TonyV

When I try, I get:

"Payment could not be accepted for your order."

Then:

"Product distribution failed"

I tried typing in a bogus password to make sure it wasn't just an account validation problem, and I got a different error, "Your NCsoft Master Account password was not verified," so it's not a password problem. I'm getting the "Confirm This Payment" box with the product description and price, and my credit card on file is the same one I use to pay for my game account, and it's still valid and not expired.

Also, there's no option in the online store to buy just one slot for $5.99, only two for $9.99 or five for $19.99.

The second issue at hand here is that a reporter named Ramon Antonio Vargas from the New Orleans Times-Picayune picked up this paper and ran a story on it. In the process, he changed the purpose of what happened from research (even if you feel it is dubious to call it that) to a story designed to represent the City of Heroes community to the outside world.

I feel that the story that he wrote reflects extremely poorly on the community, as if we're all somewhere on the spectrum between a bunch of high school conformists and fringe psychotics firing off death threats over a game.

Mr. Vargas completely ignores the fact that this research was conducted to present a negative aspect of the game. To me, this is like someone conducting some research on how modern medical advances have put snake oil salesmen out of business, and then a reporter follows up later with an article about how devastating the development of antibiotics has been on so many livelihoods and families. Are we really supposed to feel sorry for the snake oil salesmen?

The first impression we get of City of Heroes players come in the fourth paragraph of the story in which Syphris tells Myers, "If you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding." (See my earlier post about how this is misrepresented as a death threat.) Nowhere in the article are the positive aspects of the community (see my earlier post about the Taxibots, PCSAR, etc.) reflected. In the effort to make us sound as bat[censored] crazy as possible, only the worst quotes are pulled, completely out of context, for the story.

I found the following quote equally telling:
[ QUOTE ]
"[Myers] believes it proved that, even in a 21st century digital fantasyland, an ugly side of real-world human nature pervades, a side that oppresses strangers whose behavior strays from that of the mainstream."

[/ QUOTE ]
Although I believe that Myers's intent is to portray social reaction to deviating from the social norm as negative, nowhere in Myers's paper does he explicitly make that judgment. Apparently for the article, that is exactly what he admits.

There are also several other misrepresentations and inaccuracies in the article, such as:
- Stating that PvP battles "are designed to distinguish the most skilled players." Talking about who is most skilled is extremely subjective, and given that most people don't engage in PvP, I think it grossly misrepresents the emphasis (or lack thereof) of "cred" that players put on skillful PvP players.
- It completely ignores that Myers was using a game mechanic that is widely thought of as not skillful and even "cheap" to defeat other players.
- It completely ignores that unlike a genre such as first-person shooters, the goal of an MMORPG is the social experience, not so much "winning."
- It implies that Myers's study started in 2004 when the game came out, when in fact, it lasted roughly from December 2006 through March 2008.
- It implies that Myers simply fought battles. It says, "He took his character to the virtual war zone and set out to simply battle villains." It completely ignores that in reality, he instigated these battles, effectively "goading" players into treating him negatively.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about the article, though, is its gaping omission of anyone representing an alternate viewpoint. Mr. Vargas could have come here and posted a message asking for more information from those who the article is condemning. The only attempt that I can find to do so is a request for comment from NCsoft regarding banning a player that didn't receive a response, which is clearly part of the company's policy. Hell, I wish that I had had a chance to talk to him and respond to Myers's comments.

At any rate, I plan on writing to Mr. Vargas and possibly the editor as well. I don't like it when City of Heroes is portrayed negatively in the mainstream media, and I especially don't like it when I feel that it is so grossly one-sided and misrepresentative of the community. I hope that at some point, Mr. Vargas and/or the Times-Picayune will present an alternative viewpoint and show the positive aspects of the City of Heroes community.

Okay, here's the thing. As I see it, there are two issues at hand here.

The first is David Myers's ("Twixt's") actions in the game and his resulting "research." I took some time this morning and actually read his paper, the entire 22 pages, plus footnotes. If you don't mind getting past the first three and a half pages of psychobabble, it's actually an interesting read, and you can see for yourself--in Myers's own words--his take on what happened and why.

In some ways, I feel it actually compliments the City of Heroes community. One theme I see repeated over and over is that when when a player breaks the social norms of the game, even when they are following "the letter of the law, as it were" (p. 4), that character and indeed the player suffer repercussions such as ostracism and various degrees of criticism.

To me, this isn't a bad thing, it is exactly as it should be. There is no possible way that the developers will ever be able to make people play 100% like they're "supposed" to. To a large degree, we as a community self-regulate what is and isn't acceptable. Even if someone is being an a-hole but still not breaking any rules, they will be punished. Hopefully, that encourages people from not being a-holes, and without that social norm in place, we'd have a hell of a lot more a-holes in the game.

Or, as Myers put it in his paper:
[ QUOTE ]
...if game rules pose some threat to social order, these rules are simply ignored. And further, if some player -- like Twixt -- decides to explore those rules fully, then that player is shunned, silenced, and, if at all possible, expelled. (p. 19)

[/ QUOTE ]
Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't that a good thing? That if some twit (oops, forgot the "x") decides that he's going to take advantage of a game mechanic that allows him to consistently defeat enemies with very little effort or skill, and he is asked to stop because it is interfering with the larger community's fun, and if the developers and/or moderators are unwilling to address the issue, should we simply have no recourse and be resigned to allow the game to suffer for it?

Now, I've always been one to argue that short of outright cheating, pretty much anything done in a PvP zone is fair game, and I still maintain that. Still, I do acknowledge that this is a game, and as such and in spite of the backstory and MO of our characters doing what they do, the end goal is for us all to have fun, or at least as many of us that can to do so.

So yes, characters such as Twixt (and their associated players) do indeed have the right to do what was done. However, I also firmly believe that in the interest of my own fun and for the benefit of the larger community, I have the right to react to characters such as Twixt (and their associated players) by doing things such as petitioning him if I believe he is breaking more than just social rules, thwarting his efforts to break social norms, and if necessary, avoid him altogether. And I guess that's really the bottom line.

Myers says, "Indeed, the strong, negative, and increasingly emotional reactions to Twixt’s behavior were almost always focused on preserving beneficent social communities and friendships in blatant disregard of game rules." (p. 19) To me, that's actually highly complimentary of the City of Heroes community.

However...

The problem is that as I'm reading Myers's paper, it seems that he is representing this social quality of the game as a negative aspect of it. Part of me thinks that it is because he had grown tired of the game. At one point, he says:
[ QUOTE ]
The main pathway to success in CoH/V -- and, in fact, in all established MMORPGs -- is a rather dreary and, once successfully completed, very repetitive grind: defeating the game’s npc’s over and over again. CoH/V’s most dedicated players had well-established routines for advancing their multiple characters (alternates or "alts") through the game’s leveling process. In CoH/V, these routines consisted of "farming" certain missions and activities that were considered either particularly easy or particularly rewarding or, preferably, both. (p. 8)

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm reading two things into this. First, in an indirect way, he is actually acknowledging that the primary fun in City of Heroes is the social experience, not the repetitive game mechanics, and I completely agree with that. Second, though, is that he simply doesn't like the game any more. This could have been a deciding factor in his decision to go scorched-earth on us, and at some point, he probably figured that he might as well get an academic paper out of it.

At any rate, I feel like he grossly misrepresents the City of Heroes community. While he writes with the pretense of of exploring what happens when one deviates from the social norm of the game, he focuses exclusively on what happens when one deviates negatively. He simply ignores positive deviations.

Nowhere in his paper did I see mention of groups like the Taxibots, who do not focus on the advancement of their own characters, but whose self-stated goal is "to help the heroes in many different ways to provide for an easier, more fun experience," or the Paragon City Search and Rescue, whose mission is to "perform Heal/Rez patrols throughout the city and forego leveling, missions and XP altogether while on duty," or even individuals such as LunarDivine ("Paragon Hero Neos"), who simply gives out stuff to anyone who passes by and asks. These are deviations from the social norm too, but they are completely ignored.

As such, I take serious issue with the premise of the paper, "Play and Punishment," insinuating that deviation from the norm is always necessarily negative.

Also, I seriously take issue with the extent to which he represents the negativity. He presents chat lines and forum posts as if they are representative of the entire community of City of Heroes players. Personally, I think the guy has a bit of an ego problem in thinking that while he was in a zone, all attention was focused exclusively on him. While he undoubtedly commanded some attention, what you don't see represented in the paper is the number of people who simply ignored him, who went about their own business, who engaged him on the level he was seeking--as a villain working to defeat a hero--without the necessary "trash talk" and such. Instead, all you see are the extreme cases of people calling him names, and the one of someone who allegedly sent a death threat.

Speaking of which, I hate to burst his bubble, but I have a really hard time interpreting "if you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding" (p. 13) as a "death threat." For one thing, hopefully everyone knows that unless you deliberately reveal your personal information, the player who said that has absolutely no means by which to carry out such a threat. For another, "for real" can be interpreted simply to mean that the player intended on going and getting some friends to more diligently attack "Twixt," much the same way one might tell a coworker, "If you screw up that report one more time, I'm going to come over there and knock the [censored] out of you for real," without literally meaning that you're going to physically assault them. (Although I still suggest against using such words against coworkers, as I suggest telling people in the game that you're going to kill them "for real," because of the potential for misinterpretation...) I don't know Syphris and Myers conveniently left out the entire context of the comment, so I cannot say for certain what he meant, but as I said, based only on what was written, I don't see this as a death threat.

So in short, reading Myers's paper, I feel that:
- It was written from a non-scientific (arguably non-academic) non-objective standpoint,
- It presents observations in a much more negative context than that in which they took place,
- It does not fully explore the subject of social reaction to deviation from social norms,
- It ignores data that is contrary to the premise of the paper, that the vast majority of players had no interest in "punishing" his character.

But hang on, I'm not done yet, I have another post coming about that second issue I see here...

Maybe he meant these? I can't imagine someone who kicks another person for not knowing about them, though. It's not like they're universally known about, and it's not like not knowing about them is some kind of problem...

I know area codes and zip codes, does that count? No, it sounds to me like you found one of the weirdos.

Here's a full list of them, it's fun to poke around and see what happens.

Done! See, now that wasn't so bad, was it?

Hey all, I'm allocating some more space on our main web volume to move of the Titan Network sites over to the wiki server. To do so, I have to restart the server, so the Paragon Wiki is going to be down for 10 or 15 minutes.

Don't panic, it's all just normal shtuff.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
They changed the screenshot filename format from this:

screenshot_2009-06-30-00-00-00.jpg
screenshot_yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss.jpg

to this:

screenshot_090630-00-00-00.jpg
screenshot_yymmdd-hh-mm-ss.jpg

[/ QUOTE ]
I actually specifically suggested this in my TonyV's consolidated list of QoL improvements thread. Do I get a cookie?

Edit: Ack, I think I'm totally out of it today. I see what you're talking about now. Yeah, the shorter filenames are better.

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, I don't see the point of the change at all. :P The only change it did was crunch the year, month, and day together. Unlike what your other thread said, they already were sorted chronologically. Also, old screenshots were not retroactively changed. That's how I noticed the change in the first place.

I think I like the old filename because they were easier to read.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, I think I must have been on drugs. It's not the screenshots that I wanted changed, they're already sorted appropriately, with the year, then month, then day, then hour, minute, and second. That way, they sort into chronological order. The crunching of the date is kind of cool, in that the filename is kind of shorter now, and when I timestamp files, I usually name them yyyymmdd.hhmmss.[filename], with hh in 24-hour time.

It's the chat logs that I wish they would do this for. Right now, they're in the format of:
chatlog mm-dd-yyyy.txt

And I wish they were instead in the format of:
chatlog yyyymmdd.txt

Curious how they changed one but not the other!

[ QUOTE ]
They changed the screenshot filename format from this:

screenshot_2009-06-30-00-00-00.jpg
screenshot_yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss.jpg

to this:

screenshot_090630-00-00-00.jpg
screenshot_yymmdd-hh-mm-ss.jpg

[/ QUOTE ]
I actually specifically suggested this in my TonyV's consolidated list of QoL improvements thread. Do I get a cookie?

Edit: Ack, I think I'm totally out of it today. I see what you're talking about now. Yeah, the shorter filenames are better.

[ QUOTE ]

<ul type="square">[*] Change the timestamp scheme of screenshots from MM-DD-YYYY to YYYY-MM-DD so that they sort in chronological order.[/list]
[/ QUOTE ]

Sweetness, this was not only implemented, but I noticed that it was made retroactive! All of the old screenshots in my City of Heroes/screenshots folder were renamed to the new standard.

Nice job, devs!

Does this mean that you're working your way from the bottom of the list to the top? Toggling full screen/windowed mode and kicking offline task force members, here we come!

&lt;QR&gt;

I tend to not really care what gender is on the other side of a character. Sure, I have my suspicions sometimes, but really, it doesn't matter. All I care about is whether the character I'm interacting with is interesting, and both males and females can play interesting males and females. (And unfortunately, vice versa, too.)

I mean, I grew up on comics, and I don't think I ever once said to myself, "Hey, that's a guy that drew and wrote the story for Wonder Woman/Rogue/Supergirl/[whoemver]. How weird!" Yet for some weird reason, some people seem to have a hangup about people doing it here. That's what I find weird.

[ QUOTE ]
I'll be going fuchsia.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ten points for spelling it right! (Twenty if you can convince me that you didn't look it up or use a spell checker.)

I ask people how to spell fuchsia sometimes just because I know that no one really knows. I have yet to run across anyone who can spell it correctly on the fly. Another fun one to sting people with (well, people who aren't from there) is to ask them how to spell the name of the country "Philippines."

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And why would dated graphic force a CoX2?

Eve Online updated there graphic significantly at one point (raising there min. requirements). They eventually depreciated the classic version and basically required everyone to go to the new engine. Same game, not EVE 2.0.

Changing your entire graphic engine in no way what so ever requires a 2.0 version of your game.

[/ QUOTE ]And Paragon has been updating CoX's engine, piece at a time. There's also a rumor that Going Rogue will include a major overhaul of the graphics engine.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is what I have been saying.

Keep in mind that graphics aren't communicated between the servers and the clients (except when processing game updates), only commands. So for example, the server never says, "draw these pixels there," it says, "Mr. Foomonkey moved to that spot and attacked the Fifth Column," and it's up to the client to show that action to you.

There is nothing, other than developing it, to stop them from distributing a client with upgraded graphics and capabilities to everyone who pays for an expansion, and leaving the old client in place for those who don't. The only thing that would be needed is incremental updates to the old client to render new commands, and really, they wouldn't have to do that with non-game affecting commands.

For example, if they wanted power customization to be part of the new client, they could simply update the "Mr. Foomonkey shoots flares at the Kraken" to "Mr. Foomonkey shoots blue flares at the Kraken." The old client could continue to render it exactly the same as it always has, ignoring the extra qualifier. The new client could pick up on it and render the flames in blue instead of the normal red. (But this is only an example; power customization is being rolled out to the existing client!) Also, the new areas accessed by the new client wouldn't have to be retrofitted into the old client, because only the people with the expansion would be able to access them. The new client would send a command like, "Load Praetorian Tyrant Park," but the old client would send a command like, "Display 'You cannot enter' message."

They haven't officially announced a graphical update to the game yet, but from some of the things that have been said about staying competitive with the new games coming out, I am inferring it. Please note that as such, I could be totally off the mark, and don't send me angry letters if I'm wrong. If I'm right, though, you owe me a dollar.

Hey there and welcome! I'll go ahead and throw in a pitch for Johnny and Belle and the other Taxibots and say that if you find yourself Infinity-ward, be sure to seek out those who have Taxi in their name. (Johnny Taxibot and Taxibot Belle lead the group.) They are a service-oriented group who like to help out new heroes, answer questions, and just be all-around helpful as they can. They also hold several events that are new player-friendly (or even veteran player, but new to some events), with a low-key, don't-blame-people attitude that makes teaming with them pretty fun.

Definitely drop by the Paragon Wiki, we try hard to make sure it is easy to understand and has all of the information (and way more) that any player could want. Also drop by the Titan Network at some point, with a bunch of sites and utilities (including the Paragon Wiki) to make your game experience more fun.

One small word of advice, like all forums, this one usually reacts very negatively to negative comments. If you do have questions, do ask, but please avoid couching complaints in the form of a question unless you're willing to be flamed for it. If you do have complaints or suggestions, there is a "Suggestions and Ideas" forum a few below this one, and until you get a feel from some of the stuff that is asked all the time, you might want to mention in such posts, "I'm new, and I don't really like x," or "I'm new, and I think they should change y." That might head off some of the "this is zillionth time this has been brought up!" replies.

I think he's referring to the ParagonWeekly! blog.

Quick suggestion: If you do write a player guide for it, post it in the wiki in addition to the forum with the tag
[[Category:Player Guides]]
at the bottom.

Some advantages of posting it in the wiki are:
<ul type="square">[*]You don't have to personally maintain it, as anyone can edit it to add information if something changes (e.g. new badges)[*]It will be there permanently, whereas the CoH forums might get wiped. (Granted, I think the Player Guides forum is one that is set to never be pruned, but I'm always a little skeptical...)[*]It won't be "buried." People searching for day job information will see your guide in the search results. How far up or down in the list it appears will depend on how relevant it is, not on how long it's been since you posted it.[*]Perhaps best of all, it can always be edited, whereas a post in the player forums can only be edited within a day or two of your post. (Although that might change in the near future, with the migration to vBulletin, but I'm not sure.)[/list]
Anyway, something to consider. We have a bunch of player guides out there already, and we could always use more! The [[Category:Player Guides]] tag will ensure that your guide shows up in the category list.

Click on Powers above your powers tray, then at the top of that window, there's another option to see the real numbers. (I can't remember what the exact wording is, but it's a submenu option at the top of your powers window.)

Belle actually put this on the Taxibots calendar and I noticed it this morning. Happy birthday, man.

I'm betting on two pins on the LPT port being shorted. I always did like the long odds.

First of all, to relieve the suspense, this is NOT a good-bye thread. I'm not leaving, so put away those party hats!

However, I am in the process of moving sites around and consolidating stuff. Call it a little bit of late "spring cleaning," if you will. I had several smaller sites on DreamHost on a shared hosting account. Over the course of cleaning stuff up, I was left with one final site hosted on my DreamHost account, the Paragon City Free Press site. It's kind of appropriate in a "full circle" kind of way, in that the PCFP is the first City of Heroes fan site that I hosted, and it's the last to be moved off of DreamHost. Today, I moved it over to the VPS that hosts the Paragon Wiki and closed my DreamHost account. The PCFP site isn't gone, I'll still host it on the new server in all of its dormant glory.

Nevertheless, I have been using the e-mail address tonyv@pcfreepress.com, an address that forwards to my personal account, for ages now as my primary City of Heroes-related contact e-mail address. I've set up a temporary forwarder on my name registrar so that I'll keep getting mail at that address for a little while longer.

Still, with the site in a dormant state and with the added responsibilities I've taken on over the years with the Paragon Wiki and now the Titan Network, I feel it's time to move to an address that's easier to remember and that better represents where I am and what I'm doing today, not five years ago. Therefore, I'd like for all further e-mail correspondence to be sent to my Titan Network e-mail address, which is:

(Drum roll please...)

tonyv@cohtitan.com

It still goes through Gmail, which I'm convinced has the best damn spam filter on the planet, which is why I've never been too terribly afraid of publishing my e-mail address out in the open sans javascript tricks to obscure it and such. I check this account at least once a day, most of the time even more often. If you ever have any issues with the Paragon Wiki, Ouroboros Portal, or Titan Networks sites that you want to contact me personally about, by all means, drop me a line. (And really, if you just want to write to whine about how obnoxious I am, I don't even care if you do that, either. )

I've already updated my address here on the forums and on my PlayNC account as well.

Anyway, so long, pcfreepress.com e-mail address, we sure did do a lot together. Who knows, maybe someday we'll meet again!

I think that this is one just messing with us...

Good luck, and we'll catch you later. Watch out for bees.

That oughtta do it. Let me know if you have any problems!

Hey all, I'm going to take the Paragon Wiki down for a little while to upgrade it and some of its extensions to the latest and greatest versions. I suspect that it will be down approximately one hour, until 23:20 ET tonight (June 27). Sorry for the inconvenience, but hey, at least you know we're still keeping it up-to-date!

It's in read-only mode right now, so if you're in the middle of making edits, please hang on to your edits in Notepad or something for a while.

Following the Paragon Wiki upgrade, I'll be upgrading the Ouroboros Portal as well to keep them at the same rev level.