Excraft

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.

Exactly. That's the discussion that should be had, at least I think.

You're asking the wrong question with this. Why are people so interested in playing AE farms over the "correct/good" content in the game? What does that say about the quality of the content outside of AE? Why aren't more people playing it? Not trying to argue here, just that I think these are the questions that should be asked.

Yeah unfortunately the game does use the character name as a unique identifier. The code is super old and wasn't really optimized well. Not something that can be fixed outside of an entire engine revamp as I understood it. Cryptic fixed this in the newer version of their game engine. You see the same ship names and even some character names over in STO and no one makes a stink about other players being named James T. Kirk piloting the U.S.S. Enterprize. It's just not that big of a deal. To your point, here is something truly hilarious - there are people in this thread who are saying that they MUST have names released because they can't just come up with a different variation on a name who are also posting in threads totally berating others for "not being creative enough" with other people's costumes and such. Oh the irony! 🤣

Name camping is only bad if someone else does it. 🤣

Yes to this please. No objection to there being a name release policy for inactive accounts, just the implementation needs a lot of work.

Oh I wasn't thinking you were being deceptive or confusing. I understood you just fine. I get that you all have control over different things. My point was that regardless of what team you're on, people will still view you as representing Homecoming. Sorry if that wasn't clear on my part. No harm done. I still think it would be nice to try and tie into some of the very cool open bases out there somehow. Something for you all to chew on.

That made sense when the game was a commercial venture. It isn't anymore.

I want to play getting vet levels and EMP merits in AE. Can I do that?

So you're all the "Homecoming Team" without being the "Homecoming Team".... k. Understood I guess.

That's just going to create more lag.

You are promoting it. You've held base building competitions and select Dev Choice story arcs in the AE. I get that content is different on each server. Just thought something to point people in the direction of forum threads or other info that would help people find them. Some players sunk quite a lot of work into them to make these bases available for the specifically for the public at large. A few even have very cool bases used for specific themed events like the Halloween base. Just seems a real shame to provide a disincentive to explore these.

I just don't see this as a problem as there aren't really all that many new players coming in from what I can see. That's just my opinion. Reducing lag in the starting zones makes much more sense than this excuse. Why not add something to help promote all these very cool community built bases in game to all these new players instead?

Difficult or not, this is the correct way to do this. Just have any login to the account update all characters on all shards.

Just adding my agreement to those who have said this needs to be account based, not character based. Going to get super annoying real quick to log into alts that are in various stages of being worked on all the time just to preserve a name. "It's hard to code" isn't an acceptable excuse for not doing this by account.

Sure this works great so long as the zone isn't crowded and you can actually get some kills in.

I just don't think they care about alienating anyone who doesn't "play the right way" as they define it. They just don't give a shit and the only people they seem to listen to are the 3 or 4 people constantly crying and whining about farming on the forums. They keep chasing these mythical new players who don't exist in mass numbers, never will exist in mass numbers for an 18 year old game with out of date technology running on a pirate server. They keep making the same mistakes Paragon Studios made over and over again hoping for a different outcome. Of course they can do whatever they want and there's nothing that's going to change their decisions on this point. Best thing anyone can do is just accept their changes and adapt or leave and go play something else. I have a suspicion this is just the first of many more nerfs coming to the AE content and it's pretty clear at least to me what effect those will have. All anyone needs to do is look at all the other "traditional" servers out there being barren ghost towns. What's the difference between farming those missions and farming in AE? People are outside the AE building?