Tenzhi

The first pic has a skunk about to murder a stuffed toy.

The second pic has a surfeit of skunks about to murder a woman.

The third pic is of a skunk who has eaten the family cat right out of its litterbox.

Cute.

That's only a good idea if there's enough content to support it. You can disagree with that all you like, but it's the nature of the beast.

It's not clear at all. All the 'gating' accomplished was getting people to focus briefly on that single method that they made available. It didn't slow them down at all - if anything, the mass focus speeds up the process. At best, it prevented a few people with prodigious thread stores from unlocking the slot via thread conversion. Whoopti-doo. Way to go. A few more people had to farm the single avenue to the extraneous new XP a couple of times.

It's terrible to tune into a cockfight and get more than you bargain for...

Indeed. Ferrets still stink afterward. I've not encountered a domestic skunk. Hedgehogs are cute, though, if a bit timid.

More likely: Wesley Crusher.

Nope. He got beat by Gandalf the Grey, Gandalf the White, Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight, Benito Mussolini, The Blue Meanie, Cowboy Curtis, Jambi the Genie, Robocop, Terminator, Captain Kirk, Darth Vader, Lo Pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger, Bill S. Preston esq. III, Ted "Theodore" Logan, Spock, The Rock, Doctor Octopus, Hulk Hogan, and Mr. Rogers.

That and Bruce Campbell's cameos were all I consistently liked about Raimi's Spider-Man movies.

And both God and the Devil were scared enough of Lobo to make him effectively immortal.

"Ah, Mssr. Hastings, it would seem zat ze little grey cells, zey are failing me..."

I was just watching episodes of that on Netflix this morning.

That there's already been duplicates within this relatively minuscule sample exemplifies the difficulties an individual can run into. Difficulties that only increase with population, and which are magnified by how difficult it may be for an individual to come up with a name they like in the first place (a process which, as illustrated by the first post, may baffle someone for months or even years).

There's a fair number of suggestions here already. When I saw yours, I had to go back and triple check that I didn't duplicate any myself using Find.

Good to know that it's free. I'm afraid I wasn't logged in to check when I suggested it.

Conversely, you shouldn't automatically make changes just to satisfy a few people.

I didn't mention any specific changes. I would say that those are changes that probably wouldn't move the pay-line. I would say the same about making slotted IOs act as basic enhancements (no set bonuses, special IO bonuses, or procs) for Premiums without access to IOs.

When you make the changes to satisfy those could-be-satisfied-if people, you move a group of people who were more unsatisfied into a could-be-satisfied-if position. That group will ALWAYS exist. You cannot satisfy everyone.

Worse than that, you could create a new group of were-satisfied-until people with such changes.

So, when an "inch" is given and people continue to complain/leave you wouldn't justify more "inches" with the same reasoning?

It's rather impossible to eliminate such losses. But they can be mitigated. The only question is how much to sacrifice for such mitigation.

Where did I say you did?

Reducing the IOs in effectiveness is a novel idea that I could get behind, but it only partially addresses the complaints people put forward about them. Others will still complain that their characters aren't what they ought to be. If we keep giving inches to keep these folks around, eventually we'll have given a whole mile. Thus, the reasoning that we should give them that inch just to keep them around is inherently flawed. There may be a good reason to do so, but that isn't it.

Keeping them around by cutting down on what they may feel compelled to spend money on is a battle that ultimately ends either in being fully free or else having this same debate centred around a different pay-line-of-demarcation. The line has to be drawn somewhere if it's to be drawn at all, and wherever it's drawn not everyone will be satisfied with it.