Goliath Bird Eater

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I agree that there is no need to know. But I believe it would be helpful to both the community and NCSoft.

The community could see how the rules are enforced. It also acts as a warning, sort of like having a police car on the highway. Most people slow down when they see a police car giving someone else a ticket. Some law enforcement agencies have taken to parking empty police cars on highways because it is so effective at reducing speeding.

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If I may quote Lighthouse from a few posts up:

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We don't discuss disciplinary action because it is not constructive, fun or friendly discussion about the game. While there may be those who are interested in the inevitable drama surrounding such action, it's not something we want to play up or dwell on. Hence, we don't talk about it.

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There's not much else I can add to that -- the man is absolutely correct. I've got a ton of moderator and admin work under my belt, and in the long run, things like public banned lists (for example) only serve to polarize the userbase and are more trouble than they're worth.

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As such, warnings and bans are not to be discussed on the forum. Such matters shall remain private between the NCsoft and the user. Questions or comments concerning warnings and bans will be conveyed through e-mail or private messaging. Likewise, discussions regarding moderator actions are not permitted on the forum. If you have questions regarding a post or thread that has been removed or subject to other moderation, feel free to contact a moderator to discuss it.


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I disagree with this policy, to a certain extent. While I understand that your company does not want to have a public debate regarding specific conduct that results in a disciplinary action, I believe that it would be helpful to me, and others in the community, to see exactly what discipline results from engaging in certain conduct.

For example, I have seen Lighthouse and Niviene lock certain threads with a brief statement of why. Those types of moderation help me understand how the forum rules are applied in a practical and real context.

But hey, it's still your playground and you get to make the rules. Nice job getting those polished up

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It's about keeping business and pleasure separate, Flea. We, as forum-goers, really don't need to know why various bits of disciplinary action take place, or whom they affect; if we follow the rules of the realm, we typically won't find ourselves in a position where we would need to. If threads are closed for reasons other than straightforward rules violations, the community reps often do post to tell us why, and that's a very courteous action on their part. But the back-end stuff like issuing warnings to people or banning them really isn't any of our concern.

(QR)

I'm in firm agreement with everyone who's suggested the possibility of 30- and 60-day virtual "game cards". May not be possible, but it's definitely something that PlayNC should look into.

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I just can't get excited about this.

I feel like these invasions happen too often. I feel like they go on way, way too long. But more importantly, this long after issue 10, I feel like they happen way, way too pointlessly. Part of me really just can't believe that week-long invasions are happening eleven months after tens of thousands of us have earned the "Save the World" badge for ending the Second Rikti War.

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We didn't end the war. We kept it from escalating back to the level it was on when they first invaded. We also kept Nemesis from uploading his consciousness into every single Rikti, which would have been a very bad thing. Also, diplomacy has begun with one branch of the Rikti in hopes that one day, the war truly will be over.

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When the Second Rikti War began, I was sure, from the clues you'd left in the text, that this was going to be a one-time event. A big-news thing that we who were around at the time could brag about to the new people. I was completely convinced that issue 11, or at the very latest issue 12, would include some minor revisions to the Rikti War Zone, to reflect the fact that Hro'dotz and his Legacy of War no longer had the full support of the Rikti people, that they were fighting on in our dimension as criminals, not invaders, and that outside of that one neighborhood, the rest of the world had seen the last of the homeworld-native Rikti, or at least of their heavy weapons and warships, for years to come. I thought, and wrote at the time in a roleplaying piece at the time, that the Second Rikti War was going to have an end. Not that it was going to be a permanent feature of the game.


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Unfortunately, you thought wrong. Positron himself said that the RWZ revamp would be the start of a multi-issue storyline. And as you've seen in Issue 12, the hostile Rikti have changed their plans and are working on a way to eliminate their one big weakness: magic. Since they still have the capability to open small portals and the tech to launch small bombing runs, however, they're going to utilize both whenever possible. On the plus side, the Lost Cure just might signal that hostile Rikti numbers are now finite. So the war very well could be closer to ending.

Also, the devs of this game have decided that one-off events aren't the way to go. They'd rather create events that come around occasionally so that most of the playerbase has a chance to experience them at some point.

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This is especially annoying to me because the art department has still not, eleven months later, made the changes necessary to make Paragon City look like America at war. There are no war headlines on the newspapers people read everywhere, and the newspapers that come out of the newspaper boxes still show a folk singer with a guitar at a peaceful concert. Paragon City has exactly one American flag. People on the street still talk about superheroes as if they were celebrities and sports stars whose stats they follow, not as if they were war heroes. In Paragon City in June of 2008, Earth has been at war with aliens from another world bent on our conquest and assimilation for eleven long months and it's had no perceptible effect on anything but one neighborhood in Rhode Island, no affect on the rest of Paragon City, on America, on the world. That it's eleven months later and still, every 8 weeks or so, the aliens can hit us just as hard as they did in the weeks after July 24th and not only is no end in sight, but you're making it look like the war is now the permanent status quo, it will go on forever?

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First of all, it's NOT a full-scale war. Thanks largely to the fact that Hro'Dotz's plans HAVE been squashed by your character (and by every other character who has or who will run the content). And the place doesn't look like a warzone (outside of the RWZ) not only because the Rikti are only capable of making periodic raids, but also because the Supers keep it from looking like a warzone by further squashing them whenever they try their bombing runs.

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Suddenly I feel like an idiot for grinning like a fool and quoting the St. Crispin's Day speech back on July 24th of last year, for being excited about the chance for my main character to become a war hero. For feeling like something actually special was going on, not just a zone event, not merely a software upgrade, but an actual EVENT.

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You ARE a war hero, but so is every other character that runs the TF and/or does all the RWZ arcs. One of the realities of MMOs is that your experience by and large will not differ greatly from another persons experience. The content is written as if yours was the only story being told, and some semblance of time exists (Faultline and Fusionette going from rookie heroes to slightly less rookie Vanguard members when your character encounters them again later on in his/her/its career), but in the end, you need to remember that every character goes through this game as if theirs is the only story being told. It's somewhat of a necessity in MMOs.

Wanna be the greatest single hero in a world? Go play a single-player game. Or go find an MMO that does have one-off events so you can either participate and then smugly hold it over the heads of those players who missed it, or likewise complain when you miss an event and have it held over your head by the players who were there for it.

Again, the devs of this game have pretty much decided that they're not gonna go that route. They might in the future now that the meta-story is being progressed a bit, but right now, they're not. Sorry if it ruins your gameplay experience.

*Browses the art forum*

*Notices the thread with lots of pages*

*Reads thread, figures stuff out*



You're all a bunch of perverts!



Dirty, filthy, naughty, sexy perverts!




Er, wait! I mean ... I mean ... SHAME!!!! SHAME ON ALL OF YOU! ESPECIALLY YOU, ALEX!!!!!!1111!!!!!

Not very convincing, huh?

*shrugs*

*leaves thread*

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The TF is just aggravating. The final AV's are damned near unkillable with a small group, even on heroic. As Caesar would, I'd give this TF a thumbs down. I'd rather hunt for merits for costume parts than do a god damned impossible TF.

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They're hardly unkillable. you just can't go rushing in, guns ablaze. Take out the Essences first, focusing on one at a time. Try to have a Tanker keep Romulus busy while this is done.

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JLove loses sexy points for making the female Widow boots a clunky heel rather than a stiletto. Bad JLove. Bad.

The new patterns are nice though.

The Roman styles are worthless, as far as I'm concerned, since they're tucked into the back of a TF. No sexy points there.

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Also, as noted in previous issues, Jay designs costumes, but doesn't handle how they're given to players.

Please don't penalize the Jay Sexiness Points based on costume rewards

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If you wanna pick nits, you actually can blame Jay for the Roman stuff being a TF reward. The costumes were made and put into the game's files quite a while ago. When Posi saw how great they turned out, he decided that they were too good to either add to the costume creator or make a vet reward. He wanted them to be a reward for having done something great in-game. When the ITF came along, he decided that was it.

So if Jay's work wasn't so incredibly sexy, we'd have been able to make our bland costume-wearing Romans right from the start, a long time ago.

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<ul type="square">[*] Added "Spam" Button to email window. It will ignore the sender as a spammer and delete the email.[/list]
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Does this also take care of whatever is necessary behind the scenes to report the spammer/incident? Or should we still be filing petitions in addition to using this new button?

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Yes. It ignores the sender (their global, from what my chat log has been telling me) as a spammer. So just click that button for e-mails, and also left-click the spammer's name and select "ignore as spammer" for any tells you may get.

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No, they are all inside the Lobby or in the inner alcoves. None in Cimerora.

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There are 13 clues in total, with 5 of them being in the lobby, 1 being in the center "round table" alcove, and the other 7 split between the side alcoves (can't remember the exact split, sorry).

Congrats on the wedding, Jester!

And since we're throwing out CoX-related radio stations, I'd like to add Virtue's The Cape into the mix. I admit that the only time I've tuned in was when Posi, LH, and Brian Clayton were on talking about in-game ads (and I usually only listened to W00t for The Jester's Court; MMO talk radio interests me). But hey, somebody might check it out and like it!

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Hurrah, Castle sounds happy!

Let's try not to change that.

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Castle ... happy?

...

Oh my God HE'S A SKRULL!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Just the same, it's amazing how much cool stuff 15 people have been able to come up with. What perplexes me is what others have mentioned, as well - the content the Surviving 15 came up with was superior in every way to the all the content that came before.

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Necessity is the mother of [the] invention [system].

This interview is a must-read for anyone who still has doubts about the in-game advertising. I seriously doubt it'll sway the opinions of the Tin Foil Hat Club, but it'll hopefully ease some of the concerns that the sane, rational players might have.

I'm 5-starring this thread; I hope that I don't later regret that decision once more people read the interview (y'know, if they even bother before coming in here to run about, their arms flailing in the air).


Edit: First between two redname posts

*drives 8-inch metal nails into his ear canals*

THERE! Now I'm ready to truly experience this amazing, revolutionary advancement in video game interactivity! No longer will I have to go through the ...

Waitaminute ...

*puts 2 and 2 together*


...


Aw man ... I'm living in a country with socialized healthcare. Do you have any idea how long it's gonna take me to get an appointment to get this taken care of?

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LOTS of costume options, especially mask/face/detail options (trench coats too) have this bug. I've tried reporting it and got absolutely nowhere despite pages of detailed explanations with the customer service team. They eventually gave me a free costume token which of course did not, in any way, address the issue. Frustrated, after days and days of trying, I gave up on this.

To me, it's probably the single most annoying bug in the game.


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Just for the record: If it's a bug report, you'll be lucky to get anything at all aside from pre-generated form e-mails. If you got a costume token out of this, then lucky you. The bug still won't be fixed any faster than what the QA team and dev team deem appropriate.

Yeah, this right here is awesome.

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Linked by whom? A Redname? If so, please provide a link.

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I just checked the UK site, and TVG is listed on the main page as their link to yesterday's article. So we probably can take the list as being legit. That said, there are still some head scratchers, like Dark Melee/Armor for Tanks, and Electric Melee/Armor for Stalkers.

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Eh, I dunno ...

It seems like quite a few power sets on that list are real head-scratchers. And there's no real verification about where that list came from. I think I'll wait until gamezone puts up their version of what's to come; at least we know that they're getting info from the source.

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Did you read the link that was posted with the list? From: http://www.totalvideogames.com/artic...e_12_12989.htm

It's definitely the same stuff, Dr. Brainstorm revealing the powers in story format.

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Yeah, I read it. And it doesn't read like yesterday's article; the style isn't quite the same. That, combined with the odd in some cases choices for powersets, has me waiting until I read something from the site that Lighthouse specifically linked to before I start shouting from the rooftops.

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Since when have Dominators had a Manipulation secondary?

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Typo?

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*waits patiently for gamezone to put their article up*

Eh, I dunno ...

It seems like quite a few power sets on that list are real head-scratchers. And there's no real verification about where that list came from. I think I'll wait until gamezone puts up their version of what's to come; at least we know that they're getting info from the source.

(QR)

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! They're gonna tell us everything tomorrow instead of telling us a little bit today!"


LOF'NL

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In my efforts to learn Illustrator, another vector, a Blue Shield Version of the PPD logo:
Avatar at 80x80, transparent background
Avatar at 600x600, forum blue background

I might do something else later this week as well.

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Now THIS I like! Very clean, not too busy.

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Last night, when I was on CoV, I could have sworn I saw a Vanguard announcement that the Rikti had been repelled from Atlas Park.

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

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In addition to the big invasions, an invasion force gets randomly sent to either a hero zone or villain zone every time a team finishes the Lady Grey Task Force.

(QR)


A repost of mine from an unofficial thread about this announcement:

In all fairness, it's not as if we were promised some earth-shattering, super-awesome-omega-cool secret tidbit of information. From what Lighthouse (or one of the other devs, I can't recall right now) has said, there's still a little time before I12 goes into closed beta, so the information can come in little chunks in order to fill up time.

Besides, after reading WW's diary, I gotta say that there's a distinct possibility that my newbie heroes will actually hang around the Hollows after talking to Wincott instead of making a break for Kings Row. The new spawn design - along with the in-zone hospital - really makes this zone a lot more attractive than it once was.

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I just want to say how glad we are to have Blue Steel on the forums.

Whoo Hoo!!

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Hello kitty!

... What? Somebody had to say it; figured I'd get it out of the way.