ZemX

Patience?! Ain't nobody got time for that! 🤪

It makes sense. When doing this as an actual Praetorian, after picking a starting faction in the tutorial you're presented with TWO storylines worth of contact chains amounting to six alignment choices. Hence you could get the badges if you stuck mostly to one alignment but picked the other just once. I'm playing a red-sider now doing all redside arcs but I might expand to the rest like Snarky is doing if I don't lose interest before then. But if I had to do it all over again, Praetoria is still my preferred starting area. These four arcs just work better in the open world, especially the undercover aspect and the side-switching, and the story hits home better when you're a Praetorian. Having just done most of redside and finishing up Grandville now... I think I'd rather do 1-20 redside via Ouro than Goldside the same way, then leave Praetoria for the Rogue Isles at 20. As much as the redside arcs are better written than blueside, goldside is yet again that much better.

If I understood @Zhym correctly, you only need to pick each alignment once. You don't need to pick one five times in each of the four alignment arcs. Once you've picked one of each you can literally flip a coin for the rest and get the badge because there are so many alignment choices you can't help but get one four more times.

I never claimed people literally couldn't name their characters right now OR that there weren't still good names to be had OR that this policy would somehow make it so you would always get the name you wanted. But you and others keep demanding I defend these positions I've never taken, so I'm done with all of you. I've said what I want here more than once and we're just going in circles. So I am fine leaving it at that.

It is, in no possible universe, a prudent thing to try to explain something in game that you already know is a four (or maybe five by now) page flame war WHILE you are trying to form a GM league.

Anybody try turning it into a proc bomb? That's a long recharge. Wouldn't it have relatively high proc chances all around if it's not a pseudo-pet or does the redirect power work the same way as Pseudopets for PPM? Or is that still not enough to save it?

I do love snark, but in this case the answer to your snarky question is... "no". It is, in no possible universe, a prudent thing to try to explain something in game that you already know is a four (or maybe five by now) page flame war WHILE you are trying to form a GM league. Honestly, the best thing to do is pretend you didn't hear them and if they continue pestering you over it, put them on ignore. Best for everyone really.

(a) I just told you it wasn't a need. (b) I never said it was. Not once. (c) So what? Stuff gets added to games all the time because it's wanted... not because it's needed. Nobody "needed" any of this. Stuff is added or changed because the people proposing doing it think it makes the game better, not because it needs to be.

No, I think I'm done with you. You're about 0 for 100 in logical arguments in this thread and that's quite enough for me. Ta!

One post ago you were asking me to thank you for saving myself from my own policy and now it "benefits me at the expense of others"? Can you make up your mind?

I'm not trying to twist anything. I asked what I thought was a simple question. You misunderstood it. And now you're insulting me over your misunderstanding. You might want to notice I haven't returned fire. I believe you're upset and I'm trying to tell you that's not my intention. The entire point of asking was to establish about how often you name check and hit a taken name. A name that you want for a character. The only point of asking that is to establish how many taken names are wanted names. Remember when you told me none of the released names from Live were "wanted"? I said I had a hard time believing that and to support that I am trying to estimate how many wanted names might be in inactive accounts. There is no trickery here. If you know a better way to do that, tell me.

You are not quoting fact or law here. This is your opinion. Mine is that logging in once in two years is more than reasonable to keep your "stuff" from being considered abandoned. It is far more than most other MMOs allow. I neither want or need your gratitude. The policy I'm talking about would apply to all including me. And since I consider two years an acceptable time to log in if I want to keep MY stuff... ACCEPTED!

Nobody ever said it was a need. There isn't a single thing in this game that is a "need" including the game itself. Literally every thing in it is a want, not a need. In other words, what you just said is also no reason NOT to do this.

What did you think I asked? Nobody, in this entire thread, has claimed you can't come up with a character name...eventually. Of course you can. We all do. That's not what any of this was ever about. It's about getting your first choice, which is usually (but not always) your preferred name. I'm talking about name checks. However you do it. I said character creator, but checking a name with /friend is effectively the same thing. You come up with a name idea, usually the one you think is most appropriate for that character and then you check it. Bzzt! Taken. So you think of another. Maybe, on some occasions you even think of a better name in this process, but more often than not, I bet that first name is the "most wanted". The whole point of asking this is to show how often wanted names are already taken. From there, you look at the ratio of inactive to active accounts. The odds that the name is taken by an inactive account are HIGHER than the odds they are on an active account. There are simply far more inactive accounts. Now, as I've admitted many times, there's no way we know how many of those are on accounts that have been inactive for two whole years. It would have to be tried to know for sure. But.. you provided what I needed anyway, thanks: If you don't think 50% of the names you try being taken already put together with the fact that probably only one tenth of accounts that exist are being actively played doesn't add up to a strong possibility that lots of wanted names are sitting in inactive accounts, then sure... we should leave it here. Because that's my whole argument. And I haven't seen anyone explain what's wrong with this logic yet.

What happened that anyone on Live would notice? I was on Live too and I don't remember this at all. You don't SEE these names being released. You wouldn't know if a new name you picked was available because of this release script being run unless you had tried it immediately afterwards. Most people who run into a name collision figure out a new name and are on their way. They don't try it again. But look, forget it. You are just gonna keep repeating that it happened the way the devs claimed it did and I'm gonna keep point out how I think it's completely ridiculous that you could have released hundreds of thousands of names nobody wanted. I'm not saying anybody is lying. I'm saying there's something about that that is probably missing that explains it. Maybe, like I said, they were wrong to cut it off at 35. When you think of people who would have gotten burned out playing and quit, isn't it likely they got at least one character to 50? I certainly did when I left CoH for a time before returning for CoV. You are 199 for 200 on getting the name you typed the very first time? Because that's what I meant. I am not saying you couldn't come up with a different name. Everybody does that. If you really have gotten that many on your first time, congrats. But it would have to have something to do with how you pick those names. People who use common words, which is pretty typical of the genre, would run into collisions a lot more often than that. Example: I wanted to re-create a stalker from Everlasting on Excelsior. Name was "Metal Ninja". On Excelsior? Taken. Okay "Iron Ninja"? Taken. "Steel Ninja"? Not taken! But let me keep looking. "Chrome Ninja"? Yeah, I like that better. Goes with the shiny metallic look. So I could come up with the name. But VERY easy to have a collision when you are trying to make a typically simple comic book genre name like that rather than "Glorziblurg Freezonab" or something totally random. I've certainly been surprised too by what ISN'T taken. "Annie Matter" my old Rad/Rad corruptor from Virtue, was not taken, surprisingly, in March of this year when I joined HC. But had I tried "Aunty Matter"? That would have been taken. And like I've said plenty of times already, there's no guarantee those taken names would not be from active accounts, but the odds are decent that they could be considering the ratio of inactive to active accounts.

So? It is a "slippery slope" fallacy to suggest that just because there is a name release policy that it would inevitably be expanded. Every rule in the game draws a line somewhere and the act of drawing it doesn't imply it MUST move.

It's a report of what happened and it stretches credulity, which is why I am questioning it. There should have been hundreds of thousands of inactive accounts when they ran those scripts but I'm supposed to believe that freed up no names anybody wanted? Bull. Either that or their decision to cut it off at level 35 was wrong. How many people played the game to 50 and then left for good, having "finished" it? When you consider that the kinds of names people make in this game aren't nearly as random as in other games. They are most often some type of descriptive powers-based thing. They are more likely to be thought of by multiple people than my much more random SWTOR names and yet even THOSE were taken while I was away. Hell, what's your own experience? When in the character creator, how often do you try to come up with a name and it's taken? When you consider that the number of active accounts right now is probably a tenth of the total accounts that exist, the odds are high the person who has that name isn't playing. Have they not played for two years? That's much harder to say. But worth a look.

Seriously... what the hell are you even going on about? I didn't say anything about every character slot on every server being used. Why are you talking about that? It's got nothing to do with anything.

No, I'm not.

I'm not saying it will free up any names *I* personally, want. But that anybody wants? That's the part I find hard to believe no matter what that wiki says. Like I said, my own experience with SWTOR is that I've had names I lost due to inactivity. In much less than two years. And they weren't even the kinds of names we have here. They weren't even words in any language. Just names I put together phonetically that sounded "Star Warsy" to me. And boom... they got taken. And not just one of them. Several. Also, we've all seen plenty of names like Snarky's "c10wny" example where it was obvious people wanted a name that was taken, so came up with some variant using numbers or punctuation or misspelling. Doesn't mean the person who had it wasn't also an active player on that server, but odds are decent they aren't. Maybe not that they've been inactive two years but... we wouldn't know until we tried it. I don't see the harm in it. Two years is more than reasonable and if nobody wants them then nobody whose been complaining in this thread is losing a name when it's unreserved, right?

I never take it. Did it leave you hidden before? In City of Data, it looks like Spring Attack is implemented as an ExecutePower redirect after the teleport, which is like how Savage Melee's Savage Leap is implemented. It does not spawn a pseudo-pet like Shield Charge or Lightning Rod. I think the whole thing with SC and LR not dropping hide was more of a side-effect than actual intended behavior. It's supposed to be an attack and attacks are supposed to drop Hide. Just nobody bothered to change it. The positive benefit of it being implemented this way though.... it should work a lot better with procs. Have you tried any?

There has to be some context missing from this claim. Was there already an automatic name release for unpaid accounts? Or just that script? Because if it was just the script cleaning up abandoned accounts, it should have found TONS of names to release. The number of active accounts is a small fraction of total accounts in any MMO. At the point in time when WoW reached 100 million total accounts, it had 7.6 million active accounts. Just look at Homecoming Stats. Last posted in 2020. The Februrary 2020 total accounts was 160K. Active accounts? 32K. Granted that is just active for that month and we've been talking about two years inactive, but it hints at how many people who once created an account are probably not playing anymore. If even a tenth of those accounts hadn't logged in since late August 2019, a name release would hit sixteen thousand accounts times however many characters were in each. Probably an average of more than one each.

Doubt it. We haven't managed it here so I wouldn't count on anyone doing it in game. People who have a problem with "no tells" should just not join those teams then. Nobody owes them an explanation and, like I said, nobody COULD convince them. Not the ones who are so offended by it that they feel it's okay to get abusive in game with the team leaders. Best just to ignore them. Not put them on ignore, just don't engage. Put them on ignore if they start harassing you about it. That's my conclusion anyway after this whole failed thread.

So they don't have to team with you ever and you don't have to team with someone who dared not stop everything they were doing to explain themselves to you, a total stranger, just because you demanded it. Sounds like everybody wins to me.

What if there's a nuclear war! What if aliens!? Good grief people. This was a simple suggestion. It is not nefarious. It is not cruel. It's been done in THIS game on Live. It is done routinely in other MMOs. Nobody is kicking puppies or clubbing baby seals. Nobody is being "harmed". If you think this is pure evil that is your own extremely ludicrously exaggerated (in my opinion) opinion, not some "fact". We're talking about names in a game. Grab some perspective please and take the melodrama down about eleventy notches before this whole thread gets locked. Unless some of you are trying to do that, I guess. If you don't like the idea that's all you have to say. You don't have to accuse the people who disagree with you of war crimes. FFS. Bunch of drama queens some of you.