Lothic

Yeah maybe. But you have to admit both Fire Imps and Scrappers just run around like mad little monkeys and make bad guys standing in front of you fall down dead. Not -that- much difference to me.

You're right that just doing the CoV content "naturally" would probably be enough to eventually get you the Thin Line badge.

But since I had to do the "Television: Video Games Made Me Do It" mission anyway to get the Couch Potato badge for my Hero-turned-Villain badge collector I realized I could finish off Thin Line there too.

I just set it to "-1/8x" to clear it of all Paragon Police. At that setting even my squishy Controller was able to blast through it quickly and I only had to repeat it a few times to get the full 1,000 PPD.

My method earned me 5 defeat-type badges on average once every 36 minutes. That was good enough for me.

That's funny to hear people call Tanks "pets with badges".
Since I've been herding Fire Imps for years I've come to consider Scrappers just as "big imps with badges".

Well I agree I would've thought they would try to contact me BEFORE taking that kind of action, especially since they waited for several days after my purchase. As it was the first hint that they were going to do anything about it came in the form of an automated email sent to me AFTER the fact. Even if they could not reach me by phone they could've have sent me an email days before the reversal to comfirm it. I have no idea why that didn't happen and the folks at PayPal couldn't give me a good answer either.

Prior to this I've used PayPal for years from my home. I have even used it while travelling domestically in the US without trouble. I think this might have been the first time I tried to use it from a location outside the US so I assume that's why they flagged it as suspect. But since I had used it for years from many locations I was never led to believe my physical location outside the US was going to be a problem in this case. Obviously in retrospect it was.

The OP was trying to figure out ways to pay for his NCsoft CoH account from a foreign country. I just mentioned my PayPal situation as a public service warning to everyone that apparently PayPal has some "gotchas" with dealing with international transactions.

Uh, yes. What's your point?

The first time I knew anything was wrong PayPal had ALREADY reversed my payment and NCsoft had banned my account. At that point it didn't really matter what PayPal had done because the real "damage" that I had to fix was getting NCsoft to unlock my account.

Sure I called PayPal, but at that point they effectively said "too bad for you because we did the right thing by keeping your account safe from what we thought was a suspicious transaction". They were essentially zero help in this situation.

After contacting NCsoft and having to wait several days for my case to make it to the desk of a senior customer service rep they finally pulled the first Super Booster Pack code off my account and unlocked it. The day they finally got around to doing that I rebought that Super Booster Pack with a credit card and have had no trouble since.

I hope that explains the situation to your satisfaction.
As I said before because of this I will not use PayPal with NCsoft again.
It's pretty much as simple as that.

What? No I wasn't in Japan for years. I'm sorry but did you even read the first post I wrote about this yesterday? It's back on the first page of this thread.

Yes. As I mentioned in my first post all of my information has been confirmed by PayPal and has not changed for years. I ultimately got a single automated email from PayPal telling me that they were reversing my payment, but they literally sent me that email a few hours AFTER they had done it.

I'm sorry I may be bursting people's collective bubbles about PayPal's supposed coolness and infallibility but this situation is what it is. To be fair I've used PayPal in hundreds of other transactions without any trouble so it's not like I totally hate them and everything they stand for.

Again, one more time, my main point is that don't automatically assume (as I had gotten used to doing) that PayPal is completely perfect. *shrugs*

Part of my problem was that I was in Japan doing many more important things than worrying about this situation as a primary concern. Had I been home and had a little more free time I might have gotten it resolved more quickly. You have to understand from NSsoft's point of view I had screwed them out of the blue by taking my money back from them. They initially had no idea I had nothing to do with PayPal's decision to reverse my payment. It doesn't really surprise me that they had to get a senior customer rep involved. Water under the bridge and all that.

While this episode with PayPal was sad and annoying I wasn't about to get my lawyer involved in a dispute over a $9.99 transaction. Besides my account had already been banned before I could do anything about it. A letter from a lawyer might have reduced the time it was locked by a few days but not prevented it from happening in the first place. You do realize that many people around the world consider Americans to be a little "sue-happy" don't you? Lawyers aren't the appropriate answer for everything you know.

The main point to my post was that PayPal is likewise not the "miracle cure" to these kinds of things. Sure it's great for the things it can do, but there are risks/consequences that people need to be aware of. The lesson learned is that you need to watch PayPal like a hawk so that they don't things "on your behalf" you don't expect.

I'm not really worried about computers going "belly up".
I'm actually more worried about computers becoming self-aware...

That's when we're going to need the ammo.

Yes but does the 3rd Edition dictionary have the word "aardvark" in it?
Or even "antidisestablishmentarianism" for that matter?

[5 points to the one tells us where those references come from. ]

Maybe it's just that most bluesiders don't "know" about Stalkers yet... j/k

Anyway I keep thinking it's weird to have some of my heroes redside now.
Everytime I enter Grandville from the ferry I keep having MoSTF flashbacks.

Travel Suppression serves a valid purpose in this game as a tactical game balancing mechanic. Clearly many people don't understand its purpose, don't like it regardless of that purpose and/or both. That's fine.

But until the people who hate Travel Suppression manage to convince the Devs it's doing more harm than good the Devs will never remove it from the game. Either come up with an ironclad argument better than "It's poo-poo yucky!" to convince the Devs they have made a mistake with it or, with all due respect, shut up about it and just let this one go.

Simply whining about it for years now has done nothing for your cause. Get a clue... *shrugs*

The whole point (whether players like it or not) behind Travel Suppression is that it's supposed to be a "less-than-subtle" reminder from the Devs that you MIGHT be better off tactically and END-wise not using travel powers in tight situations that could lead to combat in close quarters.

The Devs publicly stated years ago that they were initially surprised people were even trying to use travel powers during combat in general. Their original design concept geared the END cost of travel powers so relatively high that they thought we'd "get the hint" and be smart enough to turn them off ourselves. Of course that didn't stop people from trying anyway.

Then they imposed Travel Suppression on us mostly because they really, really wanted people to follow their original intention of using travel powers only during non-combat situations. They figured if they made travel powers borderline annoying enough to use while in combat we'd finally get the hint and maybe think of alternatives.

Players have argued for years that the Devs' core philosophy of "travel powers were never intended for use during combat" is a fundamentally dumb idea. It very well may be depending on your point of view. But once you understand where the Devs are coming from with this you'll understand why they forced Travel Suppression on us and why they'll never make travel powers -that- much easier to use in combat with something like your speed control idea. Remember if the Devs had their way you wouldn't be able to use SS or Fly while fighting AT ALL.

The Devs have very reluctantly lowered the END costs of travel powers over the years to try to appease us with that kind of compromise. But what you're suggesting would be a complete reversal of their core design paradigm. In fact your speed control idea could almost be seen as a sort of "anti Travel Suppression" as far as being an encouragement to do something the Devs don't actually want us to be doing in the first place.

Your speed control idea is technically not a bad idea.
It's just clear to me why it'll likely never happen. *shrugs*

Oh I have no doubt that at $7.99 it will be the most PROFITABLE because they had to do the least amount of effort for it.
I just contend that they might have sold 3x or 4x as many of these packs if they had pegged it a $3.99 instead. *shrugs*

I guess it's all up to what each person is willing to tolerate. YMMV.

I don't have any problem whatsoever with the company attempting to make more money by selling us optional extras. They are a business after all. If they were NOT trying to figure out new ways to make money I think I might actually be worried about that.

I just think they missed their price point on this latest pack. Making some extra money is one thing but I think they got a tad too greedy with this one. If they had pegged this party pack at $3.99 instead of $7.99 they would've had a winner on their hands. *shrugs*

Thanks for organizing this BT.

I've got several badge alts I'd like to get this done on but would be willing to help out after that as time and opportunity allow.
I should be there for the starting redside run tomorrow.

Why not? I've never seen anything to suggest they're blueside-only critters.
The game has the generic "void hunter" guy it uses anywhere he's needed already.