SG invites with out anybody logged on

I do for the same reason the Dev's are. That being said, I would like them to make a "liar" option in bases. It's upgrades could be paid for by time spent offline in your lair (like you were working your day job to pay for it, or each day job contributes). Then the soloers could have an option.

If your SG isn't active, Find an active one. There should be at least one.

On a basic level of course dev design games etc... thats a given no need to say the obvious to make a different point we all know devs design the game. Its the unwanted, unneeded and too restrictive part we are dealing with here. There is no "real" reason for it not to be there except "Posi" wants it that way, which directly conflicts with the players and does not negatively affect the overall design of the game to have it there as a QOL deal period.

The standard of "other" games are not why I play "this" game so comparing how terrible some "other" game is to make this game look less terrible does not work. The standard set in this game is the standard of measure not some other standard from some other game.

You are forgetting that prior to Issue 12 (May 6th, 2008) when the devs were forced to implement draconian restrictions on Trial accounts to combat RMT abuse, it didn't cost us a dime to create a second trial account to use to invite alts into our solo SG's, and we had that ability for years.

Hell back when they doubled the SG membership and held the Prestige Giveaway they encouraged players to make as many trial accounts as possible so we could pad our SG Rosters up to 150 with fillers and get the maximum amount of prestige possible for our SG's/bases.

So no it was never about making extra money off of the players.

You can say this about pretty close to any QoL feature proposed for the game. Tell me what you would like to happen QoL-wise in game that I could care less about and I'll be at the ready with the above comment.

What we are really talking about here is offline SG invites for everybody... not solo bases. Solo bases is just the latest (IMHO poor) rationale for not doing it. I know from personal experience that this gets a lot of "air play" in terms of requests from the player community (hits the forums often and gets mentioned at many dev/player gatherings; including the last one). That in and of itself merits consideration... if the devs are indeed listening to the desires of the playerbase over personal bias.

No it isn't, since the devs have gone on record saying that if they were to add such a feature they would specifically block us from being able to send invites to our own characters.

There's a world of difference between them saying "If we do this you won't be able to do "x"."

and, "We aren't going to do this because we don't want you to do "x"."

Agreed,

Let's not forget a SG invite is dependant on a check if you're already in a SG, and an e-mail is global.

LOL, this is a lost cause that should be abandoned. In today's world of f2p account creation (with Paragon Market spending providing the necessary token vet reward level), 99 cent sales with one month VIP type access, and the use of proxies (other players) they aren't going to be able to determine whether the net effect is I have SG invited one of my own characters or not (now or with offline invites). And I believe that this result rubs the devs the wrong way and fuels their fear of too many solo SGs comprised of just one player and multiple alts. That, in turn, is hurting the implementation of the feature. I'll stick by what I said before.

Time to eliminate the silliness and go with a straight offline SG invite system of inviting yourself or whomever you like.

Please feel free to believe whatever you want. It isn't going to change the actual facts. The devs aren't afraid of Solo SG's. If they were it would have been ridiculously easy for them to simply code it so we could only have one character per account in an SG.

No they always intended to let us have multiple characters in our SG's, but they also intended for SG's to be group oriented content.

Lair entrances have been another aspect that has been bandied back and forth many times over the years. If it ever does happen tho it will be most likely a similar entrance to the one we have for bases with access in every zone because it's much easier than coding custom entrances. Everyone is going to have different ideas for each of their characters.

Tell you what... I was there at the last summit. And just for the heck of it, today I listened (again) to the Q & A on the topic of inviting alts to SGs and Posi's response on the subject. I recommend you give that a shot... then tell me again believe what I want.

Believe what you want. The devs aren't afraid of the big bad solo SG boogeyman. Posi isn't losing any sleep because there might be a solo SG hiding under his bed and it might get him if his night light goes out.

I can vouch for this being the correct case 300%, because I've done it 100% this way 3 times. Ok, so I made up that math, but yes I've done it this way 3 times and worked this way every time. All 3 of those accounts are Premium now and have SG access. I made up the cost by not eating at McDonald's this week.

Ok I'm out. If you can't believe a direct, in person, eyeball to eyeball contact direct question and answer backed up by post summit video evidence then I guess we have no common ground. Wow... just wow. Yeah, in this case, I will believe what I want to believe regardless of your input. Thanks and see ya.

Redundancy check, FA has a point.

He hasn't made any points that weren't already made by posters before him, and the only thing being disagreed with, is his opinion that fear is motivating the devs decision to not allow us to send offline SG invites to our own characters.

^^^This is why they won't ever allow you to invite yourself, and why they aren't afraid of solo SGs. The SGs are about groups. Making friends, meeting others, and talking to people.

SG's do not solely fill those functions.
Teaming and global channels also fill those functions.

Just because a player may want a solo SG, doesn't mean they don't have friends or meet others or don't talk to people.

SG's are what the player makes of them.
And many players prefer to make them solo.
There's a difference between desire/intent and reality. The argument that SG's are "supposed" to be group content doesn't hold water to the way the players actually use them.

The problem I'm seeing is mixed signals from the Devs.
On the one hand, they've crippled SG's and bases to such an extent as to make them much less useful for larger groups.
This has caused an uptick in solo SG's.
On the other hand, they are not allowing features for the solo players because they "don't want a bunch of solo SG's using up all the resources".
There is some serious counter intuitive thinking going on here.

.

Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson

Did you not read the original quote? It was an example of what they try to do in this game. If you want to do some things in this game, you have to at least talk to people. SGs, teams, Trials, TFs ... they all have one thing in common ... promoting communication and friendship. I'm sure there are more reasons, but this is the one I was talking about.

Are you sure mixed signals aren't just many signals ... meaning they won't do it for any and all the reasons listed. None of them conflict; therefore, they can't be conflicting.

No big loss. If they wanted they could have easily circumvented rent by just removing the items that incur rent.

Storage Items (per bin) 100 prestige
Auto-Doc / Tree of Wonders 100 prestige
Combat Logs / Contemplation Charts 100 prestige
Robo-Surgery / Spirit Signal 100 prestige
Advanced Worktable / Advanced Forge 100 prestige
Expert Worktable / Expert Forge 100 prestige
Robotic Fabricator / Flames of Hephaestus 100 prestige
Radiation Emulator / Enchanting Crucible 100 prestige
Linear Accelerator / Arcane Crucible 200 prestige
Supercollider / Mystic Crucible 300 prestige

There's nothing on that list that a solo SG "needs" to be functional.

What? They didn't want to pay for extra group storage? Too bad. TANSTAAFL as they say. They don't pay a sub They don't get access to extra group storage unless they have a VIP in their SG. They can go buy the extra personal storage off the Paragon Market.

I say good riddance to deadbeats that expect to get full access to the game for free.

Agreed

These are people who have paid for a long time (enough to get IO use) and accumulated a lot of stuff, the limit on SG storage is what forced them to create their own SG base in the first place, otherwise they'd have used a communal one.

Also, try playing on Victory in the EU day/evening, there's about 1/4 the number of people there was before everybody decided to go play with their lightsabres, we cannot afford to lose these people, I'm finding about half the time there aren't enough people on to do anything I want to do (and that's a pretty long list) and going off and playing another game instead, which is making me question whether my 2 subs are worthwhile. I'm just waiting to see how many people stay playing the new game and how many return atm.

If they actually played for a long time then they already know from experience that they can store more stuff on the characters on their accounts than they could ever dream of storing in base storage.

Base storage Maximum number of bins 18

Salvage Bins - 30 slots each (Event Salvage takes up a salvage slots on a 1 to 1 ratio)
Inspiration Bins - 100 each
Enhancement Bins 100 each

No the Vault doesn't count as base storage because it doesn't require SG membership to use and it is accessible outside of bases.

So players can store a maximum of 540 to 1800 items depending on which bins they buy for a base.

Now an individual character (if he maxes out his storage capacity) has the potential of carrying roughly . . .

Inspirations - 20
Invention Salvage Slots - 165
Recipe Slots - 125
AH Transaction Slots - 52 (which can each store stacks of 10 recipes and salvage for a total of 520)
Vault Slots - 80
Enhancement Slots - 30

Event Salvage

Halloween Salvage - 99
Winter Event Salvage - 9,999

So 1 character has 10,570 storage slots (11,038 if he is using AH slots to store stacks of 10)

Plus the Email Slots - 20


So let's say a person returns to play his Premium account to find he has only has 3 slots he can unlock. That means he has the ability to store up to

31,710/33,114 storage slots plus the 20 email slots

while at best his solo SG's can store 1,620/5,400 storage slots if he has a VIP as a member of his SG.

Now as a VIP the storage potential a player has access to increases exponentially.

Minimum 12 characters per server with 16 servers (192 total) equals roughly 6,088,320/6,357,888 plus 20 email slots.

and 192 solo SG's can store at most 103,680/345,600


So what's the next argument going to be? That it's easier to keep track of stuff in SG storage?

Sorry to disappoint but it isn't. A player still has to individually keep track of everything he has in each solo SG just like he has to keep track of everything he has in storage on each character.

The only reason it's easier to track stuff in SG storage is because the amount of items that can be stored in SG storage is so much less than what can be stored on our characters.

Next Argument?

Oh Premium players are afraid that their stuff will be stolen if they invite a VIP into their SG? Invalid argument.

1. As the SG leader Premium players can set individual storage bin permissions to prevent anyone from taking items out of storage except themselves.

2. With access to the base editor Premium players can easily place storage bins in a section of the base and wall it off from access to any other SG member.

3. Finally if a Premium player is going to stop playing for any length of time all he has to do to retain ownership of the SG is kick the VIP from the SG roster.