TonyV

Amen! Your post is actually refreshing in that it's an honest account of things you find frustrating, confusing, or disappointing. Many are the posters who come back saying basically, "You have screwed us all over, the game is miserable, the devs are idiots, and you OWE us a better game, even though we aren't paying anything!"

Those get derided, ignored, or deleted. Yours not only will likely not get any of those reactions, but might actually be talked about in meetings at Paragon Studios as a data point for the experience of premium players returning.

Sure they can! They can provide adequate information so that normal people understand what it is they're getting and how it works. There's not a black-and-white line that separates "that's okay" from "that's vague," but in my opinion, in this particular case, there's enough of a gray area that Customer Service should do something to make right by it.

Part of that "do something" is, as Zwillinger indicated, making it more clear how things work, and when you're about to do something that has permanent consequences. That's all fine and good, and it's highly needed. However, it doesn't change the fact that if that's all they do, this particular user was hosed out of something because it wasn't clear enough to begin with. That's why I feel that the "do something" should also entail transferring the thingamabob for him.

It's my understanding and belief that this is an extraordinarily easy thing for them to do, just click a few buttons or type a few words, and it's done. The hard part, I would think, is getting approval to bypass whatever safeguards, whether technical or administrative, that are in place that keep unscrupulous people from transferring virtual goods all willy-nilly. Still, I don't think it's that big a deal. Get someone to sign off on it and make it happen, problem solved, loyal customer happy, CS people praised publicly, everyone wins.

Seeing these two posts consecutively amused me.

Well, when you did comment on her, you opened up the door. If you had just let it go, this thread probably would have been a lot more about your OP, I'm just sayin'. You kinda threadjacked your own post.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe you're wrong? That there's not really anything wrong with her posts? That you need to stop trying to do the moderators' job for them? If it were offensive, that would be one thing, but to report someone multiple times for posts that are just mildly annoying is probably bugging the moderators more than endearing them to your cause.

No, the nicest way is to simply ignore it. There was no need to reply at all. Your little snarky reply was totally uncalled for, totally unjustified, and really, about 100 times more non-constructive than her post was.

Look, I don't know what your beef with Golden Girl is. I thought her post was funny, and most of her posts are pretty good. It's certainly not the quantity or quality of her posts, not really, because there are a lot more here that have been a lot worse than she has. Whatever it is, you need to just let it go. At worst, she's not hurting anyone. At best, she is clever and amusing. All that aside though, if you're just plain determined to grind your ax on her, you need to figure out some other way to do it that doesn't make you come off sounding like a total richard.

If she posts some kind of threat, or a personal attack, or something along those lines, I'd be 100% behind you. But this? Really? This is what you're all worked up about? Let it go, man.

That's mighty nice, but I really hope you guys will go further and actually transfer the thing for him.

1) He (presumably) hasn't used it yet. It's not like he is looking to screw the system over or get something for nothing. He has not benefited at all from this mistake, and until he actually consumes it, there is nothing lost by transferring it.

2) Lycantropus has been a member for what appears to be a really long time. It sounds like he's earned a little bit of leeway beyond a copy-and-paste response basically boiling down to, "Sorry, but hey, at least you learned something."

3) I know you guys are busy, I really, really, really do. And I respect you for it. There's no telling how many hours you put in every day, and I know that piling one more thing on top of that would really suck. Nevertheless, this sounds like something that would be trivially easy to do. Granted, I don't know what tools are available to accomplish such tasks, but surely, surely the back-end tools exist to override (with permission, of course!) the safeguards and manually bump the number of an item on one character up by one and the number of an item on another character down by one. I've just gotta think this wouldn't take more than two or three minutes, maybe six if you count the time it takes to explain the situation to any appropriate manager to get approval to do it.

4) Even if the floodgates open and other people start expecting you to do this, I can't imagine that it's a situation that happens very often. Even if it is, I have to agree with Lycantropus that it's very not obvious that you're making an irrevocable decision in claiming this item that, unlike damn near everything else in that list, cannot be traded to another character on your account, no how, no way. I just think it kinda sucks if he ends up paying the price--literally!--for this subtle shift in functionality.

So how about it, guys? No harm, no foul, can't you make an exception for this one? You know I'm on your side, but this one sounds like it's worth pushing up the chain to get done.

If nothing else, even if it's just simply impossible to pull off, at the very least, how about throwing a bunch of free Super Packs or even Paragon Points his way just to say, "We're not admitting we're doing anything wrong, but we also want to make you happy."?

Are you new here? Do you or don't you want to have a discussion about your topic? And by "discussion," I don't mean, "every post up to Dark Energon's inscrutable standard of 'constructive'." Do you think that we're out here now thinking, "Wow, ol' Dark sure told her!"? (Hint: we're not.)

But... But... Friday activities! Change your flight! Eat beans and rice! You can be home any time you want! Um... Except the week before, and the week after, but still!

Who said he's going to lose?

According to my imaging software, it is actually 55,661 unique colors.

I understand this viewpoint, but count me in the camp that thinks they should be offered on the Paragon store. Here is my rationale:

1) It has been exclusive for six or seven years. I just feel there's enough precedent to establish that "exclusive" always has an implicit "...for a long time" behind it, and there has been plenty enough time passed that those who bought the Collector's Edition have gotten their money's worth of exclusivity.

2) We're not talking about giving the stuff away for free. People will still be having to pay for it, either through direct purchase of Paragon Points or through the monthly VIP subscription fee that grants them the Paragon Points stipend. So you would still be upholding the "we won't give away for free something people have had to pay for" philosophy.

3) As you mentioned, buying the Collector's Edition has not been the exclusive way to get the in-game goodies that came with it. The stuff in it was repackaged later and sold as "Hero Gear" kits.

4) I feel that by not offering the items on the Paragon Store, you are indirectly allowing an even worse option, which is people selling them through a secondary market such as eBay. Some people buying them there are bound to get ripped off, and as has been mentioned earlier in this thread, some people are grossly overpaying for the items based on an artificial scarcity that can easily be remedied.




Here's what I propose. Feel free to ignore or take into consideration as little or as much as you want.

The in-game exclusive items from the CoH Collector's Edition should be bundled into one package and sold on the Paragon Market. Buying the items separately shouldn't be an option. I know some people might not like it, but I do agree that allowing someone to simply buy the VIP badge isn't very cool. Also, it's not like you could buy bits and pieces of the Collector's Edition or Hero Gear kit before, so while some may complain about, "I just want the cape and you're making me buy a stupid badge that I don't want!", in reality, what they're paying for is the entire kit--just as those who bought it originally did.

The original Hero Gear Kit sold for US$20. Translating that to Paragon Points, that should make it 1,600 points. However, I honestly think that would be a bit high and cause undue outrage for a very, very few in-game items. As a reasonable compromise, I think it would be worth it to split the price in half, and consider $10 of the $20 to have been for the physical swag. I think a fair and reasonable price for the cape, prestige power slide, and VIP/Destined One badge would be 800 Paragon Points.

The City of Villains Collector's Edition only came with a couple of chest emblems. I think a fair price for it would be 400 Paragon Points. I can't remember the difference in price between CoV and CoV:CE; I think it was around $20. But CoV:CE focused more on physical swag than in-game items, with seven HeroClix and an art book. The difference in Paragon Points between the CoH:CE and CoV:CE in-game items reflects that difference.

Undoubtedly, there are a very few people who would yell about having to pay $X on eBay for the items and now they're being sold for $10. Still, I think there would a lot more people who are delighted to have access to stuff that they might not even have known about back when it was released to retail. Plus, like I said, I think it would behoove Paragon Studios to help people who might want the items in the future avoid having to pay exorbitant amounts for it (money, I have to point out, that NCsoft/Paragon Studios get exactly $0.00 of) and risk getting ripped off in the process.

That would totally suck. How are we supposed to celebrate the anniversary of the I22 release? Celebrate on the 28th? Celebrate on March 1? Only celebrate every four years? They need to think of these things.

P. S. Golden Girl is awesome.

I honestly don't know. I think so, maybe. Honestly, I think that it will take them a little more time before they grasp specific strategies like that. I mean, I'm not convinced that they even saw the Cleansing Flame, it is a tiny little thing that you really have to watch for. Even if they did, I'm not sure they processed what I was saying well enough to realize that they need to quickly switch their targets back and forth. But at any rate, I honestly don't think that me using team inspirations detracted from their experience or caused some bad habit to be formed, and I was happy to make it through a task force that I was kind of questionable about with something I honestly just considered a minor little perk that I wasn't sure when I was going to use.

You seem to be under the false impression that I just clicked a few buttons and *poof!* we were done. We still had to fight the battle.

The team inspirations merely took a situation in which we were at a severe disadvantage due to our team leader leaving (leaving us shorthanded) and half of our team being very inexperienced and turned it to our favor. It wasn't "pay-to-win." It was pay-to-have-a-decent-chance. It took something that was a bit frustrating due to things beyond our control and turned it fun. Also, it's not like I popped them and though, "That's it, we've got this one wrapped up." It crossed my mind more than once that we might still have failed. We didn't defeat that Cleansing Flame with a ton of time to spare, and if it had healed Positron back up to full, it could have cost us the task force.

But thanks in part to the inspirations, that didn't happen, and we succeeded, and a likely futile faceplantfest was turned into a pretty exciting battle. Even if we had failed, I still would have been pleased, because either way, we had tried and lost, lessons learned, and I felt like I was helping to give my team its best chance of trying again and winning. It was fun.

Yes, you could go overboard with it. There's nothing stopping you from spending $1000 in the store, stocking up on large team dual inspirations, and popping them willy-nilly to the point where your team would never lose at anything. Truth be known, if I teamed up with someone who did that, I probably wouldn't team with them again because 1) I like some challenge in what I'm doing, and 2) it would bother me in a cosmic sense that someone is wasting that much money on something so frivolous. Luckily, I don't think anyone has really done that kind of thing.

These inspirations were meant, in my opinion, precisely for the purpose for which I used them: To turn something that was mildly frustrating and a little bit discouraging into something fun.

So yeah, in spite of the rain on this parade, I'm going to have to whip out my brella.

Now to be fair, I think that three of the people were relatively new and still getting used to the game. Only one seemed to be pretty experienced. I definitely wouldn't call them stupid, just kind of green. And unlike a lot of people, I actually like these kinds of task forces where we don't just walk-through-the-park everything to death. Those are boring, this one was different and interesting.