Dasher

Based on this announcement, we as players, fans and consumers should make a responsible attempt to convince NCsoft to reverse its decision in this matter.

Therefore, we are mounting a campaign of letter-writing to make a personal appeal to Mr. Taek Jin Kim, CEO of NCsoft, to reconsider the decision to shut down Paragon Studioes, and instead keep this excellent Management and Development Team intact and keep City of Heroes alive.

We invite all players who have enjoyed this game to join us in this effort. Many players have already drafted petitions, and we urge all players to support these efforts and sign them, and encourage anyone who has ever played the game to do so as well.

Most important, we want to get physical letters onto Mr. Kim's desk. E-mails make a forceful statement, but the impact of receiving 2,000 e-mails is not nearly as great as the impact of having 2,000 physical letters sitting on one's desk. Nothing impresses a CEO like a piece of paper with a name on it, because it is a tangible reminder that there is an actual paying customer behind it.

When you write to Mr. Kim, it is important to follow some simple but crucial guidelines:

1. Be polite. I cannot stress this enough. A letter which begins with criticism and outrage ends in the wastebasket. Hostility toward a shutdown only validates the decision to be rid of such customers. BE POLITE.

2. Being polite does NOT mean being deferential. As a customer, you are entitled to certain considerations, and it is not at all improper to request that your expectation of those considerations be met. Write as an equal, as one gamer to another, and make it clear that your devotion to the game represents your devotion to the NCsoft as a continuing customer. Threatening never to buy another NCsoft game is counter-productive, but asserting your continued commitment to subscribing to or purchasing items in-game from "City of Heroes" cannot hurt our case.

3. Be brief. One paragraph is all you will need. "One page: read, two pages: dead." Remember that you are writing to the CEO of a major corporation. It is not reasonable to assume he will have the time to read every letter through and through, but knowing that the first ten letters say the same thing as the next 990 will make an impact.

4. Put a Subject line before the text of your appeal. A single line that says something like "Please do not end my subscription to City of Heroes!" gets your point across and reminds him that you and the thousands of other letter writers are part of his profits.

5. Send letters to both the US and Korean offices of NCsoft. We can't know for sure where Mr. Kim will be at any given time, but knowing that he has stacks of mail waiting for him at either office is part of the message we want to send.

6. Send all letters via "Certified Mail/Addressee’s Signature Required/Return Receipt Requested". This takes a little more effort and costs a little more, but it is well worth it. According to US Federal postal laws, a letter so marked must be signed for by the address or their legal representative, which in the case of CEOs is usually their personal administrative assistants; usually it's not the receptionist or security guards. This is your best shot at getting your letters directly to where they will do the most good.

7.Don't stop at one letter! If you can mail a letter every day, that would be great! But try to send at least one every week. Keep the flood of letters going. They are expecting an initial surge of appeals. What we want to show them is an ongoing commitment to saving the game.

All letters should be addressed to Mr., Taek Jin Kim, CEO, at the two main offices of NCsoft:

In the United States:

Mr. Taek Jin Kim, Chief Executive Officer
NCsoft Corporation
1501 4th Avenue, Suite 2050
Seattle, WA 98101
UNITED STATES

In Korea:

Mr. Taek Jin Kim, Chief Executive Officer
NCsoft Corporation
157-37 Samsung-dong
Kangnamu-gu, Seoul 135-090
KOREA

These are the corporate offices. Writing to any other addresses will reach NCsoft facilities, but may not reach Mr. Kim in time, or at all.

Please get involved!

We already KNOW that the game will be GONE if we do NOTHING.

If we do SOMETHING, we may have a chance to save it!

Good luck to all of us, and start getting those letters out!

Sincerely,

DASHER

P.S. If we save this game, I swear you will never hear me complain about "Travel Power Suppression" ever again. You have my word on it!

Thank you all very much for your responses and information.
Sadly, it appears that this is another one of those great ideas that the Devs discarded in favor of something perhaps easier but far less rewarding to or desired by the players.
Alas, I have learned over the past eight years that "keeping my fingers crossed" for implied -- even promised -- improvements is as useless as believing "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", since the marketing model for games now consists of just ignoring those wheels until they fall off and roll away... MMO's are not vehicles, they are millipedes; the players are just legs, and if a few dozen are lost, management does not care, they just grow more. :-)
Anyway, SG Base Transferral was a great idea; bold, innovative, exciting, which is probably what doomed it from the start... Why bother to try to do something adventurous when you can overlay yet another animation skin over the same tired old powersets and charge for it?
Ah, well.
Still, to those of you who DO care about SuperGroups and their bases having some in-game utility beyond being just another zone where you can't access the Auction House, I do want to offer my sincere best wishes for continued success in making them relevant to the game; it is definitely a cause worth keeping alive, if only for our own enjoyment.

DASHER
"I used to be a superspeedster..."

In the weeks leading up to "Freedom" going live, one of the more encouraging rumors making the rounds was that entire Supergroups - rosters and, mor eimportantly, SG bases - would be eligible for transfer between servers, or to the Exalted server specifically, or to I don't know which, I got all this second-hand.
Was this ever, in fact, considered?
If so, was it implemented, tabled or dismissed?
If tabled, is there any chance of hearing an update as to when or if it might happen?
Or was this a player-driven myth or a casually mentioned Dev-suggested possibility that took on a life of its own in the rumor mill?

Every MMO kills "skilled" PvP.
When abilities can be linked in macros or are dependent on "perfect builds", the end result is a parade of collectible-card-game decks which may be committed in a different order, but which simply repeat the same algorithms with slight randomization until one or the other is defeated.
When abilities model actual capabilities, and players are allowed to implement them in creative fashions, only then is there anything like a contest of "skill".
Example: As detestable as "bunny-hopping" may be, if the targeting model reflects the loss of accuracy such a (ridiculous) tactic should impose, then a player who can use it and still hit their target has demonstrably developed a "skill" at using their character's abilities in conjunction with a manuever; this is the very essence of tactics.
Positioning one's character to gain advantage is one of the first things every MMO eliminates, since most MMO players think that "skill" means a perfectly built character.
Perfect builds are not, by any definition, an example of "skill". They are the result of careful, meticulous, even brilliant design and planning, but they are not in any way "creative', since they consist of immutable elements assembled and re-assembled to achive a reliable end result... which may desirable, but is in no way realistic.
The continual superiority of perfect builds in any game system is in fact a condemnation of that system, in which mere mechanics are regarded as creativity, but which, in fact, lack all true creativity as proven by the "perfect build" characters of players consistently at the top of PvP "pyramids". They have mastered the mechanics of the game, but the potential for wonder is lost.
To paraphrase Kipling: "It's clever; but it isn't art."
That said, if MMO's are all about such mechanistic mastering, well then, bravo. I don't have to PvP so I can enjoy the game as I like, and I do.
But I have no illusions that winning -- or losing -- the rare, unavoided PvP match reflects in any way my skill as a tactician or even as a player, and it certainly does not indicate any superiority on the part of my attacker. It simply reflects the immaturity of my opponent -- as when a team of level 50's jumps a group of level 35's who stumbled into a PvP zone; that's a dead giveaway of a 12-year-old frustrated bully -- or the armchair engineer who has gone through fifty websites examining game code to tweak the "perfect build" over opponents who quite possibly don't even know such sites exist... or knowing, couldn't care less.
That's why I have to laugh when PvP'ers complain about desiring a "level playing field" and insist the Devs "nerf" some abilities or eliminate others altogether.
Because what they REALLY want is for their code-crunching "perfect build" to be secure against an opponent's creative use of their own powers, because true creativity is the one thing they can never predict, and when they actually have to deal with it, they cry "noob!" or "hack!" or "that ability is overpowered!"
Well, it may be overpowered in that it's used against them with true imaginative style, and against such creativity, the number cruncher is, indeed, impotent.

It's only a "spoiler" in the sense that I guessed Darth Vader was Luke's father after my first viewing of "Star Wars" back in 1977; I have always had a pretty good track record on this sort of thing, my latest being guessing the reveal on this seas of "Dexter" in the opening scene of the first episode.
So, with my credentials out of the way, and just in case I'm right this time too, I want folks to be warned.
Anyway, here we go:
It's starting to look pretty obvious that the target of the "Who Will Die?" arc is going to be Lord Recluse. Whether he's actually "killed" or not - in comics, no one ver dies, but CoX isn;t really "comics" in any meaningful sense fo the word, is it? I mean, if it were true to comics, we'd have long since had stretching powers and travel powers wouldn't be the bad joke they've become since issue 4.
That said, what do folks think will happen to the spider-themed Rogue Isles? It'd be cool to see them dramatically altered over the next few years, but who knows?
Comments?
Discussion?

DASHER

We've posted these two items as "bugs" several times while in-game, Support recommends these forums, too.

Don't know if anyone else is having these or similar problems, so here goes:

SG WRONG SYMBOL LOCK-UP

1. Our SG symbol is the 8-pointed star with the long descender, the one in the SG symbols column with a Chalice at the top and the letter "W" on the bottom (at least on my screen resolution, 1920 x 1080).

We had two "Biohazard" floorplates for our Eden/Crey's Folly Telepad. Everything else, EVERYWHERE in the base, was the "Star" symbol.

Since the last issue, every flag, hologram etc. in the base shows the "Biohazard" symbol. Nor can it be changed; the SG symbol still displays correctly in each member's SG Settings, but even removing and attempting to reinstall every "Room/Wall Details" instance in the base (which was NOT fun) still shows the "Biohazard" as the only SG symbol choice.

Only our SG leader has authority to modify the base, so we know we don't have some phantom re-decorator in the SG.


2. BOOBY-TRAPPED INSPIRATION COLLECTOR

Our base has four Inspiration Collectors (one is filled with Christmas presents we give out to new members and new arrivals in Atlas Park during the holidays).

One of the units is seriously bugged; any time anyone tries to interact with it, their game locks up and/or crashes.

Even though it is filled with medium-to-high Inspirations, several gifts and a few special inspirations ("Essence of the Earth" and "Ambrosia"), we were going to delete it and install a new one to restore a usable Collector and avoid the crash issue.

However, the Base Edit function doesn't "see" it. Targeting the Collector during base Edit will show the item, but the "Sell" tab is greyed out, so it cannot be removed.

Please make these and other SG Base fixes a priority.

Thank you.

DASHER

On the advice of several SG mates and friends, I set my NCSoft launcher to "not run in the background".
Now I'd like to get at it to check settings, and it closes immediately after launcing the game. I'm just not quick enough to click the "Settings" and change it back so I can access it.
Any suggestions?

DASHER

Boy, I want to see the answers to this one, too!

I've got a MA/SR Scrapper who misses MORE with his Alpha Strike when he uses "Focus Chi" than when he doesn't.

I've got a TA/Archery Defender with the same accuracy issues.

Both are Incarnates, neither have Accuracy Shards because given the previous evidence, I can't see the point.

So yeah, I want to know what's up here, too.

Okay, so this is weird:

Having cut-and-pasted the command line as instructed and then clicked "OK", I get the following message:

"Windows cannot find 'C:\Program'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again."

What fun Windows 7 is!

<gnashing teeth, rending of raiment and much lamentation>

Kitsune Knight, thanks for the input! I will try that and post the results, just in case anyone else is having the same problems.
Just for the record: I've replaced my vid card, switched monitorss, UPS'es, cables, the whole nine tards. It's down to either a CoH-related issue or a power supply issue, but so far I'm only having problems in CoH, so...
<crossed-fingers>

I have heard thaat some folks are experiencing problems since installing the new NC Soft launcher.
Since I instaled it, I have been plagued with graphics issues - image flickering, black tiles on the Log In screen, screen going dark when clicking in-game menus, etc., etc., etc.
I have been told these are the results of a memory leak problem with the new launcher.
Is there a thread on the forums where I can find information on how to fix these problems?
Thanks in advance.

DO NOT use in-game E-Mail to send attachments!
Two days ago, I and several of my SG-mates were transferring items among alts via e-mail.
To date, at least a dozen RARE Salvage Items and 20+ Candy Canes were lost when the e-mails and their attachments simply disappeared.
The items were not returned to the senders' inventories, they were simply GONE.
We have Help requests pending with the GMs, hopefully the people who lost Candy Canes will have them restored before the Winter Event is over.
In the meantime, DO NOT USE IN-GAME E-MAIL TO TRANSFER ITEMS, and if you have any difficulties report them to in-game GMS IMMEDIATELY.

DASHER

Unfortunately, there is no reason NOT to do so.

I have a couple of role-playing toons that I probably won't bother with, but even in roleplaying terms, it's hard to justify not taking villains on the Incarnate path to "more power".

Since it is the only way to get 50+ content, and since the 50+ content so far (Tin Mage and Apex TFs, for example) is impossible to do without Incarnate status, the choice is either go Incarnate or keep doing newspaper/radio scanner/AE missions with our 50's.

Besides, since we have yet to see an Incarnate Power that eliminates Travel Power Suppression and put us on a level with Synapse and Neuron, it's pretty obvious that some Incarnates are more Incarnate than others, so it's not like we'll ever get to their level.

Come to think of it, even if we do get to Statesman's level, Synapse and Neuron are, by definition, more powerful than him, since they don't have Travel Power Suppression. Since the other Incarnate abilities will bring us up to Statesman's level, and none of them eliminate Travel Power Suppression, then logically, Statesman is subject to Travel Power Suppression, while Synapes and Neuron are not.

QED

:-)

DASHER

lol.
I didn't complain.
I just asked why they didn't stack.
As I said, I was just curious.
And a verbal assault full of assumptions isn't a very nice way to answer a simple question, especially since it didn't contain any good reason why they can't be kept stacked to use later.
It was more of a "quality of life for all players" question.
Just because I don't respec all that often doesn't mean some other people don't.
I don't wonder about issues in this game solely based on how they affect just me.

Just out of curiousity, what is the reason for not letting Respec Tokens be retained if they aren't used?

I rarely re-spec characters, but I ask because I have a lot of Veteran Award respecs I haven't used, so why can't people hang onto the "tokens" given with various issues, in the same manner?

Just wondering.

DASHER

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