Game Update June 17th, 2008
By
3N1GMA,
Posted on: 2008-06-17 24:37 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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As concerns the new limitations to trial accounts:
Restrictions on trial accounts entering SGs make even less sense to me. The only two reasons I can think of why the devs would do that have already been mentioned in this forum: a) the padding for the prestige grant, and b) some SGs having their bins raided by RMTers (or other nefarious delinquents). As to the first, that should only be an issue if the devs are planing another prestige grant, and if they are, this is no reason to add such restrictions, as the same people hell-bent on restricting your access to cash would likely not also be willing to throw it at you.
[/ QUOTE ]Theres more reasons. If RMTs could join SGs, I think theyd form one with some paying accounts active as leaders, and use trial accounts as extra storage.
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As I understand it, storage as relevant to an SG is based exclusively in the SG base, with all its attendant bins. I am thus at a loss to understand how RMTers could use trial accounts as a form of spare storage for their SGs.
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As to the second, if you lost valuable stuff to an RMTer you errantly invited to your SG, it's you're own damn fault, not the devs, and trial accounts oughtn't have to pay the price for your error. I know it sounds harsh, but you have ample tools at your disposal to stop such thefts (such as restricting permissions--and if you made an RMTer a leader in your SG, you deserved what you got as far as I'm concerned). It is neither the duty nor the place of the devs to be fixing that for you, and it is inappropriate that you should ask someone else to pay the price for your own failings.
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The RMTs often disguise themselves as legitimate players(having a real person there to respond to checks devs may do occasionally). As to "if you lost valuable stuff to an RMTer you errantly invited to your SG, it's you're own damn fault, not the devs, and trial accounts oughtn't have to pay the price for your error." How would you know someone was a RMT, beside the obvious names like dshgdkjrty and such? If a RMT has a normal looking name, would you actually expect someone to be able to tell that the persons a RMT? And I dont believe anyone expects the devs to give back any items/inf lost to RMTs stealing from the SG, as I believe I saw somwhere that the devs have said that they wont do refunds/replacements on items lost to scams. Not sure, but thats how I remember it.
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This was perhaps poorly stated. My point here was simply that if you've lost stuff, it is in many ways your own fault for not having proper safeguards on your SG's bins, and gimping trial players' ability to experience SGs is not an appropriate response to that problem. It's not the devs' responsibility to deal with that, particularly not at that level.
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Last but not least, the chat restrictions do make some sense, yes. CoH, and to a lesser extent CoV, are, however, inherently team based games. There are ways to solo, and to solo well, but we should all know that no noob knows them and can only stumble into them by blind luck (kinda like I did... >.>
. Allowing trial players to chat in broadcast is, I think, not unreasonable, but I note it's not on the list. I have played for the past year on Triumph, Infinity, Pinnacle, and Victory, and have yet to see an RMT ad anywhere but my inbox and in tells. Allowing trial accounts access to most of the other channels paying players have access to should increase their ability to effectively team without seriously increasing RMT spam. That said, they'd probably move there, given the other restrictions, so...
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Ive seen spam in Broadcast before, on Freedom, so consider yourself lucky.
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Ooooooh so many reasons why I don't play on Freedom 
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Which leaves us with the prickly issue of tells. It has been pointed out, correctly and at some length, that tells are an integral part of the process most players use to get a team, or to recruit one. The idea has been put forward that trial accounts be allowed to respond to tells but not to originate them. This solution, while interesting, will prove ultimately unfeasible.
It works from the inherent (and invalid) assumption that tells function as a sort of in-game AIM conversation, which one person can initiate and another can respond to, and they do have that effect. But in practice, the mechanics of the game are such that every tell sent would be accounted as a new conversation, not merely a continuation of an old one. Most of use that handy little backspace key to reply to tells, but all that amounts to is a keybind that fills in the first part of what we're doing, the routing information. But that's not actually replying. There is nothing to reply to as far as the software's concerned. It's just a new communique from point A to point B, and the system doesn't remember if something went from B to A first.
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How do you know this? And besides, if "There is nothing to reply to as far as the software's concerned.", then how does it know whose name to start a tell to? I dont know about you, but if I hit backspace, on my regular account, I get (without quotes) "/t Playerwhosenttellsname, ". Maybe its an error somewere if you dont get that. Or, maybe you mean the game doesnt store the message? Im not 100% on what youre trying to say here, but I can say that I dont see how sending and replying to tells arent separate, you'll need to explain that.
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You'll notice that, when you hit the backspace key, it retrieves the routing information for the last incoming transition of that kind and puts it in your chat bar. Clearly, something is keeping track of your chat logs.
That said, is that something set up in a send/reply fashion? That's a lot more difficult to ascertain, and admittedly, I'm no red-name or programing wiz to have examined the code. That said, one can point to certain tell-tale signs in the way it functions. Most specifically, if the system were set up in a conversational fashion, with a send/reply structure, each sending of a tell to a new person would constitute a new conversation, and one should be able to just tap backspace to continue that conversation. But the function of that key is slightly different, so that if you send me something, and I then send someone else something else, if I tap the backspace key, it doesn't continue my conversation with someone else, but with you.
Quite aside from which, can you imagine the complexities of trying to keep track of who's in conversation with who according to whose chat tabs? Mine could still list me as in conversation with you, while yours could list you three conversations later, and trying to maintain such a thing remotely would be difficult, to say the least. I therefore conclude that the most logical way for the system to be operating right now is not as a conversational send/reply mechanism, but simply as a series of one-way communications, with something built in to keep track of who the last person to have sent you a communication of this kind was.
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This leaves us with a problem since, clearly, RMTers are abusing tells, but we still need something to fulfill the role that tells fill for teaming for most players, and simply replying to a tell is outside what the system has been designed to handle. Rather, I would suggest that, with their new-found ability to expand the number of global channels, the devs create server-specific channels for trial accounts to communicate to one another, to allow them to team and learn together, with an explanation in the GMOTD of all trial accounts what that channel's for, and what sorts of questions should be directed to help. Otherwise help's going to be overloaded and people with legitimate questions won't be able to get them answered for all the people ignoring the channel.
Those are just my thoughts, take them as you will.
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Now THIS I can agree with! That'd be very helpful(pun intended 
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Well, I'm glad we can agree on something
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Whole lotta shakin' going on here to while zoning in fly/hover. Going forward doesn't help, but hitting the space bar does for me.
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I've noticed this too. The shaking ends if I move up from the ground, but no amount of distance seems to help if I hover as close to the ground as possible. Even if the ground slopes up or down, it seems to be my distance from the ground that matters.
-D
Darkonne: Pinnacle's (unofficially) mighty Dark Miasma/Radiation Blast enthusiast!
Be sure to check out this mighty Arc:
#161865 - Aeon's Nemesis
Anybody else have their extra character slots disapear, i had two unclaimed ones and now they are gone, i even deleted a toon to make another one and that one also disapeared.
Did we get reset to only having 12 toons per server?
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Anybody else have their extra character slots disapear, i had two unclaimed ones and now they are gone, i even deleted a toon to make another one and that one also disapeared.
Did we get reset to only having 12 toons per server?
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Yes, that happened to me this evening, deleted one to make a free slot and all the extra slots are still locked.
in addition the 'rename' and 'transfer character server' buttons have dissappeared, almost as though we went back to an earlier version of the interface... except that the 'extra character' slider is still active.
I checked my account status to make sure that i wasn't restricted, and I am not... could this be some side effect of restricted account status?
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Anybody else have their extra character slots disapear, i had two unclaimed ones and now they are gone, i even deleted a toon to make another one and that one also disapeared.
Did we get reset to only having 12 toons per server?
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Yes, I am having same issue. I had three extras (15 total), the two initial free ones plus one veteran slot. Slot #14 was available before the patch, and now shows as Unavailable.
It looks like there's bugs with trying to make chars in slots past the first screen. I don't think I 100% 'lost' my free slot, because I have a hole in the list: there's char #13, a 'unavailable' in slot #14, and then char #15. As though somewhere the server is aware that I should have three more slots, it just won't let me make toons in them.
No, we are not reset to 12 toons per server. I still have my two extra toons (and one of my non-veteran friends still has one of his extras in the free slot), although I haven't checked to see if I can login with them or not.
when are we going to get the funky chicken dance fixed for fly/ hover when zoning. My 5 and 7 year old think it is one of the best parts of the game
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Anybody else have their extra character slots disapear, i had two unclaimed ones and now they are gone, i even deleted a toon to make another one and that one also disapeared.
Did we get reset to only having 12 toons per server?
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Yes, I am having same issue. I had three extras (15 total), the two initial free ones plus one veteran slot. Slot #14 was available before the patch, and now shows as Unavailable.
It looks like there's bugs with trying to make chars in slots past the first screen. I don't think I 100% 'lost' my free slot, because I have a hole in the list: there's char #13, a 'unavailable' in slot #14, and then char #15. As though somewhere the server is aware that I should have three more slots, it just won't let me make toons in them.
No, we are not reset to 12 toons per server. I still have my two extra toons (and one of my non-veteran friends still has one of his extras in the free slot), although I haven't checked to see if I can login with them or not.
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I believe you are right that they didnt go away it is just a kink to work out.
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Heres the problem I have ewith the new changes. One of the players in our Posi TF was on a trial account, we found this out as he started to complain he was getting no xp OR infl any more.
However, one of the missions bugged, a kill all that wouldnt finish despite all enemies visable to the team had been killed. (apparently there was a clock work off the map somewhere, 8 players searched very thoroughly) So the leader sent a petition and we waited... and waited.. Eventually the leader quit, then someone else, etc. Leaving the trial account as leader. The GM responded to the petition... BUT THE TF LEADER COULDN'T RESPOND TO HIM! He couldnt use tells! The GM went on his merry way thinking the trial account user was afk, telling him to respond via e-mail.. which he couldnt do without a support account, which apparently you dont have as a trial user... so instead of another hour wait for a new petition, the TF broke up..
And BTW, if you've ever petitioned a mission in progress, nearly the first question they ask is "Is this your mission or are you the team leader?" (TF missions belong to the team leader, thats why you can't use 'makeleader' during a TF to switch the leader) Which is why only the TL was petitioning.
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Buuut... GMs don't magically know who the team leader is to send tells to. If the GM was responding to him, it was because he sent his own petition along with the mission leaders.
Also, if he wanted to get rid of the star, he could have logged out and then back in. The star would have been passed to the next name on the list.
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A) He did send a petition after the original TL left, increasing the response time.
B) The first things the GMs ask is if your the Mission owner (TL in a TF) and if not, too bad, have the mission owner petition and we'll respond to that one...
C) I begged him to log off. Idiot went and sat in his SG Base for awhile, then joined a CC in Atlas, then back to his base, went into the mission a couple times (preventing a reset by time passed). Eventually it did reset and we went to try and redo the mission.. he died twice near the beginning and chose to sit in the hospital without responding to any conversation until I finished the mission. I couldn't get the next mission from Posi since he remained unresponsive. I eventually logged off and came back the next day to solo the TF to conclusion.. he wasn't logged on then, but he apparently stayed in team, since everything spawned for two...