Turgenev

Aion's weather IS very nice. Who knows? It'd be nice when, during Rhode Island winter, there's two feet of snow everywhere and you have emergency snow removal TFs in Paragon City.

That piccie made me tinkle in my kilts, drog. Good one.

Nah, Laser can take it.

(I will take the cookie and the head pat however. Meow. Prrr.)

This, basically. Old-school clans have hosted Vent/TS servers for ages now because the VoIP solutions out there hadn't really materialized until recently as a viable alternative to a client/server setup. IRON's had a TS server for upwards of a decade now (TS2, TS3 doesn't really appeal to us ATM), but Skype's ability to group chat is a huge benefit, as it doesn't require a hosted server solution. It's also crystal-clear.

Shu'up, you kimchi-suckin' expatriate of questionable parentage.

We are, obviously.

Heya doll. Maybe I'll pop my head in more on the boards now that you're around. XD Been busy defending the Federation a bit too much...

Don't look at me. Ymir passed over DC with nary a glance (although we did get a mild dusting tonight, it was the wind that's been the news the last day or so).

NYC got shillelaghed tho. 18-24" depending on where in the five boroughs you live. My hat's off to them, I have at least one friend w/o power for a day now. At least my mom's got power and heat. =/

Sold.

Welcome back. Can I has ur... oh, wait, got it backwards. Damn memes, I always goof 'em up.

Repeat Offenders is a global organizational channel for the cross-server SG of the same name. I still see their members post, and see a few on my global list that are die-hards, so I'm assuming that chan's valid still (you tell me, I'm not on it. )

You can also refer to this master list of Freedom-oriented global channels. These are public-access channels meant for server-specific conversation.

Hope the list helps, and welcome back to Freedom.

Hast thou not hearkened to the blessed voice of the prophet UniqueDragon? FIE unto thee, jerk-hacking unbeliever, that thou wilt roast for all eternity 'pon the fires of iniquity. (...and duped rares.)

...Gods, I'm punchy after two cups of coffee. Mmm, coffeecoffeecoffee.

Take this.

All this snow can be yours if you pick it up. Like, now.

See You Next Tuesday, Umbral, ol' chum.

There ya go.

Actually, I thought my last post was milder in tone. Hm. =/

Arguably, when people competed (mostly unintentionally, as they didn't know they were being pegged) for Chosen One, the community benefited by having solid storylines and thought-out mission mechanics. It was a terrific way to raise the bar for creativity for all players.

You keep referring to the mechanic that was used for HALL OF FAME badge designation. That had NO impact on Chosen One. They're two SEPARATE issue. I'd agree readily for HoF being nerfed, precisely because of what you state constantly. BUT, that has no bearing on Chosen One badges.

Sure, but you keep saying Chosen One is bad. I still fail to see HOW it was bad. Re-read what I wrote about Hall of Fame above, and you might want to rethink your argument.

No, I want to know the problems caused by Chosen One. Explain it to me, and don't confuse it with the Hall of Fame badge this time.

Actually, Dev Choice was at the whim of the redname who would try a new arc, like it enough to badge it, then make it official. The first 12 DC recipients fall into this category. It stalled for half a year, then Dr. Aeon picked up the ball again. People sold their arcs, true - I sure did, but only after the fact - but the majority of Chosen One recipients had it handed to them during Architect beta, to kickstart the creative process for people. At least, that was the idea.

I'm harping on Chosen One in particular because, for all your arguments, correct or otherwise, Bug Hunter is still alive and kicking. I harp because of the disparity between the two. Both are subjective. Both reward players that serve the playerbase. One got nerfed. The other did not.

Cite the problems. How did @The Cheshire Cat having "Chosen One" for his magnificent "Astoria in D Minor" hurt the playerbase? It wasn't because people were up/down voting. You said yourself that the badge was obtainable if you tried hard enough. So where was the problem?

I'm leading you somewhere with this, believe me. More to come tomorrow.

You don't understand how the Dev Choice mechanic works, do you?

We have a badge named "Bug Hunter" that's been out for longer, and behaves on exactly the same principle as Dev Choice. "A redname awarded this based on subjective merit."

Why was Chosen One such a threat, when Bug Hunter has been in place for so long, and remains in place today?

Now, whether or not having an arc flagged as "Dev Choice" is worth a badge is something that can be argued. However, it's frustrating to note that Bug Hunter is still out there, whereas Chosen One is not. That's an incongruity that needs to be rectified, in either direction.

So, all it takes is enough strifing (I invented a word, sue me), and a badge that mattered to someone can be removed because the vocal masses think it's "not fair"?

Let's go with Empath. How is Empath "fair" when it's picked up by a scrapper after a few days in a heal farm? Or a controller picking up the damage badges after two weeks in a Rikti boss farm?

Actually, it served its goal. It rewarded people, based on subjective evaluations by the rednames. The fact that it made other players scream "unfair, unfair" doesn't take away from the fact that it served its goal: Rewarding players who accomplished. But now that doesn't matter.

So who was better served here? The masses who took something away from people who earned it? Or the players who took pride in earning it for creating something for the playerbase, then had it taken away by that same playerbase?

You still don't explain the "problem". You think that Dev Choice badges were something that could be exploited by downvoting/upvoting. That's simply incorrect.

Review the history behind the Chosen One badge nerf, and restate your case at your leisure.

Imma gonna bed.

I hope he doesn't. In my opinion, I think it's the wrong path to go.

Vet rewards are a different mechanic: A reward for length of subscription, which applies to the account itself. An "Anniversary" badge applies to personal attendance during 30 days of a given year. The two are NOT the same. One rewards account subscription. The other, actual character presence during an anniversary month. My dual blades scrapper should not have 1st year anniversary badge. He wasn't there to celebrate it.

This is a case where I'll call Positron's promise to "look into it" as cowing to a vocal minority. I have the anniversary badges on a few toons. Not all. (Just the few important ones.) I don't need them on my latest toons. I don't WANT them to be on new toons. Those toons weren't THERE for the anniversary.

An "Anniversary" badge is a metric to show the character itself was there for a given time period. That's FACT. This whole conversation started because I stated FACT to the OP, and Astrolynx took it as an opportunity to start an argument.

So here I am. Argue away. It won't change the fact until Positron buckles under and blatantly changes half a decade of badge behavior to satisfy the have-nots.

Indulge me. How is Chosen One bad?

I don't want to "restrict" anything. I want badges to retain the meaning they had when they were rolled out (barring badges whose values were an "oops" instead of actual intent: Namely, Empath). We keep nerfing badges to the lowest common denominator. If we do this for players who have it on other toons, then the people who don't have it on other toons will whine louder, state it's not fair, ask why we're trying to keep it from them, yadda yadda yadda. The cycle begins again, and the design is modified, yet again, and the value is watered down - yet again.

It doesn't end, until we man up and cope with the fact of, "BY DESIGN, it's meant for characters who were there for an anniversary." And that's it. Pleading for a badge that your toon couldn't have earned because they didn't login during that period is simply that: Pleading.

So, I'm for UPHOLDING the design of badges, as they are. That's not restricting you. That's just making you face the truth.

As for your commentary of "you have them, so what do you care, hmmm": I'm for logical design. Show me a framework that fits the badge as it is, and pitch it sensibly. I'll argue it logically. Your argument here is "it's just a badge for logging in". You want it to be something "other" than that. I argue for the status quo.

It's THAT simple.