Discussion: VIP Head Start - Patch Notes for Build 2100.201109140228.1
By
Aquila_NA,
Posted on: 2011-09-15 11:26 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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Thank you.|
Originally Posted by Cende
You can, in a chat tab, type /mypurchases and get a list of ALL the purchases you've ever made.
This includes all the costume parts unlocked on your account, all the Rewards tokens, lots of stuff. I just did it, and have the last line of: Displayed 593 purchases (from account server) If you highlight it all, copy (cntl-c for windows) and paste it into a text file, you at least have a list of everything. It's a workaround. Not a great one, but one. |
You can also "/copychat <tab name>" but that puts everything on 1 line.
Erg... 519 purchases?!?
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
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After you execute that command, find the log for today in C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\logs\game (C:\Program Files (x86) for the Win7 and Vista people), and find the log entry corresponding to that command. It will be on one long line. Copy that one long line to another file, delete the header part with the timestamp and save it to a file called something.html. Then open it in a browser.|
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
Thank you.
You can also "/copychat <tab name>" but that puts everything on 1 line. Erg... 519 purchases?!? |
The line will start something like this:
09-15-2011 23:06:25 <color #ffaaff><color2 #ffaaff><colorhover #ffaaff><colorselect #0><colorselectbg #333333><link #ffaaff><linkhover #ffd2ff><linkselect #0><linkselectbg #666666><table><tr><td><b>Name</b></td><td><b>Purchased</b></td><td><b>Used</b></td>
and just keep going. Delete the date and time, so the line starts:
<color #ffaaff><color2 #ffaaff><colorhover #ffaaff><colorselect #0><colorselectbg #333333><link #ffaaff><linkhover #ffd2ff><linkselect #0><linkselectbg #666666><table><tr><td><b>Name</b></td><td><b>Purchased</b></td><td><b>Used</b></td>
When that is saved to a file and opened in a browser, it will be formatted reasonably.
I find this amusing:
Mission Architect License (30 day) 800 0 2077-05-29 10:33:00 COLIMARC
The game thinks I've bought 800 30 day mission architect licenses and they will expire in 2077. Ditto the auction house and inventions. It sort of makes sense, but its still funny.
Edit: I'm not sure if I would consider that fail safe, or wildly optimistic.
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Neither one! In 2077 they will forget to update your account and you won't be able to use your IO sets.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The game thinks I've bought 800 30 day mission architect licenses and they will expire in 2077. Ditto the auction house and inventions. It sort of makes sense, but its still funny.
Edit: I'm not sure if I would consider that fail safe, or wildly optimistic. |
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I was thinking of posting a "DOOM! The world is ending in 800 months!" thread. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I find this amusing:
Mission Architect License (30 day) 800 0 2077-05-29 10:33:00 COLIMARC The game thinks I've bought 800 30 day mission architect licenses and they will expire in 2077. Ditto the auction house and inventions. It sort of makes sense, but its still funny. Edit: I'm not sure if I would consider that fail safe, or wildly optimistic. |
If anyone is still playing in 2077, I wonder if they will get an extension to those licences (there are a couple).
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
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Not exactly.|
Originally Posted by Cende
You can, in a chat tab, type /mypurchases and get a list of ALL the purchases you've ever made.
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You can get a list of unlocks.
It is not a list of purchases. It's a list of things unlocked. It doesn't show you when you got things, or whether you spent points on them.
Note that if you have chat logging on, it's a big fat block of HTML which something like Firefox can render. But...
It's not a purchase history. A purchase history would show times and amounts of points spent. Having seen ncsoft running a store in the past, I am assuming that this is because it never occurred to them to log such things.
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Or, if you're me:|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
After you execute that command, find the log for today in C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\logs\game (C:\Program Files (x86) for the Win7 and Vista people),
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C:/Users/games/appdata/roaming/ncsoft/City of Heroes/logs/game
Side notes:
1. The AppData directory is hidden. You just have to know it's there.
2. Yes, the game really does display this with forward slashes when showing that path (say, after /wdwsave).
3. If you check Properties of the game in the launcher, and then click "Browse...", you see this directory, but not the files, because it has spawned an Explorer window which shows files only if they are named CityOfHeroes.exe.
... But yes, you can extract it from there and look at the utterly meaningless data. I like that there is more than one thing I'm listed as having purchased which has EXACTLY the same name. (I have two things labeled something like "Wedding Pack - Bridal Tights". They have different product codes, though.)
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I wouldn't say its meaningless. For example, it shows how many character slots I've purchased total, and how many were used. I could compare that to how many the game thinks I have left to verify I have the correct number of slots. I could also verify the number it thinks I used corresponds to the number of extra slots I've deployed on other servers. If I wanted to know if I purchased something and I wasn't sure, I could text search that data to see if it showed up anywhere. Its not the best organized data, but I could see some use for it for people checking up on Freedom.|
Originally Posted by seebs
Or, if you're me:
C:/Users/games/appdata/roaming/ncsoft/City of Heroes/logs/game Side notes: 1. The AppData directory is hidden. You just have to know it's there. 2. Yes, the game really does display this with forward slashes when showing that path (say, after /wdwsave). 3. If you check Properties of the game in the launcher, and then click "Browse...", you see this directory, but not the files, because it has spawned an Explorer window which shows files only if they are named CityOfHeroes.exe. ... But yes, you can extract it from there and look at the utterly meaningless data. I like that there is more than one thing I'm listed as having purchased which has EXACTLY the same name. (I have two things labeled something like "Wedding Pack - Bridal Tights". They have different product codes, though.) |
If you have the inclination, you could write a script to reparse that data as CSV and stick it into Excel. I might do that this weekend if I have some time. You could then do things like sort it looking for similar or duplicate items.
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True, it can be used for some things. It just does nothing to tell me, say, why I have a different number of points on two accounts when I thought I had bought the same things on both. Or whether my next salvage purchase should be 2/10 or 3/10. Or whatever.
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It's not meaningless, but as Seebs says, it does not indicate PURCHASES in any reasonable fashion. It indicates unlocks. These are overlapping but not equivalent.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I wouldn't say its meaningless. For example, it shows how many character slots I've purchased total, and how many were used. I could compare that to how many the game thinks I have left to verify I have the correct number of slots. I could also verify the number it thinks I used corresponds to the number of extra slots I've deployed on other servers. If I wanted to know if I purchased something and I wasn't sure, I could text search that data to see if it showed up anywhere. Its not the best organized data, but I could see some use for it for people checking up on Freedom.
If you have the inclination, you could write a script to reparse that data as CSV and stick it into Excel. I might do that this weekend if I have some time. You could then do things like sort it looking for similar or duplicate items. |
Yesterday I had a friend make a costume purchase through the market, and proceed to get upset because a) it was still showing as locked in the costume creator, despite multiple relogs and a fair amount of time, and b) there was no indication the transaction was actually SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED once you're past the screen where you finalize it. A lack of simple records here is problematic for basic end users.
It eventually did work, but a lot of the stress would have been circumvented by actually seeing that the transaction was logged.
His parting remark was to the effect of he didn't mind the delay so much as the lack of paper trail. Without that, he can only see it as a potential black hole money pit and will not buy points.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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It occurred to them to log when you spend points. It just didn't seem to occur to them to have a way to show what you spent the points on. Which to be honest seems more retarded than completely forgetting to log it.|
Originally Posted by seebs
It's not a purchase history. A purchase history would show times and amounts of points spent. Having seen ncsoft running a store in the past, I am assuming that this is because it never occurred to them to log such things.
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Honestly, I have to be frank here. The last time I saw something like the Paragon Store's implementation someone outsourced development to a sweatshop in India. I bet I could write something better in PHP in a weekend. I don't even know why its written in an Ajax toolkit when the store pages seem almost completely static. Coding a store in Ajax and having back buttons not work right is like chartering a 747 to take just two people from San Francisco to Los Angeles and then driving it down the interstate to get there.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
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I don't see any logging of point expenditures. All I see is a point total which has been modified. My purchase history shows when points were added, but not when points were removed.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
It occurred to them to log when you spend points. It just didn't seem to occur to them to have a way to show what you spent the points on. Which to be honest seems more retarded than completely forgetting to log it.
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So. I started with some points. I bought some points. I now have fewer points left.
I do not see anything that convinces me that ANYONE at ncsoft can say with certainty whether I spent those points on Wednesday or Thursday. Maybe they can, but I don't see any evidence of it.
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| Honestly, I have to be frank here. The last time I saw something like the Paragon Store's implementation someone outsourced development to a sweatshop in India. I bet I could write something better in PHP in a weekend. I don't even know why its written in an Ajax toolkit when the store pages seem almost completely static. Coding a store in Ajax and having back buttons not work right is like chartering a 747 to take just two people from San Francisco to Los Angeles and then driving it down the interstate to get there. |
Given ncsoft's history (store, ncsoft launcher, etcetera), I think they are probably being run by people who figure that saving $20k on a programming project is a very important deal, and losing $20m of income because your store is unusable is insignificant.
(What really got me was the discovery that the launcher doesn't actually have to be run as admin; it is able to run updates, install games, and so on, without admin privileges. Rather, it merely requests them unconditionally without even trying to do anything. You can just click "no" and, if your system's permissions are reasonable for the purpose, everything runs without difficulty.)
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Honestly, I have to be frank here. The last time I saw something like the Paragon Store's implementation someone outsourced development to a sweatshop in India.
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Originally Posted by seebs
The store does have that "outsourced" feel to it -- you get the feeling that there was a checklist of features but that there was at no point any kind of design.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
We are still working on a way to filter past purchases, however there's some snags with how the database plays with individual items, past purchases and bundles. It's a known request and something we're working with our partners to figure out.
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What if that DOESN'T mean 'some guy in another ncsoft office' ?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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Well, my assumption was always that Paragon was basically sane, but ncsoft corporate had the sort of surreal total incompetence that made Dilbert so popular for being "true to life".
Outsourced is plausible. So is "ncsoft just sucks at computers".
This store feels like the same sort of idiocy as the existing online store and the new launcher, to me. It's got that thing going where with practice you can sort of predict the kinds of ways in which they will get things wrong.
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I did that with a text editor that supported regular expressions and a bit of common sense. The lack of a transaction history is, to be blunt, retarded. I seldom use the term retarded because I think the term is too much of an insult to mentally challenge people.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If you have the inclination, you could write a script to reparse that data as CSV and stick it into Excel. I might do that this weekend if I have some time. You could then do things like sort it looking for similar or duplicate items.
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However retarded is also used as "to slow the growth or development of" something. That describes the market exactly.
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Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
A lack of simple records here is problematic for basic end users.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
It occurred to them to log when you spend points. It just didn't seem to occur to them to have a way to show what you spent the points on. Which to be honest seems more retarded than completely forgetting to log it.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Honestly, I have to be frank here. The last time I saw something like the Paragon Store's implementation someone outsourced development to a sweatshop in India. I bet I could write something better in PHP in a weekend. I don't even know why its written in an Ajax toolkit when the store pages seem almost completely static. Coding a store in Ajax and having back buttons not work right is like chartering a 747 to take just two people from San Francisco to Los Angeles and then driving it down the interstate to get there.
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I think that the standard code rant needs to be updated because of situations like this.
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
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Honestly, I find the idea that they hired someone, on purpose, for money, presumably after having seen other samples of their work, to create the Paragon Market even scarier than the notion that someone at NC/Paragon is vastly overestimating their abilities or resources.|
Originally Posted by seebs
Outsourced is plausible. So is "ncsoft just sucks at computers".
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I don't know nothin' about the technical side of the market or the reasons for its manifold failings in that area, but I deal with metadata and metadata-related UIs of varyingly competent designs every day, and it feels like a slapped-together hack job on that front too.
Well, tell ya what.
Any rednames reading this:
Can you tell me what I have bought through the paragon market, and when? I'm (@Seebs Dot Net) in game. You are hereby permitted to look this up and PM me or post it.
The questions are:
1. Which actual things in the store have I purchased?
2. When did I purchase them?
3. How many distinct checkouts was that?
From the information I have seen so far, I simply have no evidence that anyone at NCsoft or Paragon can answer those questions. Obviously, the information should exist... But this store has been a running series of gaffes which no one could possibly make.
If someone can convince me that ncsoft really does have transaction records and history, I'm inclined to buy some more points and fill some stuff out. But without that history... I'm not super comfortable buying things through a store that may or may not leave any record behind except the observation that character slots are marked unlocked and my account has fewer points. I want to have some confidence that, if that data gets screwed up, there's records to allow recreating it.
I'm really loving this game right now, you're doing great things... I just don't have any confidence whatsoever in the people doing the store. Like, if you told me that they were running an internal competition to see who could get a listing on the Daily WTF, I would consider it a better explanation than any I currently have.
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Ok, seriously... sure, you can remove a ++ Hami-O, but it removes the +'s! >: (|
Originally Posted by Freitag
Enhancement Base Storage
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I just went to grab a 52++ Nuc Hami-O and it was converted down into a 50. I wouldn't have pulled it from storage if it was going to do that!
pohsyb: so of all people you must be most excited about the veats
Arachnos Commander: actually, I am
pohsyb: I mean you kinda were one already anyways ^_^
Arachnos Commander:
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Same thing happens when you pull it out on a full Respec. Always(?) has. Why would it be different with a single unslotter? NOT saying that I LIKE it, just that this is not new.
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Originally Posted by Commander
[/LIST]Ok, seriously... sure, you can remove a ++ Hami-O, but it removes the +'s! >: (
I just went to grab a 52++ Nuc Hami-O and it was converted down into a 50. I wouldn't have pulled it from storage if it was going to do that! |
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I'm not really happy about the current "work-around" but it is possible to find out what you've unlocked. This is mostly an answer to question 1, though the Paragon Rewards are in there as well.|
Originally Posted by seebs
The questions are:
1. Which actual things in the store have I purchased? 2. When did I purchase them? 3. How many distinct checkouts was that? From the information I have seen so far, I simply have no evidence that anyone at NCsoft or Paragon can answer those questions. Obviously, the information should exist... But this store has been a running series of gaffes which no one could possibly make. |
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To get a list of your unlocks you can use the /mypurchases command.
Warning: it will spam your system message channel.
The easiest way to see it outside of the game is to:
- enable chat logging
- use the /mypurchases command
- close the game
- change the log file extension to .htm
- open the log file in a browser
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Originally Posted by seebs
If someone can convince me that ncsoft really does have transaction records and history, I'm inclined to buy some more points and fill some stuff out. But without that history... I'm not super comfortable buying things through a store that may or may not leave any record behind except the observation that character slots are marked unlocked and my account has fewer points. I want to have some confidence that, if that data gets screwed up, there's records to allow recreating it.
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Originally Posted by seebs
I just don't have any confidence whatsoever in the people doing the store.
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- The people that made the store.
- The entire marketing group at Paragon Studios.
- Clockwork 01 for his insistence that the store operates in a "less than ideal" fashion. As a producer, the buck stops with him.
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
But this is what this VIP Head Start is for, identify the problems with the new item market and fix them before trying to entice new and returning players.
This includes all the costume parts unlocked on your account, all the Rewards tokens, lots of stuff. I just did it, and have the last line of:
Displayed 593 purchases (from account server)
If you highlight it all, copy (cntl-c for windows) and paste it into a text file, you at least have a list of everything.
It's a workaround. Not a great one, but one.
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