Ironblade

I think the cooldowns are all or nothing so they might be able to code '10 per day'. So it would probably have to be something like a 90-minute cooldown or 2-hours cooldown. That does seem like a reasonable middle ground, though. I think there needs to be more effort in identifying a middle ground or compromises. We went from 'No vet levels in AE' to 'Vet levels are back but no conversion to Reward Merits'. Neither of these options has been well-received. We need to look for an option that blocks the problematic outliers without harming the average player. They can't. One of the devs said that if they had a reliable way to stop AFK farming without penalizing active farmers, they would have already done it.

Well, this arc is from The Pilgrim and it's level 25-50 so you can't outlevel it. Also, I don't know that there is any way to drop a CONTACT. I think you probably just dropped a mission. If you dropped the first mission (or any other), you should be able to just go talk to him again.

Obviously not a GM here, but that seems fine because you're not using the names and likenesses of actual people (which is prohibited). If he looked like MC Hammer and had that name, that would break the rules. But I've seen lots of characters that look like MC Hammer and have a name that makes some oblique reference. Also, I'm old school, so I would have gone with Ivan 'The Polish Hammer' Putski for a pro wrestler. 🙂 As for the second one, that's pretty dark. I had to look up '27 Club'. Seems even less infringing since it has no one's name. Edit: The Hammer guy should have a dwarf outfit. Lots of literary dwarves known for using hammers.

Absolutely NOT. Having said that, I would like to expand on two particular points. 1) A little bit of planning goes a long way. I'm not saying you should download Mids and min-max your characters. I plan my builds in an Excel spreadsheet once I get to around level 30 and have a feel for how it plays and what shortcomings it has. If I'm having END issues, I can build to fix that. If I'm too squishy, I can build for that. Etc. So I feel that SOME planning ahead will have you much more satisfied with the performance of your characters. 2) If you plan to run something like Relentless Aeon SF or be the lead tank in certain incarnate trials, that's a different story. This is not just 'end game content'; it's end game hard/challenge mode. You'll want to build more carefully if you're going to do the absolute hardest content in the game and/or LEAD end game content. If that's not in your plans, you're fine. Planning your build can have a dramatic impact on how the character plays. - Lots of people build for their 'squishy' characters to have defense over 45%. Not easy, but big impact. - My character Toggle Man runs 18 toggles in combat and has no END problems. That was pretty cheap and easy (more than +50% recovery, not including procs). - I built a beam rifle/kinetics corrupter JUST for Really Hard Way badge runs. He is built to maximize damage - his own and the team's. - I have an invuln tank with +370% regeneration. That was pretty easy; regen is generally the first set bonus. And this doesn't have to be expensive. An optimized, high-end build can cost a half billion inf. My invuln tank with 370% regen cost between 30-40 million. Think about whether you have a character that you like, but if only they had ??????? (better recharge, more endurance, some defense, etc).

I believe that would be an example of a straw man argument.

Here is a direct quote from the Terms of Service: "We allow a basic level of multiboxing on the Homecoming servers outside of peak times. These rules apply on a shard-by-shard basis (by ‘shard’ we mean Torchbearer, Excelsior, etc)." So you can stay 100% within the ToS and multibox three accounts ON EACH SHARD SIMULTANEOUSLY. Not sure why they phrased it that way, but they did and went to the effort to clarify exactly what they mean by 'shard'. The computer I had 18 years ago could run three accounts. I think it's quite possible my current system could run fifteen. For the record, I only have three accounts.

Personally, I never did this because I generate crazy amounts of Reward Merits by running the weekly task forces. Also, I didn't know (or had forgotten) that we could. 🙂 Having said that: 1) Consider whether you might want different/additional incarnate powers on some existing characters. As a specific example, if you're leading or assisting on some content, you might want the Clarion or Incandescence powers in the Destiny slot. 2) If a character has 50 or more Empyreans, you might want to convert to a Transcendent which allows you to email it to another character on YOUR account and convert back to Empyreans to give them a headstart on the incarnate powers. If you're reasonably certain neither of those situations is applicable, by all means, go ahead and convert to Reward Merits. I actually went through a bunch of my characters yesterday and found that I had quite a few who had 3 or 4 different Destiny powers *AND* a lot of extra Astral/Empyrean merits. I ended up emailing NINE Transcendent Merits to my newest 50 and converting some stuff to Reward Merits.

Indeed. Unfortunately, more than once, I have seen people express their outrage and say that some change isn't 'better for all' because THEY don't like it. They don't seem to grasp that 'better for all' means 'better for the community' and not 'better for every single individual'.

That's probably part of the point. It's a role-playing destination and having a place with a dark atmosphere is just as valid as the Luau. A group of smugglers and pirates who haven't bathed in a week fit better in a dingy bar drinking swill than in a tiki bar with fancy drinks with little umbrellas in them.

In theory, I suppose this could be an issue. Realistically, though, I don't see this one change as being significant enough to noticeably increase the population in the PvP zones. I was in Bloody Bay yesterday, getting a Shivan Shard, and there was no one else in the zone.

Did not see that coming. I'm guessing that datamining showed tons of inactive characters at or near level 1. This seems like a pretty generous policy now. Thumbs up!

Good call (about this thread). I was going to suggest that this deserved it's own Focused Feedback. Having said that, the original AE change (no vet level rewards) was quite a dramatic change. Now that is reverted and we have this change, which is also quite dramatic. Based on these changes (about to try to guess dev intentions), it seems that earning Emps/Astrals in AE *AND CONVERTING THEM* is what's being targeted. I therefore restate my suggestion that I made in response to the original AE change - continue to allow the vet levels BUT FOR A LIMITED TIME (maybe 15 levels). This addresses the issue in a 'middle of the road' manner. Maybe 15 vet levels is too little or too much, but that's where there's room for debate. These all or nothing approaches don't seem great.

The Empyrean/Astral Merit to Reward Merit conversion has been removed from Reward Merit vendors. Huh. I'm sure I must have heard about this at some point, but I did not know we could do this. And now we're going to get Reward Merits for iTrials. Works for me. 🙂

Huh. Did not see this coming. Seems like a good way to let people check out PvP without a big up-front time investment to see if it's something they want to get into. Not seeing any downside at the moment (although someone may come up with one).

Whether you 'buy' it or not is irrelevant. As a database programmer, it is ABSOLUTELY possible that there is no way to do it other than querying the entire character database for that shard to see which link back to a particular account ID. Do I know that it's set up like that? No. Is that a REASONABLE way for it to be configured? Absolutely it is. And, since we were TOLD that it isn't practical, I'm guessing that's exactly how it's set up. Unless you've set up relational databases, you don't have enough knowledge to comment.

No, they keep the farmer but cycle through characters on a second account, farming the door-sitter to vet levels in the range of 15-75. Not claiming it's fun or the most efficient or some specific level is best - just saying I know people who currently do this.

Surely they would have a friend who could do it for them. I did this for someone in my SG back on live. They were going to be out of contact during the anniversary month and wanted the anniversary badge on their characters. (They were in the Navy and were going to be on a submarine.) So I logged in for them. Did that violate the terms of service? I think so, but who cares. It was the right thing to do.

Just bought all the yellow salvage I wanted at 1600, just 200 inf over my traditional price.

Cool.

I see a possibility of a slight improvement here since no one seemed to know the default range until Number Six told us. What if entering no number showed you your current settings AND the default so it would look like: "Your current chat range is 60 ft. (Default range for this zone is 100 ft.)

I didn't even think of this. Since it's stated as a "supergroup base style area" for people without supergroups, then it should be accessible from any base portal - as well as the P2W SG portal power.

Unless we foil your sinister plan! For example, in my case, I recreated 3 characters that I had back on live so that I wouldn't lose the names. That was 70 days ago. I can tell you that without logging in because I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of this. And my spreadsheet specifically has a column to warn me when I'm approaching the name release deadlines that I implemented when the policy was first discussed. YOU'RE NOT GETTING MY NAMES, COPPER! 😛

(shrug) I have exactly one badge hunter and he's personally carrying about 1.5 billion. It's not an issue to me, but it seems a mite grindy in general. Not terrible, but let's not have this be the first step in a downward spiral.

If it's intended as a "supergroup base style area", then it should probably also have a quartermaster and a . . . I guess 'medic' who would sell inspirations and buy your random junk like the corresponding base items (Tree of Wonders and Auto-Doc) or the nurse in the hospital.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG THANK YOU!!! I just tested this and it works perfectly. My Dual Pistols blaster is forever grateful.