I only look at vet badges when giving away goodies to low level characters. See if I can convert short term players into long term.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Always look at powers at the start, and I pay no attention to anything else. I really just want to see where potential troubles may lie.
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There are lots of people in this game that pay but don't really play. They don't want to lose on vet badges. CoX has quite the loyal following and there are many that simply won't cancel on this game, even if they leave for a period of time. |
Originally Posted by Kheldarn
Personally, I don't know anyone who would buy time for a game, then not play it for the entire time, barring any outstanding circumstances. |
There are those that play, but mostly roleplay or craft or build bases. I think every SG has those people that have more fun with the editors than they do the combat.
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You mean the ones who are all "Her identity is a closely-guarded secret, even though I just told you everything right here"? Yeah, that's annoying. More so if you make a comment on their name and they immediately assume you're metagaming.|
Originally Posted by Lyrik
This...mostly this. Although on longer missions, groups of missions I go read the descriptions to find out who they are. And if it's a good story I compliment them on writing it.(unless they show signs of RP...then I wouldn't be able to read their story now would I and it would be rude to assume I know everything about them...
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Here's some other characters you might want to avoid, even in a non-RP context:
- The Guy With More Out-of-Character RP Notes Than Actual Story(Seriously. I once saw a Corruptor with each of their Radiation Emission powers individually listed with the type of grenade they were RPed as instead of saying something like "Radiation powers RPed as different grenade types)
- Skimpy-Clothed Girl With Maxed Chest Slider(especially if their bio is simply "(ERP)", or if it goes into detail about how hot and irresistable she is and how much your character wants to be with her, accompanied by the phrase "No ERP". Inconsistent much?)
- Why The Hell Is This Psycho Considered A Hero?(You know what I'm talking about. The guy who tries to rip off people's arms in Pocket D simply because they're one of the villain archetypes. I mean, during a Test Server event, or maybe on Virtue, there was a guy who RPed that he was tearing off Ghost Widow's arms. I'm surprised GW didn't use Soul Storm right then and there.)
- XxXwolverineXxX, magneato., B14ck Vu1c4n, dr. doomed, Human Scorch, Gunisher, etc.
Formerly known as Stormy_D
Like some others have said, I'm more interested in the badges for defeats, accomplishments, accolades, etc than for played time. Gives an idea of how "well rounded" their CoX career has been up to that point. But I don't know that I've ever altered my playstyle on account of the badges, I'm just nosy and get bored waiting for the final slots in a TF to fill.
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This a quick reply. Sorry if it's already been touched on.|
Originally Posted by Fusion_7
So, with that mentioned above, do we know if and when there will be a "fix" on making the description field longer so you can elaborate more on your toons history?
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Every player can have up to 36 characters per server. Even if you haven't bought the slots, there's probably storage space allotted for them. So that's 396 characters per account.
Assuming that there's 100,000 accounts, that's 39,600,000 characters. Maybe more, because of inactive accounts, maybe less because the overhead storage space might not be that high. For easy math purposes, let's round it down to a nice even 35 million.
You can currently type 1000 characters into your bio. Let's be really generous and give you 10 times the space. That's +9000 bytes per character in the database, even if for the characters whose bio is blank. That's 315 terabytes of extra data. Even if we were only to increase the default slots of those 100,000 accounts, it would be 105 terabytes.
Then you have to take backups into account. Double that number if there's only one backup. There's probably more than one copy of the database though, since people have had deleted characters restored up to 6 months afterwards. So assume 6 backups (1 per month). That's potentially up to 1890 terabytes of storage space reserved. For a feature that would probably not be used by a very large percentage of the population; less than half the characters I see even USE their bio, and of those that do, it's rarely close to the limit.
It's likely that the devs would not reserve that much space - afterall, as it gets used, they can still add more before it reaches the limit. But still, anything which increases operating costs is potentially detrimental to the game's longevity, unless the change increases subscription numbers.
Short version: I'd like more bio space for the rare time I use it. I don't think we'll get it because the potential costs are probably too high to justify.
@Roderick
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I do. I know someone who subscribed to the game several years ago and left it on autopay, but never really played. Her vet badges are higher than mine, somewhere in the 50s, but she really only has a couple months of actual experience under her belt.|
Originally Posted by Kheldarn
Personally, I don't know anyone who would buy time for a game, then not play it for the entire time, barring any outstanding circumstances.
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And, sometimes she lets her friend play who not only hasn't played CoH for even a month, but hasn't played ANY MMO ever before, despite having a 50something vet badge in her info.
Vet badges only track time paid for on the account. Not time played, or even the person currently playing the game.
The only time I ever pay attention to vet badges is when it's 3 or less. Then I try to be helpful and ask if they want any help or information.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Personally I'll look at powersets and vet badges as a team's forming so I've an idea of what to expect. More often than not if someone has 12 months or more I can assume they have a decent understanding of the game mechanics, and someone with 0-6 months may be spotty on things. This is, of course, not a hard and fast rule but I've found it a useful guideline.
If I'm on a team of predominantly 12+ month veterans my initial approach is to assume competency on their part unless I'm proven wrong. The new players I'll assume that they may not know what they're doing as well and play cautiously for the first mission or so until I see how they handle themselves.
Like many of the replies so far I've run across the 40+ month noob and the 0 month player who's highly competent so vet badges can only tell you so much. It's always pleasant finding a new player who knows what they're doing; and I always try to have more patience with mistakes that new players make.
As an example, if a new player pulls a bonehead maneuver that causes a problem for the team I'll be a lot more forgiving than if a long time vet pulls the same stunt.
I tend to assume competence on everyone's part unless I'm proven wrong... for example a recent TF with a storm controller with perma Hurricane who loved to stand beside my tank was a rather unpleasant exception, and he had 48 months so by god he could do no wrong and was the best player in the universe!
I've also run into players who'd only been playing a couple of weeks and were eager to learn, those are among my favorite teammates.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
I'm glad so many have already stated it
Vet badges mean absolutly nothing when it comes to player competency