Peregrine_Falcon

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I am trying to get clarification on what is ok to say and what is going to get deleted.

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Devilchild, you are not going to get that clarity because it is subjective. We take cases as they come. If you would like to discuss it further with me, please send me a PM, thanks.

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Are you serious?

I ask because it appears to me that what you're saying is this:

1) We have a new set of fairly vague rules for the forums that are completely open to interpetation by the whim of the moderation staff and whatever level of caffeine they may have in their system at the time.

2) It's against the rules to use any of the basic "bad words."

3) It's also against the rules to post other things, but since that list is "subjective" you're not going to tell us what it is.

Which means that every single time that I or anyone else puts a post up on these forums that isn't 100% happy-happy-joy-joy undying praise for the moderators and/or NCSoft staff that we're essentially giving the Grand Wheel 'O Death a hearty spin. Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows!

*click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click*

Congratulations!! The Grand Wheel 'O Death has stopped on... Perma Game Account Ban!! Yes! Congratulations!! You now have the opportunity to kiss all of the money you've paid over the years, all of your characters and your Veteran Rewards goodbye! You just violated a rule that you didn't even know existed!

Yeah. I'd appreciate it if you'd send me a copy of that PM as well Lighthouse, because I really hope that there is something that I've misunderstood here.

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I would also remind everyone, that the nature of this thread is to answer your questions regarding the new rules, not to provide a place to attack moderation actions, discuss moderation that has been done, or engender non-constructive posting on this topic. Please refrain from these types of postings, as they are not allowed according to the new rules of the forums.

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Is discussing how these rules might possibly be applied allowed to be discussed according to the new guidelines?

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I have tried to answer as many questions about the new rules as I can since I did a lot of work into writing them and will be doing even more into enforcing them, however I will continue moderating posts that are not conductive to the discussion. Constructive discussion I will continue to try and answer to the best of my ability.

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So posts about the rules and using past enforcement of said rules as examples is not allowed in an official thread that's supposed to be about the rules? Huh? I is confused now. Mayhaps you will be so kind as to explain the logic of that to me, cause I'm honestly not getting it.

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All I'm going to say is--if you (the Mods and Community Managers) are going to step up the rules and expect us to abide by them, then I think we as the players deserve some sort of commitment from red names to commit to this decision as well.

The sheer number of times I go to report a thread and it says, "The moderators..." and I see it there a week later... *shrugs*

Also, as has been mentioned, there are specific groups of people with their own forums that are encouraged to act in ways that already break the forum rules. This isn't a whine, this is a fact. If the moderators are participating in, oh say, a discussion involving x-rated material with pictures...what are we supposed to do?

Again, I recognize that this is your sandbox, and you have your rules. I don't mind following them if you don't mind enforcing them.

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Exactly. The only problem I've ever had with the moderation on this forum is consistency.

I have no problem following the rules, whatever you decide the rules are going to be. This forum is afterall the property of NCSoft, not a public place. However, the problem is that often times I see posts/threads locked/deleted that are perhaps slightly rude whereas entire threads full of insults and vitriol have been ignored. It's even worse when I try to report the posts only to find out that almost every single post in the thread has been reported. Then a week later I see that same thread still there, completely unmoderated.

And when I PM a Redname about this thread I get a read receipt but nothing happens to said thread. Then I see people get warnings or bans for completely inoccuous posts, while said thread full of vitriol, flames and outright insults is allowed to continue for weeks.

Consistency. If it's not ok for me to break rule X, then it needs to not be ok for others to break rule X. And "we're only human and we can't see everything" just isn't an excuse when said thread remains at the top of the forum for weeks with every single post having been reported and the mods having received multiple PMs about it.

Personally I am glad to see that the forum moderation staff is being increased. And I say this as someone who's received a temp ban for my posts. I'd really like this forum to become a nicer and friendlier place to post. In order for that to actually happen though the rules need to apply to everyone equally. My experience up to this point is that for whatever reason that has not been the case.

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I am just doing a little villainous scheming here.

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Well seeing as Positron recently mentioned that changes for bases are coming I don't know that doing this makes any sense.

Of course even if changes weren't coming I don't believe it would make any sense either.

The devs are going to do what they're going to do. I honestly believe that anything we have to say isn't going to make much of a difference. Think I'm wrong? How many people have asked the devs to buff Invuln? How many years have they ignored bases? How long was the Robo-Surgery broke? How long have people asked for the Cathedral of Pain to be fixed?

The forums are a great way to comunicate with the devs, they've made that plain. And they are aware of the things that we the players want. But realize that they're going to do what they're going to do. The recent protest against the EM nerfs should have made that clear to anyone who's paying attention.

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The VIP Pass will also unlock a special in game item that was selected for this show only.

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Please tell us what this special item is.

And please consider making this item available to those people who could not attend Comic Con. Perhaps for a small fee? This makes everyone happy. NCSoft makes money, and those people that want this item can have it.

I've been attempting to contact the City Scoop. I have a base I'd like to submit for consideration in the Base Showcase article.

Both of my PMs have gone unanswered.

If you guys think I'm a jerk and don't want to have anything to do with me I'm ok with that, but could you at least reply to my PM and let me know that?

Thank you.

IMO, the biggest problem right now is that bases are nearly worthless.

With the proliferation of temp travel powers and teleporters, the Pocket D teleporter, the market teleporter and the Oroborus teleporter, base teleporters just aren't worth much. Storage is great, but isn't so earthshatteringly useful that I feel deprived if I'm not part of an SG. And with the introduction of the market and the Vault storage is no longer a problem for those characters that aren't in an SG.

The fact is that there isn't anything that you can do inside an SG base that you can't do outside of an SG base, but there are many things that you can do outside of the base that you cannot do inside the base. Such as change your difficulty level, access the market, train up, etc. So currently there is no real advantage to being in an SG, but there are disadvantages to being in an SG. Such as having to deal with base storage issues. SG mode reducing the amount of earned Influence/Infamy. SG mode messing up your costumes when you switch. The game crashing when you enter your base or logging off while in your base, etc.

Being in an SG should give characters an advantage, even if it's just a QoL advantage. Having a useful base should also gives characters an advantage. Right now neither having a base nor even being in an SG gives any real advantage to a character but it does bring several disadvantages.

On top of that they feel abandoned. Even when an entire SG team of 8 people are in the SG the base it just feels like the 8 of us are meeting in an abandoned base. As many people have said before a huge list of available NPCs set to wander around/patrol the halls/stand guard or remain stationary and work and/or repair things would go a huge ways toward making bases feel like someone actually lives/works there. I believe the Vanguard base in the RWZ is the perfect example of what an SG base should look like. All kinds of useful stuff, mechanics working on mechs, a doctor in the infirmary, contacts you can talk to/sell to/buy from. I wish my SG base looked and felt like the Vanguard base, they're an SG that everyone wants to join.

The introduction of customizable signs, NPCs that you can actually interact with and items that add more actual usefulness (not just fluff) to bases will make all of that magic desk spinning finally worthwhile.

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On top of which ... OK I wasn't playing or following the boards at the time, but I ran into someone who swore to me that Lighthouse and Ex Libris specifically advocated that behavior. Now that seemed a little silly to me, I didn't see much NCSoft benefit in trials being used like that. But he was sure enough that I do believe him.

So it seems like a big jump from "we recommend it" to "it's not allowed."

Not that CoH would ever overreact to anything.

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I believe it was Lighthouse. And they told us an entire month in advance that they were going to give us a prestige grant. Moreover, they told us specifically how and when this grant would happen. The specific day, and that it'd be 20,000 prestige x the number of members in the SG.

Within just a few posts people were talking about using their 4 referral accounts to get 4 trial accounts for themselves to fill their SGs with. Then they were talking about swapping fake characters to pad SGs on servers they're not on. I believe it was less than 2 days after the announcement when one of the base-gurus started the swap toons thread. Back in the main thread however some people started raising concerns that the devs might consider this an "exploit" and thus punish the players doing this. After continually pressed for an answer as to whether padding your SG with trial account characters was an exploit or not I believe it was Lighthouse again who said something like: That'd certainly be one way to benefit from this announcement we made a month in advance, wouldn't it?

Needless to say, everyone took this as full approval from the devs. We knew that they can't just come out and say; "We know it's an exploit, but go ahead. After all, why do you think we let you all know a month in advance?" Then the character padding trading really hit full swing. Several players announced that they even created entirely new SGs just for this. We filled up tons of SGs to the brand new maximum of 150 players.

Then the prestige grant hit. Then the next day it hit again. In response to people asking if it was a mistake and wondering if they were going to be losing the extra 3 million prestige they didn't expect to get one of the devs said: "Whoops. We accidentally ran the prestige script twice. No, we're not going to reverse it. Merry Christmas."

The first hint we had that maybe not all of the devs were happy with what we'd done was in a thread talking about rent prices and Positron said something like: After a lot of people filled their SGs to the brim with pads we're going to be a lot less receptive to the idea of lowering rent or costs of base items.

So while SG padding was unofficially not just allowed, but in fact heartily encouraged, not all of the devs were happy about it. I'd say that the fact that it can't be done anymore pretty much proves that.

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No, and such speculation is pretty silly if you know anything about how RMT operations work.

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Well considering that I (thankfully) know absolutely nothing about how RMT operations work I'd say that my speculation is just that. Speculation. Nothing silly about it. If I knew anything about RMT operations then I wouldn't have to speculate now would I? Perhaps you, with your boundless expertise on RMT operations, could inform me as to how RMT operations work. I'm also curious as to how this knowledge came to you as well.

I do think it's kinda funny that a lot of these trial accounts, registered within just the last couple of days, are posting on the forums now. All of a sudden. I haven't seen this many new accounts on the board ever.

And it's also kinda funny how a lot of these supposedly new people seem to know a lot about CoH/CoV. For example: one guy who registered just today in his very first post used the term CoX. Now if he's really new to the game, new to the forums and on a new account (and not an regular forum poster on a trial account or an RMT spammer) then how does he know to use that term?

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Is it just me, or does it seem like the RMTers are really upset about the new trial account limitations?

Upset enough that they just might be using those brand new trial accounts to make brand new forum accounts to post on the forums in hopes of getting the trial limitations reversed.

Hmmmm... we may never know.

I lost four free slots that I had available but did not use. 2 were the free slots given to everyone and 2 were the vet reward slots.

Congratulations Hero!

Go train up, we'll wait for you at the mission door.

I rolled a Katana/Willpower Scrapper just to check out the new Hollows.

I really like the changes. The Hollows is still a challenge, but it's also less frustrating and more fun!

Now if the game would quit crashing on me well... that'd really rock!

We did this yesterday with 2 Controllers, 2 Scrappers, a Tanker and a Blaster.

We completely cleared the area around Romulus and the Nicti and then started in on them.

We tried multiple times to immob and pull Romulus and then the healing Nictus. We were completely unable to immob any of them, and that's with 2 Controllers. We tried to pull Romulus and Taunt a Nictus away from him it never worked. With all 6 of us and 6 Shivans all simulatneously attacking Romulus we were completely unable to scratch him at all. His health bar never even moved.

After we all used all 5 Shivans we finally gave up and quit the Task Force.

Personally I think we're wasting our time even bothering to post in these threads. I mean, how many years have the devs just ignored bases? For how many years did they just pretend that bases didn't exist?

How about this suggestion that I made months ago: If it exists in the game then I should be able to put one in my base. Everything. Every single thing that appears in missions every thing that appears outside in the zones, if it will fit in a room that is. Ok, no skyscrapers in my base, fine. But everything that exists in game that can fit in a base room should be in the base editor.

Everything.

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Please fix the buff icons. It makes my MMs and Defenders nearly impossible to play.

Please give this fix a higher priority than (for example) writing a script that ensures that no villains have a hero badge and vice-versa.

Although I suppose the 3 different known bugs that cause the game to just simply crash should be given a higher priority that anything else. After all, if the game just crashes all the time that's pretty much the definition of "game breaking." How much do you want to bet that the game crash bugs won't be the first ones fixed though?

BTW, perhaps you (any red name will do) can explain how you expect to get advertisers to pay to put ads into a game that doesn't work because it keeps crashing? Good luck with that!

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What would you feel would be needed to identify each beacon *without* targeting them somehow?

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Forget those pictures on the beacons. A nice big red "Perez Park" on the beacon would be much more useful. As would making them slightly smaller so that we don't have to place the TPers on the highest floor setting just to set the beacons in front of them.

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"Anatomy Channel" or the "Xray Channel" lol

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We've always called it the Eyeball channel.

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so this isn't really about the flexibility of the plots, it's really all about the prestige costs of the entire base system?

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Speaking for myself it's about both.

Currently if I want to add a 10th 2 x 2 room I first have to pay 1.6 million to purchase the 8 x 12 plot. If the plots are done away with I'd only have to pay the 100k or so for the next room. So in that sense it is about the base costs.

However, under the current system I also have to make my base fit into a neat 8 x 8 section of land or else. This forces many to construct their bases as bland squares. If the plots are done away with then I can place those 8 or nine rooms in any shape or size I want for whatever reason is more important to me. I don't feel constrained by either the size or shape or cost of the plot in any way. This encourages creativity. If I want to shape my base like a spaceship or a snake or a big cross or a tree or whatever I can just build it without any worries or constraints.

This would also allow for a scaling rent system. Instead of the sudden jump from $0 to $20k/month I could end up with a $975/month or a $21500/month, depending on how large I build my base and how many squares/tiles I use. For example say the first 36 room squares are rent free, just like they are now, but maybe the rent system would be set up so that rent is then $1000/month per square after 36, or something. (just pulling a cost out of my hat for example's sake) So I am free to decide how much rent per month I'm willing to pay and then I know exactly how large I can make my base. This places more choices in the hands of the players, and that's nearly always a good thing.

I see what you're saying.

But what if I wanted to shape my base like a meandering labyrinth? Or give it one of any number of non-square and/or strange shapes for whatever reason?

It just makes sense to get rid of the base plot size altogether and charge rent based on the total number of squares used. This has the added advantage that no other price changes would really be necessary.

I agree that it would be better to simply do away with the base plots and only charge us for the squares (or tiles or whatever you want to call them) that we place.

One of my SGs is named "Crew of the lost starship." Our base isn't very big, but because I shaped it like a spaceship I had to expand to the 8 x 12 plot. Most of the space on that plot is unused. Now I could easily triple the amount of available space by filling the base plot with a lot of 2 x 2 rooms, but then it'd hardly look like a spaceship then.

So yes, base plots stifle creativity.

I have two suggestions regarding bases.

1) Kick someone in the back of the [censored] head and then yell in his/her ear, "Do something, anything with bases already!"

2) Please be so kind as to let us know if something will ever be done with bases. If the answer is no then we'd like to know so that we the forum goers can quit wasting our time asking for things and making suggestions and hoping that anything will ever be done with the half-broken mess that are bases in CoH/V.

Here's what I think the devs will do.

They'll create a brand new base editor that's much easier to operate and has about 100 times more items and options than the one we're currently saddled with. Once that's tested and debugged and gone live and further debugged by in-game use then they'll start work on the mission editor version.

The mission editor will essentially be the new base editor sans certain base only things (like storage and teleporters) and with new things added. Specifically spawn point flags and dialogue entry boxes.

One of the biggest problems with player created content will be the huge amount of it. There are two very good ways to cull the gold from the [censored]. One of those ways was already mentioned by Positron: player ratings. The second way is to create a barrier to entry. This makes it more likely that missions will only be created by those people that are really really interested in creating missions. The best barrier to entry would be to package the mission creator in a box and charge real money for it.

Neither one of these things alone will ensure that you will never play in a player created mission that is anything other than garbage. But together they seriously increase a player's access to only the best missions. They also make it much easier for the devs to take only the best and most popular player created content and officially add it to the game.

As an added bonus by doing it this way they will be able to kill two birds with one stone and save time and effort in the process.

And once again the Devs [censored] over villains.

It figures.

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As I said, we already have separate servers from EU. Why the need for IP addresses?

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Actually I am the perfect example of why using IP addresses instead of just the server location is a good thing.

I am American. My account is on the American servers. I was in Seattle when I started my account. However, I am currently living in Germany with my lovely (native German) wife and our two sons.

So yes. Putting advertisements for products that I cannot purchase would be a great way for advertisers to waste their money.

Also, I know for a fact that there are players on the American servers that do not live in America, and some of them have never even been to America. So posting ads for American products on their computers wouldn't be all that smart either.