City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Better Reroll System

Aura_Familia

By Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2010-05-04 11:41 in Suggestions and Ideas

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by MunkiLord View Post
Looking back I understand how that came across. That wasn't my intention, so I do apologize. Personally I enjoy reading your posts, even when we disagree.
I prefer my older posts when I didn't know anyone well enough to associate them with any previous threads.

 

Posted

Quote:
ChaosExMachina has personal focus:

Does anybody actually delete and reroll their main badge collectors? I'm guessing that an extreme minority of the population ever do such a thing, and if so they are probably the sort quite unlikely to subscribe less.

Can you think of even 1 person who would, under the current system, reroll a main badger, get to the cap, which, by the way, they are doing no faster than they would if they had not rerolled, then decide to quit?

Because the "time sink" argument is essentially saying that there is some sort of subset of the subscriber base that likes to farm badges with a single toon only, reroll that toon occasionally, and then farm them again. That's quite ridiculous.
I think the mistake you're making is assuming people have a "main badger" and that's it. BADGERS have that, maybe, but like other factions of the game, they're not the majority. And this change is entirely for the purpose of badgers and no one else, so /unsigned for being useless to most of the player base and counter to the dev's plan.

Dec out.

 

Posted

Quote:
Forbin_Project knows the ropes:

Maybe the Op is one of those people that thinks NO means if they make pest of themselves long enough the person they are annoying will change their mind.
I blame people's parents. It used to disgust me when my nieces would pester my sister until she gave in. Wuss! Hold your ground!

Dec out.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia View Post
Only way I'd /sign this is if you start at LEVEL 1, with no inf, no higher than lvl 1 temp powers, no IOs, no recipes, no enhancements and no accolades. Only the badges that don't give accolades would you keep.
You know those technical difficulties I mentioned? Let me expand on them, directly related to this version of the request.

What you are asking for:
  • The developers to add a new flag to the badge database for all badges that now and in the future count towards accolades. This has a chance to corrupt the badge database, and by extension the character databases.
  • The developers to spend time filling that new flag in the database.
  • Have the game store a copy while it is being re-rolled (aka deleted) and then add badges to the new character based on the stored character.
  • Make more work for the GMs when the transfer fails or has a glitch. Only after a certain point the deleted version of the character is gone, and now they have a customer whining that they lost badges.
  • This only gets worse when the original poster then includes souvenirs and temp powers.
In the end, I suspect that the original poster (and those that feel the same) are out of luck about this. The process is fraught with pitfalls and the standard code rant should be heeded in this case.



Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Decorum View Post
I think the mistake you're making is assuming people have a "main badger" and that's it. BADGERS have that, maybe, but like other factions of the game, they're not the majority. And this change is entirely for the purpose of badgers and no one else, so /unsigned for being useless to most of the player base and counter to the dev's plan.
Actually some of those badgers you are disparaging are against the idea too.



Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

 

Posted

Oh, I wasn't disparaging badgers, they can have their fun any way they want. I was just saying they have their own specific POV, like any other "faction" in this game.

EDIT: And looking over my post, I don't see that I said anything disparaging there.

Dec out.

 

Posted

I'm for it. Flame away.

If you need some extra ammo, here's an observation - the counter arguments boil down to "badges are designed to be and should remain a time sink" which, if true, would be a pretty uncharacteristic d*** move on the developers' behalf and b} because it would give you accolades at Lv1, which would in turn be solved by not including accolade badges in the transfer and c} 'cause I say so.

What's the big deal here, exactly? Did a badge kill someone's parents?

 

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Quote:
Quinch wants flames:

If you need some extra ammo, here's an observation - the counter arguments boil down to "badges are designed to be and should remain a time sink" which, if true, would be a pretty uncharacteristic d*** move on the developers' behalf
As far as I know, time-sinks are a pretty big part of almost all MMOs with a monthly subscription. It's not a d*** move, it's normal and expected.

Dec out.

 

Posted

Mmm

Flames aside, do find the suggestion intriguing to an extent; but I have problems with the concept from a role play perspective.

While I can see the convenience in taking your existing level 50 ALT, and mutate it into a different ALT while retaining badges, influence and what not. It does provide game issues to other players, for you did not experience the maturity in playing that alt from earning the various levels, so when you join a level 50 group, you have a level 1 mind hero trapped in a level 50 body; which is not fair to the team.

I find it difficult to justify how a character known through out Paragon City for their abilities used to fight crime suddenly became something else; its kinda like Batman one day, the Flash next day; and then Superman the next. I have a hard time with a known charcter known for their awesome buffs join my group and to my surprise is now a tanker!

I am also not sure if your respec concept is a total ALT change or just a change of powers within the same AT, can you clarify?

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: Despite that I am disagreeing with your suggestion, I want to encourage you to continue posting new ideas; one day you will hit the ball out-of-da-park!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan View Post
One-time-only badges should be account-wide. Nothing else need be done.
Seriously, what does this solution not address? Badges that can be earned at any time can be re-earned at any time. Badges that could only be earned under one set of circumstances that will never come again should be account-wide.

@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snow Globe View Post
You know those technical difficulties I mentioned? Let me expand on them, directly related to this version of the request.

What you are asking for:
  • The developers to add a new flag to the badge database for all badges that now and in the future count towards accolades. This has a chance to corrupt the badge database, and by extension the character databases.
  • The developers to spend time filling that new flag in the database.
  • Have the game store a copy while it is being re-rolled (aka deleted) and then add badges to the new character based on the stored character.
  • Make more work for the GMs when the transfer fails or has a glitch. Only after a certain point the deleted version of the character is gone, and now they have a customer whining that they lost badges.
  • This only gets worse when the original poster then includes souvenirs and temp powers.
In the end, I suspect that the original poster (and those that feel the same) are out of luck about this. The process is fraught with pitfalls and the standard code rant should be heeded in this case.
If it causes that many issues then yeah, do it without badges.

Also with all the other things mentioned above by the OP, recipe storage, merits, etc, etc. . . makes it more than likely that this will NEVER happen.

Allowing all that to transfer to a lvl 1 would INCREASE hoarding and REDUCE alting even further than that. Not going to happen.

My suggestion is at least doable and realistic if you don't include badges, as Snow mentioned.

Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan View Post
One-time-only badges should be account-wide. Nothing else need be done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan View Post
Seriously, what does this solution not address? Badges that can be earned at any time can be re-earned at any time. Badges that could only be earned under one set of circumstances that will never come again should be account-wide.
I agree fully. I would also think that it would solve more problems than it would create.

After that the "better" re-roll system would be to make a new character.



Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snow Globe View Post
You know those technical difficulties I mentioned? Let me expand on them, directly related to this version of the request.

What you are asking for:
  • The developers to add a new flag to the badge database for all badges that now and in the future count towards accolades. This has a chance to corrupt the badge database, and by extension the character databases.
  • The developers to spend time filling that new flag in the database.
  • This only gets worse when the original poster then includes souvenirs and temp powers.
Far simpler would be a simple 50ish-entry DB containing nothing but a list of badge IDs to skip. I don't know the specific internal structure of the DB, but it's almost certainly possible to do it far more efficiently than you describe.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snow Globe View Post
  • Have the game store a copy while it is being re-rolled (aka deleted) and then add badges to the new character based on the stored character.
There is no need to make a temp copy like that, and in fact that would be very bad programming practice. You delete last, after everything else.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snow Globe View Post
  • Make more work for the GMs when the transfer fails or has a glitch. Only after a certain point the deleted version of the character is gone, and now they have a customer whining that they lost badges.
Most features can create GM work, and that is more of a thing that would happen if there was a glitch not discovered in beta, which, again, can happen with any. If the transfer fails, well that is why deleting is last.

The real technical issues would be questions like what the program does if it encounters a person with high level data at level 1, and few if any players have the knowledge of the internal database to say how important that is.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Decorum View Post
As far as I know, time-sinks are a pretty big part of almost all MMOs with a monthly subscription. It's not a d*** move, it's normal and expected.
Nerf travel powers!

It's incomprehensible to read a player praising time sinks (and generally a big warning flag to a game if a dev does).

That said, even if it did make sense, what makes those using it as an argument here think it is SUCH an important time sink that economics trump feature improvement? Most players usually ask for shortcuts, and GET them. Tons of improvements improve efficiency. I17 just included some. And again you're talking about an activity that for most players doesn't exist: rerolling and badging the same badges you got before. So how exactly do you propose it would lead to less subscriptions? Where is your history of posts opposing travel powers or base teleporters? If you have no such history, then what reason would you have to switch philosophies, other than to oppose an idea just because?

That argument is embarrassing and disingenuous.

A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!

 

Posted

Hmmm.

No one ever DID answer my question I posed earlier in the thread.

What do you do when you go through ALL of that stuff to start over at level 1 with all your badges.....and then you feel like playing the OLD character?

I mean, think about it, obviously you enjoy playing that character...if you didn't you probably wouldn't have collected all that crap on it in the first place. Chances are you would jump through all the hoops required to start over and a couple days later you'd want to play your old standby character...except now you CAN'T, because it doesn't exist anymore.

And then there's the problem already mentioned. What do you do with an entire character's worth of level 50 IOs that you won't be able to use for another 46 levels? It's doubtful you will get to just hang on to all of them.....more likely you'd go through all of this and then *POOF* several billion inf worth of IOs....gone.


And the point that we don't know how important AT, powersets, and origin are to how the character is filed within the server. I can see a bug happening where the computer looks for BlasterGuy to log in....only the server is looking for a level 50 Fire/Fire blaster, and BlasterGuy is now a level 1 katana/WP scrapper. Your character, including all the stuff you were so desperate to keep, just got eaten by the server....and you can't get it back because the OLD character was deleted when you switched stuff around.

There's a lot of stuff you're glossing over or just flat out ignoring here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect View Post
Hmmm.

No one ever DID answer my question I posed earlier in the thread.

What do you do when you go through ALL of that stuff to start over at level 1 with all your badges.....and then you feel like playing the OLD character?

I mean, think about it, obviously you enjoy playing that character...if you didn't you probably wouldn't have collected all that crap on it in the first place. Chances are you would jump through all the hoops required to start over and a couple days later you'd want to play your old standby character...except now you CAN'T, because it doesn't exist anymore.

And then there's the problem already mentioned. What do you do with an entire character's worth of level 50 IOs that you won't be able to use for another 46 levels? It's doubtful you will get to just hang on to all of them.....more likely you'd go through all of this and then *POOF* several billion inf worth of IOs....gone.


And the point that we don't know how important AT, powersets, and origin are to how the character is filed within the server. I can see a bug happening where the computer looks for BlasterGuy to log in....only the server is looking for a level 50 Fire/Fire blaster, and BlasterGuy is now a level 1 katana/WP scrapper. Your character, including all the stuff you were so desperate to keep, just got eaten by the server....and you can't get it back because the OLD character was deleted when you switched stuff around.

There's a lot of stuff you're glossing over or just flat out ignoring here.
Well as far as server eating your character, I don't know what to say.

But to someone wanting to play a character after it is deleted(which is effectively what one would be doing), umm, too bad.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect View Post
Hmmm.

No one ever DID answer my question I posed earlier in the thread.

What do you do when you go through ALL of that stuff to start over at level 1 with all your badges.....and then you feel like playing the OLD character?
Then you're SOL. That character, to all practical means and purposes, is gone. They've developed into something else. Barbara Gordon didn't get to switch back and forth between the Oracle and Batgirl.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Quinch View Post
Then you're SOL. That character, to all practical means and purposes, is gone. They've developed into something else. Barbara Gordon didn't get to switch back and forth between the Oracle and Batgirl.
It's hard to swing a wheel chair from roof to roof...