Leif_Roar

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And Posi said it "can and should stand on its own" not "will stand on its own".

There is an important difference.

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In context -- as a response to a direct question of whether I14 would contain only the mission architecht -- it's difficult to read Posi's words as not strongly indicating that I14 will, at least by and large, consist only of the mission architecht.

No, it's not a decisive, offical announcement of fact, but it is a very strong indication.

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The devs need to look at a new approach for issues,

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I agree with that opinion, not so much because of Champions or DC Online, but because the latest issue that excited me was Issue 10. Issues 11 and 12 were nice, but there was no oomph to them, no sparks flying. Issue 13 is the same, and Issue 14 ... The mission architecth is all well and good; it's a big step forward gamewise and all that -- but it's just a piece of infrastructure arriving a long time after it was announced. With that as an issue by its own there's not going to be any sparks flying off Issue 14 either.

The work the developers are turning out now is, technically speaking, better than it used to be. It's high quality, it's tight, it's shiny. But it's a jazz performance with subdued applause rather than a raucous rock show. Where's the spectacle, the energy?

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Sorry? You can make descisions now then?

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No, but I'm psychic and can predict what the answer will be.

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I was going to say something sarky involving boys, wolves and parables but I cannae be bothered.

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"Wolves who live in parables shouldn't throw rolling boys gathering no moss in the hand"?

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Please can I get my account migrated to the US please?

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No.

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If those servers are on UK soil in the US they are only viable to UK law. It is a unique case I know but still it is an example of how some people make statements that are not quite true.

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The difference between "servers located in the US" and "servers located under US jurisdiction" is an exceedingly fine hair to split in this context.

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Other MMOs only have one global network. Why cant ours?

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Because NCSoft has decided to structure their business in another way.

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The organisation I work for has servers in the US and they are certaintly not subject to US law.

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They most certainly are -- or do you think they're somehow magically protected from a US state or federal warrant just because the people using the servers aren't around?

More to the point, as you're in the EU, storing data on servers in the US, you have to consider both EU and US laws, as both are purusant to your situation.

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Yes yes I do.

If we were given access to the US servers aswell as our own (Thats one big server list) We could choose to play on densly populated servers, or ghost towns.

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"Access to both US and EU servers" is a different request from "being able to move an EU account to a US account", though.

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EU side could still collect our money and sort things for us, and the yanks side could still do the same.

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There are so many questions about how the two divisions would divide costs that it's not even funny -- and that's not even taking account of the problems of taxation or legislation.

It's a pointless debate anyway. For business reasons NCSoft and NCSoft Europe are not going to do either. They're in this to make money, and they have every right to organise their business in which way they find best. End of story.

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I also don't really want my toons levelling up while at their day jobs - inf, badges, enhancements, recipes, etc. are fine, just not xp!

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I wouldn't mind if there were day-jobs that gave a small bonus to earned XP. For one it would amount to opt-in and it wouldn't feel out of place in the way a straight "XP for logged out time" system would.

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But people are saying that there prefer the less populated servers, i.e. the EU. So why would people move from one less populated server to another?

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Ugh. It's too early in the morning for this much poor, incongruous rethoric. Do you, or do you not have a real argument as to how your suggestion would benefit the game?

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[...] we should at least merge all 4 server we have on this side of the water.

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Je can sehen a petite problemen with das.

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By allowing free (or even chargable) movment of toons from one server to another it increase the chances of evening out the server populations.

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It would only do that if people preferred the less populated server. As people tend to prefer the more populated server, the effect of your suggestion would be entirely the opposite.

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Casual players that can only log a few hours now and then though, will get far more out of it.

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Yeah, but casual players don't play CoH for XP. CoH is very much a game where it's "the journey, not the destination."

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As the title says really.

Thanks

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That might benefit you, but how would it benefit the game?

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K is hinting at something rather awesome . In the meantime, concerns of the OP noted and what I can say right now is that we're working on better things in the background. Stay tuned .

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To take on the mantle of the curmudgeon cynic for once: Yeah, sure, such and such, so and so. Whatever. Could anyone wake me up when there's some actual news?

I don't know. Maybe it's just me needing a long break from the whole thing, but I feel like it's years since the community team seemed genuinely interested in the game, or the community. All the communications just seem so ... paint by numbers. Eh. Nevermind my maudling; just me needing a break, I guess.

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Hami could certainly cause problems, since it is to big to spawn inside most maps.

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Mind, Hami spawned on an outdoors map with the heroes fighting him alongside the freakshow...

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In the meantime: Patience, young Padawan, patience. The time will come when we unleash the full force of Markting on the unsuspecting.

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"And your journey to the dark side will be complete."

And one for the software professionals out there: Any bug-winged villain: The Mythical Man-Moth

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No offence to you, but while you would find an arc about all your alts fascinating, other people may be bored to tears by it and it would not mean a thing to them.

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Well, that's where good storytelling enters the picture, nicht?

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Easy enough to protect against. Just encode the files and use a seperate MD5 hash key on them, or use a digital signature.

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Won't work, as the calculation of the hash key / signature has to be done locally, and thus amenable to interference or highjacking.

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Preventing savegame hacking isn't difficult...

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Preventing naive savegame hacking isn't difficult. Preventing savegame hacking in general is.

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I feel the need to requote this bit,

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Players are rewarded for playing, creating and rating Arcs.

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Emphasis mine.

Although I agree with you, rating systems rarely work without incentive to rate properly.

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Then let me quote this bit: "On the sites where voting is rewarded or mandatory, most people just give the same rating to all stories."

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You can take arcs down as well though, Posi said that somewhere. So really its not that bad, you can unpublish poorly performing / received ones afterwards.

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Sure, but people aren't wired that way -- just look how difficult it is for most people to throw away all the junk that take up room in their cupboards, or how hard it can be to delete a character to free a character slot for a new one.

A free slot entices, it's an opportunity, a chance, an invitation. If there's no free slot, and you have to remove something to make room, it's a lot harder to get started -- particularly if you haven't received much in the way of attention or feedback on your earlier stuff.

Players will be able to publish somewhere around half a dozen or so Arcs up to our Arc server. An Arc is anywhere from one to five missions.

This is, to be honest, ridiculous. It's as if it's designed to make people lose interest in the mission generator. Yeah, sure, you free a slot if you get a mission into the Hall of Fame or Dev's Choice, but most players won't get there (getting into the Hall of Fame is going to require networking more than mission writing) -- and this system ensures they won't stick with it until they do, either.

Surely a time-limited system would be better? Say, limiting uploads to one mission a month or something?

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The only justification I can see for having unlockable stuff in the arachitect is to avoid spoilers, you shouldn't be able to uses stuff you havent encountered in the main game.

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Well, surely to avoid spoilers we'd have to make it so that you couldn't play missions that has stuff you haven't encountered in the main game.

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So, even if everyone in your SG group gives you five stars on an Arc, you still have the other hundred thousand plus players to balance it out.

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Hooo boy, where to start.

I've published short stories on sites with rating systems, and none of them work. First of all, few people rate. Getting one vote for every 100 view is typical. On the sites where voting is rewarded or mandatory, most people just give the same rating to all stories. (Or they'll give whatever rating is closest to the story's current rating.)

Now, that's the issue of getting valid votes. The second issue is to get views. People use the rating system to select what to read (or which missions to run). This means that stories with a high rating will attract more votes, while stories with a low rating will get very few.

Thirdly, there's going to be a lot of missions, so any particular mission is going to have a practically neglible chance of getting votes from people who choose mission at random, or without regard to the rating.

Taken together, this means that a poor mission with 40 immediate supergroup votes of 5 stars is going to stay at 3+ forever -- it will, slowly, attract votes of 1 or 2, but with a block of 40 5s it's going to take a long time before its rating has sunk below 4. (It'll take 14 votes of straight ones to bring it down below 4 -- but in reality a mission, no matter how bad, won't attract nothing but 1s.)

A really good mission, without any votes from friends, who happen to get a couple of unlucky votes of 3 to begin with, will never climb to the top. It just won't attract enough views, and with that votes, to do so.

(And this doesn't even take into account people gaming the system by systematically giving low rates to storys that compete with their own or to people they don't like.)

"Wisdom of the crowd" rating systems doesn't work online, at least not on their own.