put money on none of them, really... Or very very few. People ARE coming up with unique names, by and large. It's the one-in-a-hundred-thousand ones where like I said before, two people have the same good idea.

And yet again: are you going to rush out and purchase time cards for all those people who don't care to rejoin the community? If they're leeching off the freebie weekends they don't need it, they don't care enough about playing the game to want to actually reward the team for creating it. If they haven't been back since their first 5 months or however long - they won't be coming back.

Those names should be freed up, because there might in fact be a real honest paying customer who has a better use for it than sitting collecting mold in a database somewhere.

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they have the names, you want to take them without their permission. that is stealing. Nice of you to decide they wont care. You repeat that YOU have no problem coming up with names, this is for the children!!! Those poor little tykes with underdeveloped brains that cant think up a dcent name for themselves. we need a program to help them! Do it for the children.



no, the system in place was dvelopd by the dvs as he least intrusive method of dealing with this "problem" You send an email to the holder and he doesnt respond, maybe he is just ignoring you and laughing with his friends at your expense.
No name should be taken from a toon above lvl 10. i dont want to see the devs waste development time on an inane crusade such as this.

Last word, Ive got "superspud" and you cant have it. My 3 accounts havent missed a day paid since I started. I can see some nameweasel getting this and then trying to convince the devs to apply it to toons that havent been logged in in x number of days.

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Side note: How would any of you know if they suddenly started purging names not logged in for over a year?

I'd suggest that likely less than 2% of accounts have taken a break longer than a year and ever returned, and I'm 100% sure that could be datamined easily enough.

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If a member of my sg suddenly had a toon change to genericxxxx it would show up in my sg window. You are pulling numbers from a dark stinky place trying to justify your point. the current system works fine. stop trying to steal someone elses names.Thats what you are doing, whether you want to admit it or not.

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Personally, I think automated emails being sent saying, "Your account has been inactive for 12 months and the names will be released in 30 days if you do not respond." would be fine.

Even servicemembers in Iraq have email access at least once per year, and allowing them to click one link to have their account maintained (possibly with the link asking, "why the absence?" and making it noted in the account) isn't asking too much.

Non-response gets purged.

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Of course they could tell you to think of your own names and stop trying o pinch someone elses.

1) im leaving data..

I check military no matter what, my names are safe.

2) blackmailing customers is a lousy way to keep thm

3) orderable sets are 99% gm interaction free. The cost of having people assigned to getting names for unimaginative dorks is prohibitive. You say you have no problem getting names. How can the new player tell the difference between someone that has not had an active account in 6 months or an alt of mine that i havent played on guardian in 6 months.What is the line? tell the gm's its ok to pull a name that hasnt been played for 2 years even if the player has played other toons on that account in the last week? He isnt using it. Newbies need to think of their own names, just like the rest of us do.

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It's not all "add twits" trying to use the very same name that "you" came up with.

I know a lot of people who've had to add a . or 1 to their name, because the person who play(ed) the character with it is long gone.

My suggestion in the other thread about this was:

Create a 'petition for name' which allows a player to actively say "Hey I want this name, please find out if the name is being used by an active player." A GM would be assigned to looking up through the database whether the account a name is on is in use, how long it's been out of use, and decide whether to award a name to an active, PAID UP player.

I'm sorry but if you were gone for 18 months - tough. I've been here 4 years. There are plenty of people who are new who want a name and it's gone because someone pl'd their character to level 50 and will *always* be outside the purge range - even if they played for 5 months and have *never come back*.

Honestly: people who continue to pay for their accounts, even if they're not playing the game, SHOULD have priority over those who repeatedly use the "come back for 10 days! please pay for another month!" folks. And I know there are plenty of THOSE accounts out there too.

If you're not paying for your account, you're also not PLAYING the characters.

** Does the character have plenty of badges? Or were they created and *abandoned* after badges were even inserted into the game? (a badge-collecting character on hiatus would obviously have a higher chance of retaining a name than one which never got a single badge put on it)

** Does the account have a record of on-again-off-again? (accounts which have been put on only at times of freebie access should be on a lower priority than those which had been paid up and abruptly ended payment.)

** How many OTHER characters are on the account? (Altitis hits a lot of us - and though it pains me to say it, someone with plenty of alternative characters should be LOWER on the priority scale than one which has only 2 or 3 high-level characters on it. The ones with a high level and nothing else, have and will PLAY that character, where as people like myself are likely to have a bazillion names scattered everywhere - if I stopped paying for my account, and someone wanted to use "Blaque Ice" - LET THEM. I have 20 others that aren't as likely to be wanted.)

** Give both accounts name change tokens. If a name change is needed because someone else 'took' the name: get creative yourself. If you've been gone, you lose.

All this within reason: minimum 90 days unpaid, unplayed, inactive accounts only. Not "active" in any way.

I'd like to see NC institute a feedback form which allows us to click a box: I'm coming back, but financial hardship means I can't pay. I'm coming back, I'm on military duty for x months. I'm not bothering to come back, because x and y. etc. If any of thsoe tags came up, obviously, reserve the ones who state why they had to leave versus ones who either didn't give feedback (they don't care) or gave negative feedback (they won't be back).

"Getting creative" IS a high priority for me. But even then: aforementioned Blaque Ice is a 'creative spelling' for a character that would otherwise have been named several times over Black Ice, Black Icee, Black Yce, Blaaak Ice, etc. It happens that it's in character, as Blaque is his last name... But I did try naming him Black Ice. And Black Axe, and Blaque Axe in fact. All taken.

Do I play the character? No. If someone managed to contact my account about it, I'd say SURE - have it, and delete him, because he's like level 8. It's no huge deal for heavy alters like myself, but if he was my ONLY character? Yeah I'd pitch a fit.

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Call the WAAAAAAmbulance! someone needs a ride. Think of your own names. stop trying to steal someone else's.

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I wish I had something profound to say. As I don't, I will just say "woot."

This is a great add. I can see a day I'll have 36 characters on Pinnacle as a result. I'm vaguely afraid that day will be in July of this year.

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You are being pessimistic....August at the earliest.

What!!!!!! no ponies!!!!!DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOm!

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Villains have relationships too, and feel empathy, anger, and the like when one falls.

Not all villains are only looking out for themselves. The "theme" bit is a load of crap.

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A thousand times this. Can one not be empathetic to someone who is on the wrong side of the law? They just need to come out and say the real reason they won't give Emps to the Red side and stop feeding us this [censored].

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They have said that they will play around with the names and fx's of the powers and release it when they have time. They didnt have the budget to do it in I12.

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I don't have the words to say how silly WhiteLady's comment was...but I think _Pax covered it well, good job sir. Though I think I'll give it a go anyways

Henchmen/Lackeys are to Villains as Sidekicks are to Heroes, they are the same thing or the perverbial 'second banana'

Add in all the stupid special circumstances you want WhiteLady, you can't change a fact.

[/ QUOTE ]Nick Fury isn't a mastermind, and masterminds do not belong on hero side.

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First after a red name!

Errr.... wait, its just Silverspar. Heheh.

Silverspar's absolutely right though.

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Masterminds do not belong on blueside. I've said it many times in another thread down in the Sugg & ideas forum. However, I do not see a problem with a MM set/s porting over to a troller or def. Like many have said-robots work. Also, yes Fury (not SHIELD Fury though) is a MM type troller/scrapper. He leads a small group of fighting men into combat. It does fit blue-side. And it's easy to RP it as long as your willing to get into the fight or close to it.

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and empaths do not belong red side.

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The new 10-20 zone/content should be for villains too. This is a stupid mistake. I forget which Dev it was, but one of them JUST said within a week ago, that adding more hero only or villain only zones is redunant and pointless. So uh...what gives? Heroes already have 100x more content from 10-20 anyway. This and the lame VEAT is making it hard to get excited over i12 for me. I do like everything else in the preview though.

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The new 10 -20 contemt is coop.

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I have a feeling that Stalkers are gonna get a big hairy shaft...

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I'm actually scratching my head as to what Stalkers could get.



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As I said, a big hairy shaft.

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kinky

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**explodes**

c'mon Instant Healing

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/absorb_pain


ow ow ow ow...MEDIC!!!!!!!!!

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I strongly suspected we were getting ready to see alot of cross-AT "pollination" of the reserved powersets, and I'm entirely happy to see it happen. While I'm sure a goodly amount of work is needed to make sets fit properly into different ATs its still a lot less work I'm imagining than making entirely new sets. This was a low-hanging fruit just daring to be plucked. Gimme my axe brute, mine mine mine!

One downside - ya can't keep giving us new powersets after 4 years and not give us more more server slots. I'm not paying for a third account, its just not going to happen, the second account was hard enough to justify. And after 4 years I've made so many friends on a single server its just not feasible to up and move elsewhere. I know the "play on another server" suggestion is the standard mantra but its not realistic. Give us more slots! I'll gladly trade every empty slot I have on Freedom for 2 more slots on Triumph, deal?

The costume bits look wonderful. Improved power tray UI, great! Contact management improved, awesome. Inspiration conversion, weird and not even asked for that I know of but gladly taken. Level-up boost, also kinda weird and neat. Hyperlinked chatting? Oh heck ya! More Real Numbers, sign me up!

Yet another new mysterious organization (magic-based, to boot) that we've somehow never heard of in 4 years of exploring the CoH universe? Meh. Roman-styled maps? Any new additions are nice but it sounds pretty bland.

Excited, eager, mildly dampened over this Midnight Squad business and the increasingly painful need for extra char slots. i12 preview review: 8.5 out of 10.

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Id like to be able to trade all slots on 2 servers for 10 additional slots on 1 server. Make it 3 for 1 if you are going to freedom.