Cende

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Two examples that spring to mind of having paid for exclusive content and having it opened up to general populace are:

Pre-Order Sprints

City of Villains Pre-Order Helmets

and of course paying for the City of Villains expansion to begin with.

Granted, none of these are game-breaking and I won't be canceling my 4 year old account as I love the game.


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As a reminder, unless you got ripped off, you did not pay extra for the *pre-order* sprints and helmets. They were to be given out if you ordered in advance and put down a deposit on the game. That deposit was then applied toward the purchase price of the game, which was the same for everyone who bought when the game initially came out. Unless you got ripped off. It was at no time stated that the pre-order items would be exclusive.

The exclusive items were, and still are, the Cape of the 4 Winds, the VIP badge, and the Prestige Power Slide from the CoH Collectors DVD; and the Arachnos Symbol, Arachnos Cape, and Destined One badge from the CoV Collectors DVD (I think, I'm not wholly positive on the CoV stuff). It has been stated that anything you legitimately paid extra for will remain "exclusive" to those who paid for them.

"Extra" includes the jump jet and the Pocket D VIP badge from the GvE pack, and anything in the Wedding pack.

"Extra" does not include basic game content.

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I heard back from Rock Bottom Brewery, this is what they had to say:

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I am glad you have found interest in Rock Bottom for your dinner event. I have several possibilities for your event but need to clarify some details first. The spaces I have available are dependent on the time you want to start dinner. If you want to start any time before 800pm I do have my private room available that can hold a maximum of 50 people for a dinner. If you can start after 8pm I have a wonderful space in my upper dining room surrounded by bay windows and capable of seating up to 70. We would need to choose a limited menu for your group and all checks would include tax and a minimum gratuity. I have attached my banquet package for you to look through the various menu options. If you have any other questions please let me know.

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Any thoughts?

Ex

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Sorry, got accidentally logged out about a week ago and completely forgot my password.

For those people asking what food is available, here's the corporate site, with menu attached: Rock Bottom Brewery. There aren't prices listed, but if I'm remembering correctly, burgers are around $15 - 17 in Seattle and Bellevue. They really don't have alternative choices - RB is not a "Seattle area restaurant", it's a chain based around beer and beer food.

If we're looking at 50 or less, then you might want to ask if he's considering putting us in the Boardroom, or if he'd consider the Pool room. The Boardroom is banquet type seating, the Pool Room is around pool tables (I know how much you all hate pool, but it's a sacrifice I'm sure you'd be willing to make for seating flexibility).

As far as the timing, if y'all are going to be in the Exhibition Hall, showing until 7 and then closing down for half-or-45, I agree with the poster above - start it at 8 so you can at least get a chance to get some air and breathing time before you have to face everyone again. Or deputize someone to get everyone into the room early, and let people get drinks while you come over, whichever you're more comfortable with.

As far as the "not right there" suggestions made a post or two above this, while those of us who are not going to PAX really probably don't care where the M&G is held (and are likely of the opinion that the further from downtown the better), those who are at the M&G have already paid for parking, or are stuck at hotels, and trying to figure out how to get to someplace else is probably an unneeded hassle. Otherwise, the first place I'd have suggested would have been F.X. MCRory's, which is not very far away. But again, it's not easy to get there from the convention center, so that's not happening.

Seattle Rock Bottom is not particularly well set up for this, they don't have separate rooms, just differing levels. We'll make too much noise for the other patrons (they were our default restaurant a few years ago for pre-theatre dining).

Additionally, as of the last time I was there, their menus have changed and the prices went up ($23.00 for Spicy Macaroni & Cheese with Andouille Sasuage or cajun chicken & a salad), and that may be a bit much for some of the folks coming in. Granted, that was two years ago (after continually declining service culminated in me sending the same meal back three times, we stopped going), so I could easily go back and check.

I'll also look around and see what else is in the area.

Unlike most folks, I don't actually have a "real" job, so I can go check out any places necessary to pick up stuff, check locations out, and talk to managers in person. I'd already mailed Lighthouse and offered to plan this if necessary; I'm offering services here as well (I was an executive admin for something like 12 years and I've planned three weddings. A party is not an issue. )

Let me know what you need me to do.

I just think that the speed cap on flight should be AT LEAST equal to the STARTING speed of SS.

It wouldn't be faster than the (capped) speed of teleport, ss or jump, but at least it wouldn't be the "OMG, we have to wait HOW long for that person now" power that it is.

I like flight, I like being able to point myself in the direction I'm going and get there. My /sr scrapper is actually at the top of the flight cap without slotting much, but she could still stand being faster.

You are aware that this is just the first round and that there's more coming; this just happened to be the easiest lot to port.

Right?

At this point, you're pretty much going to have a hard time getting pre-built systems that don't have Vista. You can upgrade back to XP, but drivers are going to be a pain. On the up side, I've heard that Vista has mostly stopped eating the host machine now, so it shouldn't be too painful.

Good luck.

Talek and I will be building the new machines and simply installing XP on them. We're avoiding Vista as long as possible.

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[image=http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc184Floorplans[/url]

Oh well, at least it's getting better.

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[ url= (web address here) ] link name here [ /url ]

Take out the extra spaces, I had to toss them in so that the brackets would actually show up. You can't use the image tag, because non-admins cannot place embedded images.

So for example:
Unbidden's Symbol

is formated:

[ url=http://www.wolfskeep.com/unbidden/icon-pillar.jpg ] Unbidden's Symbol [ /url ]

(without the spare spaces after the [ and before the ]) That help?

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I would love to see the Rualuu have a greater presense in the game other than just for lvl 40+ content, they are very cool looking and so seldom seen.

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If you're on Champion and begging for a PL in Atlas as I'm passing through, you might get to see them sooner than you think.

Several issues ago, Zube had a kora fruit mission in the shard waiting in his que when a game patch was applied. An odd bug moved the mission's door from the shard to Atlas Park. I have never completed it. Sometimes, when they're particularly annoying, I will respond to PL beggars by saying, "SURE you can join me in a mission! In fact, I have one right over heeeere...!"

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Nifty. If I make a char on Champion, will you let me tag along for a look-see?

Not necessarily unique. If the outfit fits the character well, I don't often change it. My main character changed once, and the other fifteen have remained the same since creation - they get "special event" outfits, but that's about it. The costume is part of the character creation. If they don't look right, I don't like playing them.

I'm the one that has to stare at them, after all.

I responded. It got (really!) long, and since this isn't supposed to be a discussion thread, I moved the discussion over here (blue).

Market Watch very useful this time, thank you for the links.

Lighthouse, my PM to you is regarding this.

Talek and I are in. I know a few in-game non-forumites are in, as well.

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how these spammers are able to get character names when the characters have not been online to be seen on a /who list.

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By watching the areas around Wentworths and the Black Market as well as other high population areas like the Talos Green Line.

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If the characters have NOT been on in the first place, they're not going to be hanging around the Wents / BM / Talos tram.

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I just want to say if they keep the villain epic's the way it is it's total bs, to make a hero epic you need a 50 anywhere on the account, but to make a villain epic you have to have a 50 villain. so someone with a 50 villain can make either but a 50 hero can only make a khel.... seems thoughtless to me

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Uh.. wha ?

To make an Arachos epic, you need a 50 villain.

To make a Kheldian, you need a 50 hero.

They don't cross over. Blue is blue, red is red, we don't get purple.

Go back and smack whomever told you differently.

Love the NPC version. Talek's right about it looking bigger with the people in it.

Good use of space and color, I really like how you got a bunch of the useful things in there without sacrificing theme.

(Yes, I stayed up to look at your base!)

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anyone else annoyed at just how useless the Combat Logs is becoming?

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The thing I find most insulting about the combat logs is that it charges 100 inf for a breakfree when vendors charge 50 inf. Loading into a base automatically nullifies whatever convenience you gain. I healed 100 million points of damage for this?

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100? I didn't know that. (Yeah, we're still not at 100 million healing. Mostly because - even in a pretty large and successful SG - no one see a point in farming healing just for this one item.)

So now your 95 million extra healing gives you the ability to save 50 Inf on the purchase of a Break Free. Yeah... I wonder if we can get a little base-lovin' this issue in the form of some item upgrades.

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If I'm reading the initial post correctly, your 95 million extra healing gives you the ability to spend an extra 50 Inf on the purchase of a Break Free.

Yeah. Not going there anytime soon, I think.

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Well, I guess that's a reasonable base but why would you put it in...

<GAWK>

STACKED TELEPORTERS?!?!? Is that a trick screenshot?? You can DO that!?!!!?

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I cordially invite you to come look and see for yourself.

We apologize for the lack of real website. We were hoping for more warning that the article was going up. And we have a con next week that's eating our brains.

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Okay, the first thing that needs to be fixed is this forum. The reply/post text box is way too small...so small it is almost impossible to address such a huge quote as the one above.

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Fix your preferences.

Go to My home, find the line that says Display preferences and click on edit.

Go down to Text area columns, make it 75 or 90. Go down to Text Area rows, make it about 100. Click on save.

Reply to a post and notice a bigger window.

Realize you can customize a bit more of your reading pleasure, and go tinker some more until you get things a little more comfortable - and while so doing, realize you also don't have to massive quote an entire post like that again, you can just refer back to it by link.

While I'm perfectly happy voting Yes for Safeguards in Ouroboros (and mayhems, too), I'm actually saying *no* to having most missions available through O, and that's despite being a completeist.

I don't precisely mind the XP smoothing - it'll certainly make some of the "oh, god, HOW long have we been this level?!" levels a lot kinder. The XP increase, however, is a mixed bag. I have this thing about contacts and unfinished bars, though, and this is only going to make it worse. I've nearly stopped using contacts with a couple of characters, only go through one at a time with others, and mostly don't team with the rest. Well, the teaming thing probably wouldn't change too often, but I'd like to play out the characters a little more without worrying about over leveling.

I'd rather have a few less contacts and be able to finish out their bars; it wouldn't bother me if I didn't get some of the contacts for my level introduced to me after I ran out of missions for the contacts I already had. Since the XP smoothing is going into place, I suspect that's going to happen less. With teaming and TFs available, plus the zone missions and paper missions, we can use less contacts for the heroes, and they can be tied a little more to either origins or archtype (or both) -- make our background choices work for us, and make alts interesting with the content showing up differently.

Side thought - don't have the stupid Detectives in each zone be an actual contact - you don't *get* anything from them! Have their bar only show up when you're running radios in that area; it keeps the contact list much less cluttered, and they go away after you've either accepted or refused the safeguard (I believe it works a little differently in CoV).

We can still get all the badge missions through Ouro, so it's not like any badger is displaced - but content hounds and bar completeists won't be going so crazy, either. Toss in a slightly earlier cell phone and store unlocking, and there's less complaints about the contacts in CoH being stingy. Still complaints about lack of missions, starting contacts and general content in CoV, but I can't help with that.

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Fly
- Base Speed: 49.7 fps
- Max Speed: 86 fps (5 slotted Fly and 3 slotted Swift)
Personally, I believe Fly needs to able to achieve Super Speed's base speed at it's max, but AT LEAST fix that. I mean c'mon, 6 slots?!

Super Speed
- Base Speed: 94.5 fps
- Max Speed: 135.7 fps (2 slotted SS OR 1 slotted SS and 1 slotted Swift)

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I think it might be nice if we could, perhaps, slightly exceed super speed's base speed as a max speed, and get up to - say - a nice round 100 fps. But I agree with it not taking so many slots to do.

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Teleport
Ignoring the fact that lag can be a real annoyance with this power is unfair to those who use it. One can easily plummet out of the sky as the result of lag and that's just not right.

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It's not just lag - it's also the "red rings of death" caused, in some areas, by building or other texture skins that simply will not allow teleport rings to focus on them. This can be a particular problem in Steel Canyon and parts of Faultline, at least. Trying to find a new target area while one is falling out of the sky can be a challenge, at best.

From - Snow Globe:
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I got married on Wednesday

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Congratulations!

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Thank you.

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Loc: Pacific NorthWet

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Initially I was going to say that you forgot an "s" there, but living near Vancouver, B.C. all my life, I would say that is a fair description of the region from B.C.-Oregon.

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Yeah, no 's' forgotten. It's raining at the moment. I swear I'm growing webbed feet.

From - Zubenelgenubi:
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(except that I got married on Wednesday, which rocked).

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I don't know you at all... don't recall ever seeing your name before... but...

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOTASTIC NEWS!!!!

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Thank you. We thought so, too. And I'm usually pretty quiet. Also, mostly over in bases, posting-by-proxy for my husband, who had been resisting the forums until now.

From - Geko:

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This month, both personally and professionally (and recreationally come to mind), has been awesome.

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That's fantastic. I still hope it gets better, so you can have a stellar one. I hope mine gets better, so that I actually finish at least half my task list. Given that my task list is taller than I am, and I'm nearly 6' tall, you have a much better chance than I do.

Please forgive me if you think I am unfairly trimming heavily critical parts of your post; I am considering the whole thing when replying, however I am mostly quoting for reference. The entirety is, after all, reproduced above.

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I not sure what you think is "weird" about my argument that the epic badges encourage behavior that is counter productive

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Regarding the argument that the farming behavior is counter productive, I actually have no particular dispute. I would hesitate to put a "most" on it, but I suspect a considerable number of the badgers on the game would find that farming - as in going and standing in lava pits, sitting in CoT missions on auto-heal with a red crystal, figuring out how to arena-heal, or whatever - is rather counter-productive behavior, if you consider the point of the game to go out and have fun doing something instead of standing around having something done to (or for) you.

That being said, what I do find strange is the... persistence, I suppose, with which you (seem to) insist that the behavior is damaging and / or unhealthy. Again, I hesitate to use the term "most"; however, from what I have observed in the discussions surrounding these badges, the advice is generally to "set up X SITUATION - and then go do something else". As a result, these sorts of situations happen while the player is asleep, or at school / work - the usual things that suffer because of an obsession with a game.

Please note that I am not saying I do not understand what you're looking at in terms of what can be obsessed about. I've seen game obsession happen with several people, on a few different games, where they've become so completely obsessed with a game that they've skipped class and work (one was fired), had their eating and sleeping go awry, and their health in general suffered. Those are rather extreme cases, granted, but I do understand.

I'm not saying that that sort of behavior cannot happen here. It obviously can and will. I am saying that I do not think the way the epic badges are set up (either as is, or with an overhaul) will necessarily lead to that sort of behavior in the majority of people who would normally seek them; I am inclined to believe that it would not promote that sort of behavior in those who are not generally predisposed towards self-destructive, addictive behaviors in the first place.

Anyone who is inclined towards that behavior has other outlets that they can reach for in this game, as well. Off the top of my head, I can think of such things as farming for every purple rare possible (just to have, not to use), soloing every single GM and completing the contact bar for every contact a character gets in the game (I'm not sure if that's even possible blue side). I'm sure that other people could come up with stories of "There was this one guy who..." as well. So, no, I'm not disputing at all that true obsessive behavior in game does happen.

I am, however, wondering why you (apparently) think that these badges, specifically, will or do lead towards these sorts of self-destructive behaviors en masse, when the currently given information indicates that they do not, leading instead to actions that, while not necessarily "fun" within the scope of the game, are profitable yet non-intrusive?

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I just find this to be an interesting question of MMO design and ethics.

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See, a general discussion of game design and ethics might be an interesting one to get into. Please don't start it or I'll never get off this darn forum, and I have to go to work. If you do, PM me the link please or I won't find it, because I have to severely curtail how many of these boards I read.

Incidentally, if you haven't heard of a board called "the Forge," let me know. I'll PM you a link. It's more for indy RPG development, but it addresses a lot of design elements. It's not my cup of tea, but you might be interested.

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Like Arcana said awhile back, I would never have created this badge (or any of the healing badges) {...now they have so...} that ALL options should be on the table.

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I agree on never having created these badges, most definitely. And I actually have no argument against having all the options on the table. I think you're going to get some, shall we say, vehement discussion regarding some of those options, however.

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What's so crazy about just removing the badge? You remove the badge, then the total badge count goes down by one, a badger doesn't have to concern themselves with it, and it's over.

I ask you, "Why is that not a reasonable and humane response to the problem?"


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If no one had ever gotten the badge, ever, I'd be right there with you. And I know life isn't fair, so I'm trying hard to not bring the "It's not fair to the people who've already gotten it or are >< close to getting it" part up. And even worse, it's an interesting question.

However, I face six hours of retail smiling and Oh-Help-Me Christmas Music. Fortunately, I don't have to sell anything, I just have to explain to people that I can't sell them anything (It's Not My Department). Have a better day than that.

Geko, are we seeing the same people?

I'm not seeing people getting worked up and crazy. Mostly, I'm just seeing people who are irritated that it's going to take a couple of decades to get a badge, and who would like Someone In Charge to please take a look at it, admit it's borked, and fix it, or explain why it shouldn't be fixed (with a really, really good explanation on why it should take a couple of decades).

In my world, irritation doesn't equal worked up and crazy.

The only person, honestly, who I'm seeing get weird about all this.. is you.

Yes, people farm for this badge. They do so by effectively putting a rock on their keyboard and going to bed. Or to play with the puppy. Or to spend time with their spouse. Or to wrap Christmas presents (which I've got to finish doing). Or ...

... or maybe to read forums, which causes much more strange behavior than farming for a badge does. Strange, obsessive behavior, in some people, who occasionally get crabby.

I hope your month gets better. Mine sucks too (except that I got married on Wednesday, which rocked).

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You know, like the people who think it's cool to present-hunt in an area that poses no risk to them because they outleveled it 30 levels ago, and then they leave behind the 3 red-to-purple-for-normal-people snowbeasts when they could swat them down in about 10 seconds, because they're IMPATIENT selfish greedy little twits. But I digress.)

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Well, I swat everything I open, and I leave the area when I see lower level hunters (just collecting candy canes, don't need the badge).

That being said.. all the beasties were appropriate for their area, not for my level.

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... sorry, but I'm not registering for a website (with the inevitable, attendant spammage such would entail), just to vote - otherwise, COH would sweep my votes at MMORPG.com

8(

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I have spares. Want one?