ZemX

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.

I like taking Provoke and Teleport Target for the team utility (and Provoke is handy solo too for keeping things from running away), but I've yet to be completely comfortable without Combat Jumping, so I end up going Fighting, Leaping, Teleport, and Presence. I've toyed with leaving out Teleport for Leadership but not liked it much.

Tanker/Brute would be a safe choice. Usually is. I'd take something that isn't weak to psi though. High defense with good defense debuff resistance might be nice. Super Reflexes? You'll just be fielding a lot of attacks carrying debuffs if you up the team size. The best debuff resistance is not being hit. An /SR Brute would also do well at the "kill them before they kill you" race once you've built up some Fury, which won't be hard if you're always surrounded by a decent sized group of enemies. Pick a primary with good AoE.

Wait, you're serious? All the little smileys... I just figured you were joking or trolling. Then again, here you are just trying the straw man argument a second time while ignoring my answer. One more time then and I will assume you're a troll if you ignore it a second time: No, I'm not okay as long as it is someone else. It's okay because the whole point of a name release policy isn't to steal things from people that still want them but to recover abandoned names from people who are never coming back. Obviously, there's no 100% perfect way to know someone has left for good so you draw a line somewhere reasonable. And two years is more than reasonable. Doesn't mean you can't find one or two people who came back after two years. But that also doesn't make it an unreasonable policy. It is not too much to ask, if people actually care that much, to freakin' log in ONCE in that much time. And that's really about all that I can say about it. It's just not worth having a huge fight over. It's probably not happening anyway.

Heh... did the same just now. It's 220 feet or so, base. You can target something on the map and get range from that waypoint. Teleport, by comparison, is 350 feet unenhanced, and can be chained for very low end use. Also has that nice hang time/untouchable phase, which Team TP never got. City of Data isn't to blame. The in-game power description says 25 feet too. CoD, in fact, uses the same data files as the in-game description does. But clearly the power itself is using something else and the description is wrong, hence CoD shows the same wrong value. Nevertheless, it's slow, more susceptible to lag, shorter range, and more endurance. It's not what anybody is talking about when they say "teleport is the fastest travel power". 😀 But it's not without some use, I suppose. However niche.

It's okay if it's the other person who abandoned the game for two years. Yes. And... I think I'm done feeding the trolls. Hope you had your fill, guys.

Only if you are suffering from an excess of melodrama. Might want to see your doctor about that.

I wouldn't call it disappointment. If it doesn't free up a bunch of names, it means most of the accounts are held by active players. That's good news.

Nope, it has a radius as well and that is 30ft. It's baffling. I almost want to go to test server right now and try it. 🤪

I know, right? Who could possibly turn a worldwide threat into mere politics?! Inconceivable! 😈

From what I hear, a whole ton of people logged in when HC went live or shortly afterwards, coming over from games like WoW to look about. They then got bored and left. There might be quite a few names nobody has used in two years. But the flipside is... what's the harm? This sort of thing is common in MMOs. I've been thinking of playing SWTOR again recently and I know, when I go back, I'll probably be picking new names for any characters I have there. It's been over a year. Might be two. Not a big deal though to me. If someone wanted one of those names and was actively playing? Good for them. If I cared that much, I'd have kept playing. I think it's a small thing either way that people are making into a much bigger deal than it is. If it never happens, it won't be the end of the world for me either.

Nope. Your "stuff" belongs to the Homecoming team and so does mine. If they decide it's not your name after two years of inactivity then nobody is taking anything from anybody. You abandoned it and someone else picked it up.

Bit of a false equivalence. One person being asked to "think up a new name" is an active player. The other is someone who returned to the game after two years of not logging in even once. And it's probably a rare case on top of that. Of all the people who haven't logged in in two years... how many do you actually think are EVER coming back? How many people came over to the game in 2019 because a friend told them about it.. and then they left after a day because everybody kept laughing at them when they asked how to calculate their gear score?

Hmm... nope. The effect is tagged as ignoring resistance and player teammates are autohit by the power. But maybe it used to be resistable and that's a holdover. I just can't imagine 25 feet is the correct range. That's the range on ... Caltrops and it's barely enough to throw them out in front of you. I've never taken Team TP myself, so I have no idea how far you can actually teleport with it. I've only heard it has less range than Teleport. But if the range given in the power description isn't the actual teleport distance... what is?