Since there are hero/ vill merits... Why not..

No one ever said the devs never reversed a decision. What was done was people have corrected someones misstatements about what the devs actually said, from what he was interpreting them to mean.

This is no different than someone claiming the devs changed their minds on power customization when they always said it was something they wanted to do but couldn't work on right away because they didn't have the time, money, or resources to assign to the project.

Look I can cut out what I feel like, even stopping mid sentence, as well. Or you could deal with the whole sentence and realize the other 3/4 of it changes what is says completely.

I mean really:

"Originally Posted by Soul_System View Post
Personally I think that stating the devs have never ever reversed a decision"

VS


"Personally I think that stating the devs have never ever reversed a decision, outside of a few things you basically then laid out as not really reversing, is kind of a silly thing to say in the long time frame of goodness knows how many changes."


Call me stupid but it almost seems like your posted reply is merit-less if you take into account the full thing rather than cherry pick the words you feel like addressing. Especially if you then don't take it into context to what it was replying too. I mean it's got built in redundancy on that one .

You can try to conceal what we were discussing with all the jibber jabber you want, but the issue you chose to comment on wasn't about whether or not the devs ever reversed themselves on a decision but on the misstatements someone was making to justify his posts.

It wasn't you who made misstatements.

If you don't have access to Going Rogue you don't have access to alignment merits in the first place.

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.

So now your interpretation of my post is more valid than my actual feelings/intent about my post? That's ludicrous. What point is there if I can't even be right about my own intent in your eyes? Is it really THAT important for you to be right?

Talk about bias lol.


To be very very very very very very clear to you. I was talking about the big picture. Your still talking about the small stuff that has bee concretely noted. Of course, you obviously know what I mean better than I do so tell me, oh great master, what do I really mean that I am unaware of?

Merging the hero and villain markets.

"We looked into the crystal ball and didn't like what we saw"

*later*

"So looks like it's either try to keep three different markets entirely separate, which means a whole bunch of code for all the different edge cases, or just merge them all into one. Merging it is! Also, Gleemail now works for all your characters, you can give Insps to enemy alignments on co-op teams, and Santa is making a special appearance on Easter."

The market merge wasn't a reversal either. The devs always said they wanted to eventually merge them but said there was too great a difference in the amount of available Inf between the red and blue factions and redside simply couldn't afford the blueside prices.

Once they allowed us to email items and inf between factions that issue was resolved and merging the markets was only a few months away at most.

Uh, when e-mail attachments were first introduced, you could only claim the inf or items with a character of the same faction, precisely in order to keep the two markets separate.

As late as the Closed Beta of Going Rogue, there were plans to keep the markets separate (as well as the third Praetorian market) until it became obvious that it was far too much of a hassle for both players and developers. The decision was made to merge the markets, and the ability to email stuff to the other side was a consequence of that.

Did you actually read that post from Posyb that you linked? It's merely a set of step by step instructions on how to email items to yourself before they allowed items to be sent by emails between both factions.

Nowhere does he say that the devs implemented the email feature in order to keep the markets separate.

Now you are correct that this all happened while I17 was still in beta testing. However the devs always said they would like to merge the markets at some point.

Finally doing something that you have always said you would like to do at some point is not a reversal.

I'm just suprised how many comments on the topic sry never had something like this :P

I am not saying that "the devs implemented the email feature in order to keep the markets separate", I am saying "the fact that you originally couldn't email influence or items from heroes to villains was a measure put in place to keep markets separate".

Going back to a previous post of yours:

This quote from you implies that the e-mail attachments, as originally implemented, allowed heroes to send inf to villains and vice versa, and furthermore, that this was *intended* as a way to bypass the market separation and equalize the number of Inf on both sides, leading up to the market merge.

Facts that directly contradict this:

1) As originally implemented, the email attachments did not allow villains to receive Inf from heroes. Proof: poshyb's posyt.

2) We did *not* get the ability to send Inf attachments from heroes to villains until *after* the market merge was implemented.

3) For a while in GR Closed Beta, the three markets, Hero, Villain, and Praetorian, were completely separate, Inf did not carry over when you switched sides or moved from Praetoria to Paragon/the Isles. Proof: ask any Beta tester.

Source for a quote for "the devs have always wanted to merge the markets"?

Here is a FAQ for the Market Merge, dated 22 Jun 2010.

Here is a thread started on 3 Feb 2010, titled "So really no market merge?". There are no redname posts, but everyone seems to be under the impression the markets are not going merge come GR. (Arcanaville *is* holding forth the position that "at this point, there is no good argument for keeping the markets separate from the point of view of the ingame economy", but Arcanaville is not a dev.) The thread peters out without reaching a conclusion on May 13th, and the next post is a single smiley on June 22nd.

Before the announcement on June 22nd, merging the markets was widely believed by the playerbase to be something that would never happen. The main disagreements were on whether or not it *should* happen. Nobody seemed to believe it *would* (you'll note Obsidius accuses EvilGeko of lobbying early on).

EDIT: Here is a post from Positron dated March 30th, 2010, where he talks about how your Influence is put into "escrow or Limbo" when you change sides. This would be nonsensical if they were planning to merge the markets at this point.

Also, note that originally, Heroes and Villains were not able to gift each other Inspirations, even on co-op teams (a source of much frustration during the Valentine's and Winter events).

This is only conjecture, but since you can sell Inspirations to a Tree of Wonders or Auto-Doc, if Inspirations were tradeable it would've been possible to pass Influence from one side to the other, even if at incredibly slow rates. So I propose that this was another measure put in place to insulate the markets from each other.

Further proof: the restrictions on gifting Inspirations were lifted at the same time as the markets were merged.

From this, my theory is that the decision to merge the markets was made at some point between April and June of 2010, in response to what was going on in the Going Rogue Closed Beta. The changes to e-mail attachments and Inspiration gifting were a result of the merge, and proof of the change in direction.

Your theory is correct. The decision to implement a merge was made somewhere around the end of May 2010. The deciding factor seems to be that while the devs always understood there were QoL and other benefits to a merge, the amount of work it would have taken and some other disadvantages of merging made it not a sufficiently attractive proposition. With Going Rogue, the work to maintain the market walls would increase, the complexity exposed to the players would increase, and QoL barriers would increase, while over time the disadvantages of a merge continued to decrease. That made the decision go in favor of the market merge.

As to the whole "Paragon being controlled by Korea" thing, I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently ignorant of how the devs work to comment on that intelligently. No, that's not a typo.

You have a distinctly unique handle on the English language.

No it doesn't.

The only thing it implies is that before that decision we couldn't send items between factions using emails. Nothing more.

Duh, of course it was. The devs aren't morons. Common sense told them that if they allowed items and inf to be sent cross faction that the players would use the stuff to buy and sell on the opposite market.

They even knew that by allowing side switching that there would be players that would load up characters with IO's and Inspirations to twink out secondary builds just to use them as mules to change factions, then strip them of items using respecs and sell them on the other side.

It's not hard to power level a mule up to the desired level and then use vetspecs to strip the mule once it switched sides. Then delete and repeat.


No they don't

Which only confirms my statement is correct. We couldn't originally send items cross faction.

I never said we did. What I actually said was that once they decided to let us send items cross faction via email they couldn't have delayed merging the markets for more than a few months at most. The simple fact that they didn't even wait that long confirms my conclusion.

I was a beta tester. That's how I know that the devs didn't originally allow us to send items cross faction via email.

The last official statement was made by Positron during the 5th anniversary in game Q/A which several other forum members posted from their chatlogs, as well as confirmed participating in.

I guess your going to argue that there was a conspiracy between those dozens of players to post false informartion about what the devs said.

Which confirms what I said about the devs deciding to merge the markets after they decided to allow items to be sent cross faction emails.

The thread was made by a player before the devs decided to allow items to be sent cross faction via emails. It doesn't contradict anything I said nor does it provide any evidence that the devs were always against merging the market someday.

What players believe and disbelieve has nothing to do with the facts. For example players have been claiming the game was doomed and going to shut down in a "few months" for 7 years.

Again simply a post made before they decided to allow cross faction emails, and nowhere does he say they would never merge the markets.

Which has nothing to do with sending emails cross faction or merging the markets. That's just how the game mechanics worked for years.

See previous statement.

Exactly. It was done after the devs decided to allow items to be emailed cross faction.

Even if your theory on the order of the decisions in which came first, cross faction emails or finally merging the markets, is correct it still doesn't change the fact that the devs didn't change direction. They always said that one day they'd like to merge the markets and they finally made it happen.

"Once X happened, Y was only a few months away at most" = "X happened, and then some months later, Y happened".

In this case, X = "allowing us to e-mail items and inf between factions". The bolded part is the important one.

...yeah, sure, let's go with that.

EDIT: Okay, I did your research for you. Transcript of Positron appearance in the D.

At the very, very bottom:

From this, and the fact that the Devs never, ever change their minds in response to new developments, we can conclude that the amount of Infamy existing on redside came to match the amount of Influence existing on blueside around May 2010.

Ya, things can get pretty convoluted pretty quickly. Things are reasonably complicated enough in a straight up discussion and then people start putting their feelings and their pride into discussions, making them even more difficult and less productive. Becomes a match for "who is right" instead of "what is right" or "what I feel is best".

Situations like that are why phrases like "the internet, serious business" gained popularity.


Unfortunately society teaches you how to argue your side and try to win, it really doesn't teach you how to discuss things respectfully and successfully.

To be honest, I'm not sure how the guiding principle of "I must win all arguments" alone explains this thread. Near as I can tell, Koreans have taken over Paragon Studios and forced the devs to change their minds and merge the villain market with the hero market so they can overcharge them for email. I'm not sure I can declare a winner there.

Don't let your imagination run wild about hidden meanings that were never said.

No you didn't. You did the research for yourself. I wasn't the one trying to prove a negative. I said the devs always stated they would like to merge the markets one day and used the difference in the amounts of inf available to both sides as the reason they hadn't done it at that time, and instead of proving that I was wrong you confirmed what I said was correct. Thank you.


But please feel free to live in denial.

Hehe, capitalism. Gotta love it. Alternatively speculation, gotta love it .