TonyV

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Why can't people simply disagree with an idea w/o bashing the OP? Just say, I disagree and this is why instead of "you fail miserably..." This is ridiculous..."

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Because the OP didn't post a message saying, "I disagree with anti-power-levelers, and here's why." He deliberately posted an inflammatory message that totally misses the mark of the argument. It was a troll post, plain and simple, done for the express purpose of prolonging the bickering.

The way some in here are treating it like real satire just shows that they don't know what satire is. And reading the OP's follow-up comments, it's pretty clear to me that he doesn't even understand the other side's views, which is why his post doesn't really make sense in any context, satirical or not.

I feel like he posted a message saying something as stupid as, "Anti-power-levelers like to drink turpentine!" And now a bunch of people are standing around congratulating him on how insightful and funny that is. It's stupid, its only purpose is to elicit more ill will, it bears no relevance to the actual issue at hand, and is completely non-productive. I mean seriously, what exactly do you expect? "No, we don't drink turpentine"? It's a facetious claim, which makes it really kind of insulting to dignify with a response.

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Great satire, but... what exactly are you satirizing? I must have missed the uproar about multiple characters per account that inspired this...

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actually this is a satire of anti-powerleveling. How some players selfishness is hurting the game, how you can't have fun powerleveling, how there is one proper way of playing.

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...But fails miserable at making a point. Having multiple characters in no way even vaguely relates to that which you're trying ot make fun of. Anyone who has watched Monty Python, a Peter Sellers movie, Back to the Future II, or any number of other television shows or movies is very well familiar with an actor (a role-player in the literal sense) portraying more than one character in a story. The ability for avatars to have a wide variation of physical appearances and the ability to portray each one differently makes games such as City of Heroes particularly suitable for role-playing.

In fact, the ability to portray different characters and sell it is the mark of a brilliant role-player, a skill to be admired. It's the people who play every single character exactly the same that tend to be less desirable to play with.

That's why the suggestion that everyone have just one character really comes off just as asinine to the role-players in the game as it does the non-role-players. As pointed out, if this "satire" is attacking anything, it's people who are anti-alt, not anti-power-leveling. In fact, since most power-levelers use one or two characters to rake in the stuff they want, if anything, one could read this "satire" as anti-power-leveling itself.

But really, to me, it just comes off as silly.

Oh, and P.S., I don't think that anyone has ever claimed that there's "one proper way of playing." This is an absurd claim that every anti-power-leveler knows is BS, a strawman used to try to sway the ignorant. Anyone who says that pretty much loses all credibility in my book, because it says to me that they have no interest in having a reasonable discussion about the topic.

If you're going to attack a claim, attack the correct claim, which is that although there is no single "proper" way of playing, there are wrong ways of playing, ways that are detrimental to the fun of others and the long-term success of the game.

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*patpat*

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If only you had some, I don't know, song or something to go with that...

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Case in point: The devs admitted ED was the change they lost the most subs over.

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Clarification: Jack Emmert said that they lost subscriptions over Enhancement Diversification. And to be brutally honest, I think he got that impression by reading the forums, not actually looking at the numbers.

Because if you actually look at the numbers (courtesy of MMOGCHART.com, based on reported subscriber numbers in NCsoft quarterly reports), net subscribership actually went up at the time Enhancement Diversification hit, not down.

And, of course, whether some people left or not is completely irrelevant. You're thinking short-term. The point of Enhancement Diversification was to allow for long-term balance of the game. Without it, I suspect there would be no PvP. In fact, without it, I question whether there'd be a game at all. I never let my subscription lapse, but I did stop playing the game for a few months way back before Enhancement Diversification hit because it was so excruciatingly boring. Without it, I suspect that a lot of people would have left a hell of a long time ago.

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They should remove ALL changes to the game that JACK thunk was a gud idear.

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So let's get this straight. You think they should just shut down the game then? 'Cause, you know, the whole "let's have a superhero-themed MMORPG" gud idear that JACK thunk of was a change from the Tolkien-themed 800-pound gorilla of MMORPGs out there.

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The only people who think the Forum Cartel is important is... themselves.

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B_I obviously thinks the Cartel is a big deal. All one has to do to confirm that little fact is read her posts and watch how often she uses the term to demonize anyone that disagrees with her.

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For what it's worth, we do have cliques here on the forums. I have actually been told before something like, "They've been here longer than you" (even though I've been here for years) about something not related to the history of the game. Also for what it's worth, they're not neatly divided by post count. Some of the coolest and most helpful people here have really high post counts. (I'm looking at you, Aett and Memphis_Bill.)

My post count is getting up there, and I vehemently disagree with many long-time posters here about some very fundamental things. If I ever get to the point where my title would be "Forum Cartel," I'll probably ask for it to be changed to something like "Wiki Guy," because I have to admit that I really don't like the way that title reinforces the stereotype that there's a real "cartel" here.

Can I have your—

Oh wait, never mind.

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If you can send a global tell to the person with that character name then you might get lucky, not sure, but good luck.

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This is what I'd do. Use the following to find out the global name of the person who has the character name:
/get_global_name Armored Saint

If they don't want to part with it, though, don't bug them about it. You don't want to be accused of harassment.

Sign up for the Taxibots task force on Saturdays. They usually have a good time.

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Eaten by the forum monster long ago, but this has been posted by the development team repeatedly. The dots on the server select screen do not denote population, they denote server load.

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I'll back that up. I distinctly remember a DOOOM thread in which someone noted that during a double XP weekend or something that most of the servers didn't get out of green. One of the devs posted a reply stating specifically that the dots represent load, not population, and that in reality, the population was higher than it had ever been. When they added server resources a little more than a year ago, they made it unlikely that any but the most populous servers during high-profile events will ever get out of green status. That thread was pruned a long time ago, so I doubt anyone will ever be able to dig it up.

I've had pretty good luck with Joomla!. (The exclamation point is part of the product name, not an indication of my unbridled excitement. I hate it when products do that. Same with the television show Jeopardy!. But I digress...)

It has a little bit of a steep learning curve, but certainly not insurmountable. Once you figure out their rationale and architecture, it becomes pretty easy to get around in. For forums, I'd suggest looking to Agora instead of Fireboard. Last time I checked, it looked like Fireboard was a dead project, or at least releases were very slow, including for major bugs.

My only complaints so far is that the back-end pretty much requires javascript, and the permissions system isn't very robust or customizable. Both of these are pretty minor, though.

I don't know of any CoH-specific modules, though, for Joomla! or any other CMS.

Hey all, especially developers who can make this happen. Instead of posting a whole bunch of threads with "I want this, I want that" in them, I've been collecting some QoL improvements that I'd like to see in one list. Today, I present this list to you for your consideration. Some may be harder than others, but I think that all of them are worthwhile. Please feel free to discuss, and I'll start working on my next list.

TonyV's Big List of QoL Improvements

<ul type="square">[*] Have rare recipes only come in increments of five, like normal recipes. Do away with non-multiples of five completely from the auction window.[*] List primary and secondary powersets in the team search window and supergroup window.[*] Add a "Looking for members" option to the search interface for team leaders.[*] Group salvage in storage bins by type and sort alphabetically within the types.[*] Sort badges alphabetically in the badge window, or at least badges that have no other logical order. (Defeats, gladiators, etc.)[*] List store value of items in the auction house and let people sell items there for that price.[*] Add option to set drop thresholds. (E.g. "I only want uncommon recipes and above, I only want level 2 or 3 inspirations.")[*] Have the installer open web links in a system's default browser instead of mandating IE.[*] Give everyone a Walk inherent power.[*] Have the music in Pocket D and within missions adjust to the music volume, not sound effects.[*] Add a game_time command that tells you what time it is in Paragon City.[*] Add an npc_stuck command that runs the /stuck code on spawned NPCs in an instanced mission. If you have to, limit its use to every ten minutes. Or hour. I don't care, but we really need it.[*] Allow us to gift items in the PlayNC store to other people. They'd make great prizes for contests and will earn you more money. I've also known people quit the game because of financial difficulties that I'd be more than willing to pay a month or two for, but that I don't particularly want to exchange personal information with.[*] At the very least, give us the option to get a serial code instead of applying to my account.[*] Change "Your supergroup's rent was due on (date)" to "Your base will go dark on (date)"[*] Add an option to autopay the base rent instead of having the base go dark. In fact, consider making this the default. No matter how stupid your SG leader is, the only time your supergroup base would go dark is if you literally don't have enough prestige in the bank.[*] Allow more than one person to use base crafting tables at the same time.[*] Allow coalition members to use a base's crafting tables, Ouroboros pillar, and storage vault.[*] Add the ability to quit to the login screen using the quit slash command.[*] Allow skipping the timer to quit to the login screen.[*] Reduce the time between costume changes to once every 10, 15, or even 20 seconds.[*] Add the ability to buy inspirations and enhancements from completed Ouroboros arc contacts.[*] Fix the Robo-surgery base item. (Did they fix this already? I honestly don't know.)[*] Suppress powers in auction houses.[*] Allow the team leader to kick offline task force members.[*] Allow us to switch from full screen mode to windowed mode and back without having to restart.[*] Change the timestamp scheme of screenshots from MM-DD-YYYY to YYYY-MM-DD so that they sort in chronological order.[/list]I'll hold off on the MA suggestions until I see what you tweak in Issue 15. I also have several pie-in-the-sky QoL suggestions (API to the database for external web sites, for example), but I've tried to keep the above list to things that are relatively simply and doable.

Thanks for your consideration!
--TonyV

Hey now, don't be dissin' Starflier's avatar, I think it's one of the coolest I've seen. Hey flier, did you make it yourself, or did someone else do it?

Hey all, some of you already know about this site, it's not exactly a secret or anything, but I wanted to post a more general announcement about it being live.

A while back, we started having discussions over at the Paragon Wiki about creating a new wiki to hold player-generated content, such as character backstories, supergroup pages, player info pages, and so on. After the Mission Architect, it also seems like a perfect place to put your mission storylines, kind of a player equivalent to the Paragon Wiki's mission description system.

We decided to call the site "The Ouroboros Portal." The intention is to convey the sense that it is a library of information about all things Paragon City that you won't find in the normal encyclopedias (i.e. the Paragon Wiki, which contains normal game information). Who better to maintain such a reference than those who have access to the space-time continuum? To help prevent typos, we shortened the official URL to:

OuroPortal.com

(If it helps to remember that it has a U in it, think of it as "Our O portal.com".)

Please note that like all wikis, everyone has access to edit your pages, so if you create, for example, a supergroup site, you don't have to personally maintain the entire thing yourself. It also means that there is potential for griefing. If that happens, let us know, and we'll determine what action, if appropriate, to take. If you click on "My Preferences" at the top after logging in, you can enter your e-mail address and then tag pages to be on your watchlist so that you're notified if any are updated.

As for the content of your pages, it's pretty much up to you. Here are some guidelines that might help:
<ul type="square">[*]As part of the Titan Network, like the Paragon Wiki, the Ouroboros Portal uses your Titan Key to log in. If you don't have one, register one for free. You don't need to create a separate account for the Ouroboros Portal.[*]Please note the Article Guidelines. We're a little more lenient with topics such as language and adult material than the forums here, but this is not an adult site. Think PG-13 here. No nude pictures, some strong language, some sexual content, but nothing too over the top. The administrators of the site (including me) reserve the right to delete anything we feel is inappropriate, but we'll try to err on the side of letting you have your space. Don't abuse it![*]Please be sure to always indicate which server(s) a character is on! One easy way to do this is to be sure to put a [[Category:Infinity Heroes]] (or whatever server your on) at the bottom of your page. If a character is on multiple servers, put one category tag for each server.[*]If a character page exists for someone on a different server for a character you want on there, do not delete their page. Instead, please see the Name Collisions article.[*]The Paragon Wiki and the Ouroboros Portal are linked in some cool ways. I'll discuss that more later, but for now, you can link to a Paragon Wiki article by putting "paragonwiki:" in front of an article name. For example, to link to the main page of the Paragon Wiki, include the tag [[paragonwiki:Main Page]]. If you want to use an image in the Paragon Wiki on your page, you don't have to do anything special, just use the tag that you'd use on the Paragon Wiki. (E.g. [[Image:Archetypeicon defender.png]])[*]If you're unfamiliar with wiki markup, check out the Paragon Wiki help page to point you to some good resources. If you have any questions, feel free to post a message on the Ouroboros Portal forum linked below.[/list]Please bear in mind that as a new site, we're working on processes and procedures to make it better. Bear with us, especially at first, as we try to nail things down and standardize ways to best server everyone. If you have any questions or problems, please drop by the Ouroboros Portal discussion forum.

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So it isn't just me? The same people which you referred to as "forumistas" are following me around agreeing with one another regardless of how idiotic it is? Hmmm.

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Yes. In fact, the entire Forum Cartel has made it their goal to drive you from the game by contradicting everything you say on the forums. And also cutting your brake lines.

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Hey that reminds me, I can't make the Forumites meeting this Thursday. If I could get a copy of the agenda Friday morning, I'd appreciate it.

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The more self-righteousness preaching I hear in these discussions, the more I want to powerlevel. Its having the opposite effect of the intended.

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The more you do stuff like this, the more noticeable it is, thus the more likely it is to be nerfed, thus the more you come here and whine about those awful devs and self-righteous preachers like me.

In the end, it all balances out, and I'm still happy. But hey, good luck with that.

Still, if the OP voluntarily discloses it, it would be cool of them to give him something for his honesty. Maybe a free upgrade or two. Just something to acknowledge, "That was cool of you to let us know instead of trying to exploit it."

I have never been, nor am I now, anti-Jack Emmert. In no way do I feel that not hating Jack is some slight against City of Heroes. And heh, I have to agree, it is a funny observation.

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Of course the only opinion that counts on the question "should Player X powerlevel" is that of Player X.

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Zzzzzt! You forgot a very important group of people whose opinion counts very much: the developers and suits at NCsoft and Paragon Studios.

If newbies PLing either 1) causes them to leave the game earlier than they would have otherwise, thus denying them of the long-term potential cash flow of their subscription fees, or 2) causes other players to leave the game, thus resulting in a net loss in fees, then it's just plain not going to happen.

"But... but... but..." Argue all you want, it wouldn't matter if you had ten thousand people lined up behind you agreeing with you. The devs and other managers who run this game aren't stupid. They didn't just fall off the MMORPG truck yesterday. They have their own facts that you're not privy to, their own market research to rely upon, and yeah, their own opinions and vision for what they feel would make the game the best it can be in the long run. If you think they're wrong, you're more than welcome to start your own game and make whatever ridiculous profits you envision a power leveling-friendly game will make.

And I'm not trying to tell you to shut up or anything. You're free to disagree as much as you want to. But it doesn't change a fundamental fact that I think that SOOOO many people miss here. Your $15 a month does not, in fact, make you a member of the board of directors. Does your opinion count? Within the confines of what the developers and managers of the game want, sure. Outside of it, not so much, actually.

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There is nothing wrong with a player being able to activate a filter to get e-mail from frends only, sg members only, etc.

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...Except that it doesn't solve any problems, and can only potentially cause others.

By the way, it's not illegal. According to the CAN-SPAM Act, the spam we receive from RMTers isn't legally defined as an e-mail under the act, so the law doesn't apply. It has to meet a specific set of criteria that defines spam e-mail as conventional e-mail.

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BTW - accounts that are "banned from sending e-mail" by the "spam" button in the e-mail window, are only "banned from sending e-mails" temporarily. Apparently, their accounts aren't even closed.

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RMT accounts are permanently banned.

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I don't want to log into the game to get a red e-mail - you have RMT spammer mail!!!! any more.

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(Lower-cased) Well, too bad. I'm not sure what else to say. Your lack of willingness to ignore red letters and/or take a few seconds during your play session to delete the spam in no way mandates the developers spend the time and effort to "fix" (i.e. not fix) a problem that most people really don't care about.

/em shrug...

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Let this be another lesson to anyone that confidently posts "never going to happen" in response to a suggestion they don't like.

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&lt;QR&gt;

I've seen several suggestions meet with the response that boils down to, "We'd like to do this, but we just don't have the resources right now," or "It's on the back burner," or "This would be really complicated, something we're not really looking at doing right now." A lot of people take this as a firm no. For most practical purposes, that's probably a good idea.

I mean, think about it. If four years ago one of the devs had said something like, "Yes, we'd like to do this, and eventually we'll allow it," the standards response on the forums would be to assume that it's in the immediate future. For years afterwards, until it's actually done, people would be pestering them with, "You said it was coming! Where is it!!?" Such is human nature.

At any rate, I can imagine several other projects that I think people have assumed are vaporware that might see the light of day. The City Vault, the Cathedral of Pain, power customization, just to name a few. But really, some folks really need to understand the concept of "when we get around to it."

Personally I think that some folks are even getting too worked up about the Going Rogue expansion, expecting it to be out around the same time or soon after Issue 15. I think that's not very likely, and the real time frame will be more along the lines of June or July 2010.

/unsigned

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I am so tired of email spam from random people, and adding them to spam list only frees up old spammers as my list is full.

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If you're actually clicking on the Spam button instead of the Delete button, then the accounts are banned. At that point, it doesn't matter whether or not they get bumped off your list; an account banned for RMT spam can never send you another e-mail anyway.

I will admit that it makes adding people who aren't RMT spammers to your ignore list hard, and they definitely need to address that. It can easily be fixed, though, if when they ban accounts they do a global remove of them from people's ignore lists. (In fact, it would be altogether nice if, when they ban an account for RMT spam, they automagically removed all other e-mails that account sent to other people's inboxes.)

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A friends only filter for emails should help, I been playing for 5 years and have used the email system probably less than 10 times, but I do grow weary of clearing my email of power level/ and influence selling emails.

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We all do, but:

1) It's not THAT bad of an irritation. Each session, it takes me less than 10 seconds to blow away the spam I've gotten. Sometimes I haven't gotten any at all. The most I've gotten is after two or three days of not playing, I'll have four or five piled up. Let's not make mountains out of molehills.

2) Implementing a feature like this will take them time and effort. Not just in development, but in QA testing and regression testing for all future changes. Plus, there's the not insignificant possibility that their change could cause bugs in other things. It's yet another moving part that could break, all to save people five to ten seconds per play session. It just ain't worth it.

3) Not to put too fine a point on it, we have too many options as it is. I'm sorry, but I simply don't agree with the "more options is always better!" crowd. If I were king of CoH development, I'd actually do away with a bunch of options we already have. Whenever I do want to change a setting, it sometimes takes me a couple of minutes just to find the durn thing, and I've been playing for five years.

4) It's something that would consume yet more resources server-side. Not many, but people already complain about the lag as it is. They need to focus on ways to make everything run faster, not slower.

5) If you don't use the e-mail system, there's a simple way around spam altogether: Simply don't read the e-mail. I know, those little red letters scream, "Read me!" I'm confident in your self-control, though.

6) Some people actually actively use the e-mail system. I e-mail people all the time to notify them of upcoming events, help them with macros or keybinds, or just say hello. Global tells are not a replacement for e-mail.

7) It wouldn't work. Trust me on this. If they did what you're suggesting tomorrow, the RMT spammers would still find a way to get to you, and it's likely that it would be even more annoying than e-mail. These people are scammers and crooks, they know no moral bounds, and it doesn't matter one iota how irritating it is to you. Old-timers will remember the tell-hell we went through before they nixed that. Now that CoH is a game with loot, that cat's not going back in the bag. RMT spammers will still be there; the only people it would affect are those who use the e-mail system for what it's designed for.

In short, this is a problem with RMT spammers, not a problem inherent in the e-mail system. "Fixing" e-mail won't solve the problem and only waste resources without addressing the root of your unhappiness.

I'm with Cat and Scuzz. I never opted out, and I know for a fact that I used to receive these. The last one I received was on December 18, 2008, about the Apple Open Beta. I think at some point the database must have been reset to having everyone opt back in.

Just make sure you don't name her something stupid like KaraZorel or B1ack.Canari. I'd hate for her to grow up having to explain to her friends why her name was legally changed to "Generic Baby15394".

I think I'm qualified for one of the jobs, but relocating from Atlanta to California, wow, that's kind of a hard sell. I wonder what the salary is like? I make pretty decent money where I am. But man, the chance to get into the gaming industry, that would be a lot of fun. And with god as my witness, if I worked for Paragon Studios, I would push the City Vault out with every fiber of my being, no matter what department I ended up in.

They'd get so sick of me in staff meetings. "So Matt, how is the progress coming on the City Vault" would be my catchphrase. Hell, I'd learn what I have to and program the thing myself if need be.

Maybe I'll apply just to test the waters. It has been a while since I've put myself out there.

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Am I just being overly-negative?

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Honestly? Probably. The devs have a history of working towards balance in the game. I'm pretty sure they won't screw anything up very badly, and for 90% of the population the expansion will rock. (9.9% probably won't care one way or the other.)

Of course, I'll go on the record to say that there will be a contingent of people who will insist that this will destroy the game. They'll be very vocal about it, there will be a lot of bickering in threads about it, Mod 08 will have bloody fingers and chunks of skin on the mouse and keyboard the week it's released for locking threads.