GM Crumpet

Locked. Necro thread

At some point, in the fullness of time, eventually. But that's a conservative estimate so don't quote me 😛

Speaking as a GM of long standing I can't imagine our policy ever changing. We often get accused by people of GM overreach and we have a very hands off approach to most things unless it's a breach of the code of conduct. We can argue with people, and we can both disagree, but that's passion and love for the game. I'm sure @PeregrineFalcon will agree that we've had very different ideas about things in the past and will again in the future, but have we banned them because we don't always agree? Of course not. I value players like them for standing up for what they believe, even if sometimes their passion gets the best of them. I actually agree with them a lot of the time and value their input. I've also changed my stance once or twice because their argument has been persuasive. I've had a lot of players over the years argue with me about names they had on live and my answer is always the same. I can't help. If they want to contact the player directly and ask them if they will surrender the name to them then that's fine, but if they don't then that's their prerogative. The only time I would step in is if the player asking was rude about it and tried to involve me in some way. "GM Crumpet said..." better be a direct quote with a source or you'll find the limits of my reasonableness 🙂

We kind of need a GM Pumpkin now 😛

I don't know the amount of data all those unused alts take up, I can't imaging it's that high. If I need to search the database for a character it's pretty easy and depending on how loose my search criteria is depends on how many results it throws out. It's not the number of names and alts that are a problem.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. And I'm a he 🙂 I can't go into details of names on accounts, or say how many are name camping due to confidentiality, but you are correct in the lack of null names that nobody would want or care about. There are names I'm panting to get my grubby mitts on 😛

Everyone has their favourite from the look of things. I'm not a fan of thugs myself but have had great success with electrical affinity. Summon gang war and electrify the troops!!

The thing with live was people were restricted on how many names they could have and so a name release policy wouldn't really have too much impact. We now have 1000 slots and unlimited accounts. I have seen accounts with 300 and 400 level 1's that are just name camping. They are never going to be used. The chances of an individual name being released is small on it's own, but cumulatively when there are just so many sitting idle the effects can be huge. The solution I suppose is to rename them all really badly so nobody would try for that spelling 🙂

And if you are talking about characters you played on live they are long gone and not recoverable

I'd be surprised if a Smith or Jones didn't run into themselves at some point

I'll get the wafers and holy water ready

Where they're going they won't need no door!!

And much appreciated the reports are too, thank you to everyone who is participating!!

Warshades work by having as many enemies nearby as possible so they can suck their energy out and use it for their own defence, damage and self rez. Using their "gather enemies" power (shadow slip) they can teleport all the enemies in range (I think the limit is 16 but not totally sure) into a nice tight group at their feet. Most times it isn't a problem, shadow slip, eclipse, 2 mires, nuke. Turn into dwarf and mop up the survivors. Sometimes it backfires and you die so self rez (stygian return) and then eclipse, 2 mires, nuke and dwarf 🙂 Then a quick Dark Extraction for a short lived pet and move on to the next mob.

You spoil all my fun!! 😛 But yes, if you see a new player who looks amazing then please tell them they are breaking the ToS if you feel confident in doing so. You have no obligation to do so, all reports are confidential.

In fairness, if someone is reported for having a comic accurate costume then I'm happy to take a look. We've had endless green lanterns, Homelanders, Deadpools etc that the name is fine but the costume is amazing!! And I do feel quite guilty hitting the big shiny button on it knowing how much work they put in.

I wake in a cold sweat worrying it'll all go horribly wrong and I'll log in and find the implementation went wrong and all my funny and silly names got wiped and I'm left with 80 characters called generic<number> 😛 Which can't happen as we do make backups before any big changes in case we need to do a rollback. The biggest mess up was years ago when somehow the patch went live and all the floors in Atlas had vanished 🙂

It's not that Praetoria is super hard, it's just harder as a starting point for new players. The tutorial isn't really as helpful as it's more an introduction to Praetoria than it is an introduction to the basic game mechanics. Once you have a few hours playing blue/red under your belt you can do Praetoria reasonably well.

So. The way it was explained to me was as follows, and I might be wrong in the technical details but not the effects. All name will be given a flag. Depending on the level of the character will determine when the flag expires. So a level 50 will have a never expire flag for instance. Logging in will reset the flag and it will be safe for however long the flag is set for. Saying that, the name won't suddenly be taken off you, what will happen is it will become available. If someone makes a character with the new name THEN the old character will lose that name, but if nobody else picks it then it will be fine. You won't log in on day 31 and find you have 300 level 1 alts all named Generic-number. I have no idea when it will go live, but the majority of player won't even notice. If you have potentially popular names then you might, but for a lot of people they will mostly try to get back names they had on live but someone else now has.

Oh I agree, and as a long time player who has more inf than I can spend it's not a problem. I'll drag everything into the AH. For a new player trying to get a boost up on their inf levels it's better to sell for the best price though.

True, We could have a GM stationed on every map 24/7 and still miss a lot. Which is why players reporting violations is really helpful. What is also helpful sometimes is "this character is a direct copy of someone from the 1982 manga named blah blah" as we can't know every character from every IP 🙂

The auction house is a weird beastie and no mistake. It's quite simple to use though so here's a simple starter guide. Type /AH to open the auction house in any open zone. It won't work in missions or in bases. Best done near a vendor so you can compare sale prices. The Auction house uses the "lowest list price gets highest bid" system. So putting something on for 10 inf will net you the highest current bid. That might be 10 inf, it might be 50 million inf. It just depends on what the highest current bid is. Putting something on close to the price of the last 5 bids will sell eventually, but it could take weeks. It's a buyers market and anything listed for a lower price than yours will sell first. Salvage White salvage is vendor trash, sell it at any vendor. Yellow salvage price fluctuates wildly, drag it into the AH window and see what it sells for. If it's higher than the vendor then sell it on the AH otherwise vendor trash it. Orange salvage don't even check. Drag it into the AH and list it for 10 inf. Special salvage like catalysts and converters make good inf. Convert merits at a merit vendor to enhancement converters and sell them for instant inf. Recipes White are vendor trash Yellow and orange you need to check each one individually and compare to the vendor sale price. Some go for millions, others go for pennies. Purple don't even check, just drag them in and list them for 10 inf. Sometimes you'll need to click the find button a few times to see the last 5 prices. Buying When buying enhancements like IO's or sets look at the last 5 prices and bid under that, then work up in increments. A 10 million inf sale might be available at 2 million, or 5 million. Always buy sets attuned when you buy them. There is a separate menu on the side to buy attuned. Attuned means the enhancement will level up or down with you so once slotted can be safely ignored. The Auction house strips the level off a sold enhancement and allocates a level or attunement depending on the choice of the player. The price is the same attuned as levelled as it's the same enhancement. The only reason not to attune is if you are level 50 and want to use boosters on them. Purples, PvP and procs don't need to be attuned. And that's the basics of the auction house. Just be careful you don't buy a recipe instead of an enhancement, or an enhancement instead of a recipe. That happens a lot 🙂

Clown Mastermind!!

There is no such thing as too much. See something you think is a breach of the code of conduct, report away. I do most of the generics (sorry) and am never too busy to look into reports. It might be the character works under the parody/tribute rule. Something that looks like The Tick but is pink and called The Flea would be fine, as it would fit under the rule. Something that looks like the Tick and is called THE T!CK wouldn't be. Same as the Hulk. It's a massive green character with tattered shorts. Make him Blue and called The Bulk and I wouldn't look twice. If you do get hit with a generic and you feel it was in error (I do mess up sometimes) please feel free to reply to the ticket you get and explain why you think it was in error. "I've played this character since live and nobody has ever complained" isn't a good reason. "I named this character because of X <insert link>" is much more likely to succeed. I can also accidentally hit the wrong button and generic a name when I only meant to hit a bio. In that case I'll happily apologise and let you rename the character back. If I mess up I will always apologise. Final arbiters will be the lead GM's. If you wish to appeal the decision then you just need to ask explaining your reasons. The lead GM's decision is final, but they will come to a consensus and even take it to Cipher if they feel it's that close to the line.

I think it's amazing!! I'm so happy to see so many new and returning players. Just remember, when you make your new characters please don't use other peoples IP. It's always sad when we have to generic a name, bio or costume (or all three). Especially when it's clear someone has spent a long time in the costume creator getting it exactly right. We want you to enjoy your experience and not get upset/angry/annoyed because you suddenly find yourself nameless and in your underwear. Be creative and be brilliant, just be original 🙂