Excraft

Emphasis added. Prove it. What data do you have that can be reviewed to show this is an actual problem? Anecdotal stories do not count.

What a nice story. It's a complete fabrication and a textbook example of a correlation fallacy, but it's a nice story. Your anecdotal "evidence" doesn't prove anything without real, provable data to back it up. So much wrong with this story - "I know a lot of people have it in their head that Homecoming hardly gets any new players. They are, of course, wrong." How do you know? Show us your data. Where is your data on numbers of unique accounts being created to back this up? How are you defining "new player"? How are you verifying they are in fact a "new player" and not a vet rolling another account? "A new player signs up on Homecoming. He or she sees that Excelsior is the most populated shard, so he or she creates a new character. " What about players who make characters on the other shards? "The new player’s character loads into Atlas Park." What if they started as a villain? There are verifiable numbers of people playing as villains. That much is provable by looking at the server status page. "Loads of people begging for farms in the LFG channel constantly, and occasionally in zone Broadcast. He or she will see AE farmers tell people in the LFG channel not to join a Citadel TF that was just advertised, because TFs are “crap XP” compared to AE farming. He or she will see AE farmers tell others in the Help or General channel that only AE farming is worth doing, because it is the fastest way to both get to level 50 and get your Incarnate abilities. Then that newbie may get a blind invite from an AE farmer, thinking that PLing the newbie is a favor." This entire paragraph is fabricated nonsense. Never once have I ever seen a farmer tell anyone in broadcast or other channel that people shouldn't join other teams or run other content. If you have legitimate, unaltered screen captures or video recordings of the chat that can show this is happening, by all means post it. Otherwise, this is just bullshit. "The newbie, not knowing any better, joins, gets PLed to level 30+, and then leaves. He or she has no knowledge of the game, does not know how to get to another zone, doesn’t know how to get a new mission, and has no INF to buy enhancements because the AE farmer told the newbie to get double XP boosters." How does a brand new player know how to ask to join a team if they aren't familiar with how to use the various chat channels and/or tells yet? Again, where is your actual data to back this up? How do you know for certain what this evil farmer supposedly said or didn't say to this "new player"? "The new player has just been taught that Mission Architect is the entire game. More than likely, he or she will log off and never return." How do you know for certain they will never come back? "Everything I just described has happened quite a few times that I personally know of, with some variation." This is textbook example of an anecdotal evidence fallacy. "AE farming has overall a negative impact on the health and longevity of the Homecoming community as at least some new players are driven off." This is a fine thesis to have. You're going to have to do a much, much, much better job of proving it than making up stories and trying to pass them off as facts. Bullshit is bullshit, no matter how many times you repeat it.

Fair enough but if you're getting interrupted with that much real life stuff while playing that this is a problem for you, maybe you should log off and deal with stuff that's more important?

They didn't say it couldn't be done. They said it was a lot more work to do it by account.

Can't the AFK timer be turned on inside instanced maps? That would solve your AFK farming problem.

For YOU it is. For others who've run the same content hundreds of times or more, it gets stale. Why don't you tell everyone here, how many times should they run the same story content over and over before they get bored and just leave? Give us a number.

Which makes the entire exercise pointless. Just use a thesaurus.

Says the shrieking infant whining crying and stomping their little feet in a hissy fit because nobody wants to play with them. Oh the irony.

Seriously? Think about what you just wrote here. Is real money being exchanged for the cosmetics used in the game? Then it's commercial product.

Read the thread. There's quite a lot of feedback here from players who keep lower level characters for all sorts of RP reasons. Again, how do you know they're sitting on a character for a year and not playing it? You're making quite a lot of assumptions. And if you aren't interested in grabbing a name that might get freed up, what does it matter to you?

How do you know for certain they are squatting on them and not playing them? You've no way of know what the majority of the people are doing here. Seems to me some people are seeing big numbers like 2,000,000 and 700,000 and are getting their hopes up that the name they wanted is going to get released once this goes live. I'd be prepared to be disappointed.

Ok but is everyone going to do that? Of course not and trying to paint it like everyone will is plain stupid.

Yup. Never underestimate the absolute stupidity of the totally ridiculous excuses people will come up with to crap on even discussing this idea. Implying that everyone AFKs every bit of content 100% of the time is getting a bit stupid. Next thing you'll hear is that people just sit around having someone teleport them to every exploration badge in the game and click the Null options to change their alignment too. Unreal.

I gotta agree that people who shouted for the advanced difficulty said they just wanted more of a challenge. This is what happens when you base your direction and design decisions around what a handful of people ask for.

Spot on. It's been going on before the last couple of updates too. They've catered to that same small group of inner-circle folks since the beginning. I don't see them ever changing that or really caring about what the majority want or would like to see. A couple people mentioned this in other threads, but it really does seem clear these suggestions are being made by devs or dev buddies using incognito alt accounts to make it seem like it's something people outside the inner circle want.

The revisions to this are much better. It gives the legit roleplayers out there a lot of breathing room to work with.

This game is going for 18 years with a veteran group of players. There's no indication it won't go for another 18 or more. Stop trying to chase these mythical hoards of new players that will never be coming in mass numbers. It's just not going to happen for an 18 year old game running on a pirate server. It just can't compete with modern titles.

Yeah because that's what every single person will do all the time. And like everyone else in the game is so willing to let others carry them through TFs to unlock things like TF Commander that could be part of the badge requirement. 🙄

No thank you. You can quadruple the merit rewards or more and I still won't farm iTrials or TFs or whatever other content you all seem intent upon driving me into. Yup. It's not better for me and I'll determine what's best and works for me, thanks.

You dirty name hoarder!! How dare you steal all those names!! 🤣 Yes, I am joking. 😉

You mean this @Player2? The one that's posting different character concepts in the costume showoff thread several times a day nearly every day? I'm not at all surprised they've got a lot of character names being used to make new concept designs. And since he's releasing them to the public, he's not squatting them. You don't know if they've got more than a dozen characters at once either. See, that's what happens when you assume. You're assuming you know the answer when you don't have all the facts. Remember what that old saying is about what happens when you assume...

^ Best quote ever about this game, the folks running it and these forums. It's 100% spot on and I'd upvote it more if I could. All this pissing about and worrying about what's "good for the game" that's 18+ years on and still standing instead of just providing the platform people are clearly enjoying as is. Thank you for that and glad to see there's sensible people out there who call it like they see it.

I'd wager the majority of folks here are vets from when the game was live. We all found something to keep us here for 18 years. Why wouldn't some of these mythical new players do the same?

How do you know that a name you might want isn't on an abandoned account? Something doesn't smell right there. Another player actively playing who has a name you want can be contacted and you can negotiate with them. If they don't want to release it, tough luck on you. Pick another name. I'd be in favor of me being able to take whatever character names you have whenever you aren't logged in and playing them. You're not using them at the time so I should be able to use the name. I find that entirely reasonable. So what exactly is a "typical player"? And as far as not caring, this isn't what roleplayers posting here have said. They have legit reasons for wanting to keep their characters at a specific level. But I get it, it's ok to be inconvenienced so long as it isn't you.

That's a very good point. I can totally see how people who have a lot of alts are going to be in for a real chore with this. Excluding accounts that haven't been logged in for a couple of years, active players should be allowed to keep whatever names they want without being forced into this poorly implemented, annoying login routine to try and coerce them into playing less characters than they want. If you're an active account, you can be contacted and work with another player who might want a name you have. Releasing a name should be up to the player, not annoying code.