Customer Service/QOL Disappointment
Yeah, I think I saw a red name saying they were looking into giving a notice.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
I really hope so. Either that, I'd be cool with them being account bound instead. That way there's at least a safety net.
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
I could have easily had this same problem. When I got a Catalyst I had no idea what that was. I almost claimed it on my main just because, especially since I got no information from hovering over it. Just an item in my email and how many I had, nothing more. Fortunately, I headed here to the forums to figure out what it was.
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I really hope so. Either that, I'd be cool with them being account bound instead. That way there's at least a safety net.
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As of now, if you have more than six on a character (which can happen because they'll drop in Dark Astoria as well as in Trials) there's nothing you can do with them.
Well, if you're willing to pay, you can use Enhancement Unslotters to remove the Superior ATOs you have slotted and send them to another character (since they're account bound). You can then slot new ATOs and catalyze them.
There needs to be a better way to handle them.
Account-bound would definitely be better.
I sympathize with you, Lycantropus. The item descriptions in e-mail (and the market) are woefully inadequate. I should not have to go to a forum, wiki or other outside source just to find out what an item does and what restrictions may be on it. It's a major interface failure.
I'm sorry to hear about the situation you're experiencing. I'll be sure to pass this feedback and suggestion along to Clockwork O1.
Andy Belford
Community Manager
Paragon Studios
The core problem is that there is NO explanation of what these, or many other things, actually are in the "claim" window. There needs to be a popup help in the claim window explaining exactly what the item does, with real numbers.
If it's true that both the regular ATOs and the improved ones are account bound, then no harm done. If you ever want to upgrade an ATO, you can email it to this character to be upgraded and then email it back to your other character. But I don't know if that will work or not. At any rate, I agree that it should be account bound, not character bound. Especially if the ATOs are account bound. It would be just silly to have one piece of that process be character bound when the others aren't.
In fact, it would be so silly that I had to go look it up. The regular ATO isn't bound at all, and the superior version is account bound. So the good news is that claiming it on the wrong character does seem harmless. You can just shuffle the ATO around. But the whole thing does seem ridiculous. The catalyst should be account bound, just like the thing it catalyzed.
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1) This is something I paid actual money out of pocket for.
2) There is no information you can get out of the Email UI to describe what it exactly is (and warn that it is character bound). The only information you can access is the name of the item, and how many you can claim. |
Then you claimed something you didn't understand.
Then found it to be useless and unable to be traded.
This is clearly someone else's fault!
I agree with the feedback 100% the super pack items should all have info clicks, but not the tone of the original post like we're entitled to this or it was some kind of transgression by the developers. Reasonable people don't buy things they don't understand in the first place, or they buy things experimentally to understand them and it's not a 'loss' when it's useless or they get bad results because they learn.
And yes, technically you stuck disclaimers everywhere about how you accept your loss but you also stuck jabs in with all those disclaimers. 'Like I have a choice...'
You're absolutely right, Lycantropus, and well-said! I've noticed that MMOs (not only this game) are getting lazier and lazier lately when it comes to documentation, apparently expecting the community to do their job for them. But I don't know of any other MMO that doesn't give you a pop-up warning before binding an item to a character.
You bought something you didn't understand.
Then you claimed something you didn't understand. Then found it to be useless and unable to be traded. This is clearly someone else's fault! I agree with the feedback 100% the super pack items should all have info clicks, but not the tone of the original post like we're entitled to this or it was some kind of transgression by the developers. Reasonable people don't buy things they don't understand in the first place, or they buy things experimentally to understand them and it's not a 'loss' when it's useless or they get bad results because they learn. And yes, technically you stuck disclaimers everywhere about how you accept your loss but you also stuck jabs in with all those disclaimers. 'Like I have a choice...' |
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I'm sorry to hear about the situation you're experiencing. I'll be sure to pass this feedback and suggestion along to Clockwork O1.
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1) He (presumably) hasn't used it yet. It's not like he is looking to screw the system over or get something for nothing. He has not benefited at all from this mistake, and until he actually consumes it, there is nothing lost by transferring it.
2) Lycantropus has been a member for what appears to be a really long time. It sounds like he's earned a little bit of leeway beyond a copy-and-paste response basically boiling down to, "Sorry, but hey, at least you learned something."
3) I know you guys are busy, I really, really, really do. And I respect you for it. There's no telling how many hours you put in every day, and I know that piling one more thing on top of that would really suck. Nevertheless, this sounds like something that would be trivially easy to do. Granted, I don't know what tools are available to accomplish such tasks, but surely, surely the back-end tools exist to override (with permission, of course!) the safeguards and manually bump the number of an item on one character up by one and the number of an item on another character down by one. I've just gotta think this wouldn't take more than two or three minutes, maybe six if you count the time it takes to explain the situation to any appropriate manager to get approval to do it.
4) Even if the floodgates open and other people start expecting you to do this, I can't imagine that it's a situation that happens very often. Even if it is, I have to agree with Lycantropus that it's very not obvious that you're making an irrevocable decision in claiming this item that, unlike damn near everything else in that list, cannot be traded to another character on your account, no how, no way. I just think it kinda sucks if he ends up paying the price--literally!--for this subtle shift in functionality.
So how about it, guys? No harm, no foul, can't you make an exception for this one? You know I'm on your side, but this one sounds like it's worth pushing up the chain to get done.
If nothing else, even if it's just simply impossible to pull off, at the very least, how about throwing a bunch of free Super Packs or even Paragon Points his way just to say, "We're not admitting we're doing anything wrong, but we also want to make you happy."?
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
I'm sorry to hear about the situation you're experiencing. I'll be sure to pass this feedback and suggestion along to Clockwork O1.
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Originally Posted by VKhaun
but not the tone of the original post like we're entitled to this or it was some kind of transgression by the developers. Reasonable people don't buy things they don't understand in the first place, or they buy things experimentally to understand them and it's not a 'loss' when it's useless or they get bad results because they learn.
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![Big Grin](images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
In fact, the only one I'm upset with is myself, for not looking up what it was on the Wiki first. On the other hand, should we have to go to a 3rd party source for something so easy to screw up based on what info is available to us in-game? I'm not even mad at the Dev's, because it was probably just an oversight, since there's so many specific warnings about other similar stuff all through the game.
More than anything, this post was to give others warning, toss my 2 cents out there, and point out something that can be a serious issue to the Dev's they may not have realized. At no point was I actually mad, or felt deserving of any special treatment, just disappointed that something so rare can be screwed up so easily.
In fact, the idea that they drop in the new I-22 DA content makes me less upset about it, though I still am disappointed over the situation, and hope they change it to account bound, or give more warnings/information in the email claim sytem for the ones we get that way.
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
That's mighty nice, but I really hope you guys will go further and actually transfer the thing for him.
1) He (presumably) hasn't used it yet. It's not like he is looking to screw the system over or get something for nothing. He has not benefited at all from this mistake, and until he actually consumes it, there is nothing lost by transferring it. 2) Lycantropus has been a member for what appears to be a really long time. It sounds like he's earned a little bit of leeway beyond a copy-and-paste response basically boiling down to, "Sorry, but hey, at least you learned something." 3) I know you guys are busy, I really, really, really do. And I respect you for it. There's no telling how many hours you put in every day, and I know that piling one more thing on top of that would really suck. Nevertheless, this sounds like something that would be trivially easy to do. Granted, I don't know what tools are available to accomplish such tasks, but surely, surely the back-end tools exist to override (with permission, of course!) the safeguards and manually bump the number of an item on one character up by one and the number of an item on another character down by one. I've just gotta think this wouldn't take more than two or three minutes, maybe six if you count the time it takes to explain the situation to any appropriate manager to get approval to do it. 4) Even if the floodgates open and other people start expecting you to do this, I can't imagine that it's a situation that happens very often. Even if it is, I have to agree with Lycantropus that it's very not obvious that you're making an irrevocable decision in claiming this item that, unlike damn near everything else in that list, cannot be traded to another character on your account, no how, no way. I just think it kinda sucks if he ends up paying the price--literally!--for this subtle shift in functionality. So how about it, guys? No harm, no foul, can't you make an exception for this one? You know I'm on your side, but this one sounds like it's worth pushing up the chain to get done. If nothing else, even if it's just simply impossible to pull off, at the very least, how about throwing a bunch of free Super Packs or even Paragon Points his way just to say, "We're not admitting we're doing anything wrong, but we also want to make you happy."? |
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![Cool](images/smilies/cool.gif)
Anyway, the character I wanted to transfer it to, I already used one of the other 2 I have on him, Even if I still wanted it transferred, I'm not sure who I'd want to transfer it to now, as for the rest, I really don't deserve anything extra special for the mix up. Live and learn and all that.
At this point, I'm more on the bandwagon for making them account bound items. Especially if we'll be earning them with the new DA content. Being able to get them to the ones we actually want them on, as opposed to the alt we're probably running through it to get the threads to start making Incarnate powers to begin with (that's what I'll be doing with it for the most part anyway once my main's are taken care of with the arcs) would be a much more elegant solution, and fit the way the rest of the ATIO system works.
Originally Posted by peterpeter
If it's true that both the regular ATOs and the improved ones are account bound, then no harm done. If you ever want to upgrade an ATO, you can email it to this character to be upgraded and then email it back to your other character. But I don't know if that will work or not.
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"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
It sucks, but, as with all things caveat emptor.
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The regular ATO isn't bound at all, and the superior version is account bound. So the good news is that claiming it on the wrong character does seem harmless. You can just shuffle the ATO around. But the whole thing does seem ridiculous. The catalyst should be account bound, just like the thing it catalyzed.
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And I do feel for the OP, I had a similar situation happen to me. I was fortunate enough that the character I wanted them on and the character I claimed them on were both scrappers, but one of them wasn't 50 yet, and it took me a couple weeks to get him there so that I could slot the ATOs, catalyze them, unslot them, and send them back to the character that I actually wanted to have them on.
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Yes but: You haven't lost it. You may want ato's for that toon in the future (more packs will be coming out) and that catalyst will still be there.
Agreed. The fact that a game this alt-heavy has ANYTHING character-bound is just insane.
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This so much...
I never really understood character bound things in this game (okay certain temp powers that you get from playing the game/arcs, etc..) but beyond that, in a game that is very "alt" focused....
Account-bound ftw!
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I didn't realize the ATO had to be slotted before you could catalyze it. In that case, yeah, you're screwed. Seems weird that the ATO can be freely traded before you catalyze it, and the superior ATO is account bound after you catalyze it, but the catalyst itself is character bound. Feels more like a typo than a design decision.
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Something to help you with.
If you plan on using the ATO enhancements and upgrading them, if you can send the enhancement to your character, upgrade it and send it back.
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At the very least, since the rewards use the email interface there's an entire email body that is mostly wasted except for the item count. They could put the entire text description of the item in there, or alternatively they could put a Real Numbers hyperlink for the item in there.
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The other day I was going over some of the stuff I got from the 24 pack of Super Boosters. out of the 120 I opened, I got 3 Enhancement Catalysts. Now at the time I thought those were the things that could chance one Enhancement to another of the same type (purple to purple, PvPIO to PvPIO, etc). I remember those being discussed, and that was the only thing in my email box that even looked like that, so I pulled it onto my character that holds my purple IO's for later use, and was going to try it.
From the email interface there's no info available other than the name. There's no way to tell by hovering over it for any short or long help. Nothing. If you don't know what something is, you either have to look it up from an outside source, or claim it and look at it there.
Wasn't what I thought it was. It's for upgrading ATIO's on your level 50's. Too bad I have no intention of using a set of ATIO's on that particular character. "Oh well" I think to myself, "I'll just send it to one of my character's that does". That's when I found it it's character bound. No warning when I selected it. Nothing. Well, to be fair, there actually is a warning:
Well crap, live and learn. I hate bothering support for stuff, but I only have 3, and I paid real money for them. If I didn't, I would have just /e headdesk and proceeded to do whatever I had to do in game to get it on the character I wanted.
So I send my petition to have it transferred to one of my characters that actually could use it, or put it back in my email or something.
Aaaand after a back and forth of a couple emails (always polite from both sides, I won't fault them for that, and I'm not angry with them, they're just doing their job) I basically get a
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact us.
Now here's where my problem is:
1) This is something I paid actual money out of pocket for.
2) There is no information you can get out of the Email UI to describe what it exactly is (and warn that it is character bound). The only information you can access is the name of the item, and how many you can claim.
3) There was no specific warning when I went to claim it letting me know it was specifically character bound with no way to transfer it around, and was I sure I wanted to claim it. This is a gross oversight with how many similar prompts that exist in almost every other part of the game.
So now, because of a misclick, something rare and useful is now a piece of clutter in my character's salvage tray... I can't use it on him (I already have his build and am happy with it- No I'm not making an alternate build just to use this one thing). Worse, I can't even delete it so it's there mocking me every time I check my salvage (yes I know that is a little melodramatic, but it's true
I'll live with my mistake, not like I have a choice, but I'm very disappointed that there's no blatant BIG SCARY WARNING about this when trying to claim such items.
EDIT: Better yet, can they be changed to account bound instead, so there's at least a safety net with such things?
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.