ZacKing

People complain about grinding all kinds of stuff in MMOs. They still grind despite the complaining, so "hoarders" are still going to hold onto their names.

Yeah, this is bollocks. You're being disingenuous here. No personal offense meant, but trying to say there's no people here who are chomping at the bit right now to release all those names in the hope that the one they really want will get freed up is just being willfully ignorant. It's a false hope in that there's already a 1 in 700,000+ chance the name someone wants is going to get freed up. That means the chances are overwhelming going to be that person hoping for that name is going to be very disappointed and probably come here to the forums to rant about it. Saying otherwise is ridiculous. As far as what's "selfish" goes, the "selfish" ones here are the folks who simply cannot live without their new costume piece, new powerset, new mission, new badge or whatever new shiny they're wanting in favor of giving the dev team here time to work on something like fixing this name thing once and for all for everyone so everyone can have the exact name they want. The HC peeps know what the problem is and what it would take to fix. Yeah, it's a big job. Yeah, it won't be an easy fix to make, but I have the utmost confidence in them. They've got the knowledge, talent and skills to do it.

The policy as it exists now isn't going to stop anyone who wants to hoard names from hoarding names. They can still log in every one of their sub-50 characters and keep whatever names they want.

That's arrogantly presumptuous and yeah, it's looking down your nose at people who don't live up to your expectations of creativity or imagination. Please dismount your high horse. No one here is suggesting anyone should be able to make clones and charge money and show up at some kids birthday party here or any of that other nonsense you're on about. If you'd read through the posts I've made in this thread where I've said on numerous occasions, if you see something, say something and report it. We all know it's a violation of the rules. The reasons why people make clones here, whether that be out of passion or ignorance or malice is completely and totally irrelevant. It's against the rules, period. End of discussion. My point was that if I see someone making a Superman clone, I'm not immediately jumping to the conclusion that they're doing it to be a jerk. I'll just report them and let the GMs do their thing.

Yeah no, superheroes are absolutely not a distinctly North American thing. Superhero movies and merchandise rakes in billions all over the world. Not sure where you're from, but we do have Halloween here in Europe and I see kids dressed up as famous Marvel and DC superheroes all time. There's superhero merch in stores all over the place, so definitely not just a North American thing. And no, cosplayers at a convention isn't a strawman. Ever been to a comic con or anime con or any kind of con in general? Many of the people who cosplay there are incredibly amazingly talented and creative people in replicating the costumes and such of their favorite character. They're not doing it out of a lack of imagination or creativity, they're doing it because they're passionate about those characters. Any one of them could most certainly come up with an original character, they just choose not to in favor of cosplaying and supporting their favorite character to share their love for it. That's not a "lack of creativity", it's passion, which is what I personally think some people are doing when they make a clone here. Looking down your nose at people for "not being creative" and "lacking imagination" is just being ignorant in my opinion.

Internet win!

I think it's more they went for the cash grab to churn out as much as they possibly could to strike while the irons hot. They definitely focused on volume instead of writing decent, cohesive stories and focusing on character development. Part of that was their desire to compete in the streaming service wars and cranked out as much crap as fast as they possibly could to have as much content on Disney+ as possible. Coupe that with hiring writers who didn't know the first thing about the comics or the characters they were writing for was a huge, huge, HUGE mistake in my opinion.

Setting aside that making exact clones here is against the rules for a minute .... So as a kid when you were reading comics, you didn't want to pretend to be Superman or Batman or Iron Man or Spider-Man or whatever character you were reading at the time? You were happy playing as generic super strong dude? On Halloween all those kids who want to dress up as their favorite superhero are all unimaginative dolts? People who are cosplaying their favorite characters at comic cons are stupid and lack any creativity? You're really no one to judge what is or isn't "creative enough" for other people. By all means, report them if you see it in game, but don't belittle anyone for their "lack of imagination."

See, this is another example of people spreading misinformation in order to create a sense of panic and FUD. Disney didn't sue that family for using Spider-Man on a balloon at a kids birthday. They denied the family's request to use an image of Spider-Man on their sons headstone. Enormous difference. There was another similar case where a family wanted to have Mickey Mouse on the child's headstone too. It was an express wish of Walt Disney himself that his characters not be used for anything sad like the death of a child. And the one kid did receive a personalized signed copy of a frame from the actual Spider-Man movie as a compromise. Disney didn't sue the family into oblivion. I have to agree, enough with the FUD and spreading misinformation already. It's getting really old. The GMs have spoken here. If you see something you feel isn't right, report it to them and move on. It's their call, so let them do their job. That's what they're here for.

I don't necessarily disagree, but the GMs can't be everywhere every minute of every day. They have to rely on player reports. We as players can PM others from now until the cows come home and gently remind them of the TOS , but it's not going to force anyone to change a name or costume. Only GMs can do that.

Ultimately it's not your decision to make. It's up to HC GMs to decide what is or isn't breaking a copyright rule. Better to let them make the call. You're never going to get consensus from the community at large as to what's acceptable and what isn't. One person's homage is another person's copyright violation. If you want to PM people, go right ahead. All I'm suggesting is that it's better to have a GM make the call and contact the player if necessary. As to someone "spamming" them with reports, so long as they're legit, I don't see the problem.

Enough that it's a problem that comes up often here and is clearly a big issue for many. Here's just one recent example. There's already a handful of open threads about it in General Discussion right now, not to mention various server subforums for name releases and such. Personally, I'm fine with using a thesaurus or doing without a name, but clearly some people just aren't. Like I said, I'm perfectly fine going without a costume piece or new powerset if it means people like those expressing their frustration over names can get that problem resolved permanently.

No. If you think someone is breaking the rules, report them and let the HC GMs make the determination. No need to start arguments with and pestering other players about it. Better if that message comes from a GM.

I've said this in another thread, I think the whole name thing should be resolved through code so that names don't have to be unique and are a combo of charactername@accountname like Cryptic did in their updated engine. HC could run their name release code right now and there's still going to be a ton of disappointed people who think that a name they want is going to get freed up but didn't. There's no guesswork if this gets fixed permanently instead of a band aid fix. Yes it's a big project and yes the devs here absolutely can handle it if they wanted to do it. Posts they've made on the topic over the years have shown they've got a good understanding of the problem and what it would take to truly fix it. Hopefully they can bring on more devs to help with a project like that as I personally think its a worthwhile endeavor for the long term health of the game and would make a lot of people happy.

Badges may be a low hanging fruit thing to do, but why even bother tying them to prestige if prestige has no real meaning? Enabling it just to enable it so that a badge can be earned without the added sacrifices of XP or inf the way the old system worked seems like a wasted effort.

I remember the dev posts talking about this where they said it would be a big project and require a lot of work, but not impossible to do. If taking that on helps eliminate the pain point and frustration a lot of people have with character names, maybe its a pita worth enduring. Like I said above, I personally can live without a new costume piece or two or new mission for a while while this gets worked on.

No personal offense meant to you, but this is very arrogant and presumptuous. You aren't in any position to speak for anyone here either and you're attacking someone for their supposed lack of knowledge and sharing their opinion. Your post isn't lending anything to the conversation. It comes off as defensive and just looking to start a fight by attacking someone who has a different opinion than you do and white knighting. That's not cool. I do see you apologized for it though, so that's a good thing and very kind of you to admit you were wrong. Says a lot of good about you. I'm happy to admit I don't know anything about the code here or what the devs are or aren't capable of. I will say I do agree with what @Excraft said in that based on the devs own posts, they look to have a very good handle on why things work or don't work and what it would take to fix things properly for good. So yeah, that's not demanding or dictating to anyone what they should or shouldn't work on. It's just sharing an opinion on what they feel might be a more worthwhile effort if the team here decides to take on that project and expressing their confidence in the devs that they can handle a big project like that. No idea why a couple of people here are taking that as some personal insult of the dev team or someone kicking a puppy and using it as a white knighting opportunity. Anyway, one thing that seems to have been lost here is that the whole names topic and how to fix it has come up a quite a lot over the years. Having a name not be available has been a continuing pain point for a lot of people and has led to a lot of frustration for many players. Seems like some people posting here have forgotten that's what this thread is about. So yeah, maybe it's worth the extra time and effort to put in a fix that makes the name problem go away so more people can enjoy the game playing a character with a name they really want. Being of the opinion that kind of project is a good and valuable use of dev time isn't being selfish since it helps everyone, especially those who would get the opportunity to get a name they really wanted but couldn't get. For me personally, I could definitely live without a new costume piece or story content for a while if it meant that the name issue could be resolved properly once and for all for everyone. That makes sure there's no guesswork in whether or not a name would be released and no disappointment when it isn't through the existing naming policy. @Excraft is right, the HC devs have posted quite a few tidbits over the years about the challenges in fixing how names work. It's not something they said they absolutely couldn't do, they just chose less involved things due to limited staff, but they're recruiting more now. They definitely know what they're doing and they're fully capable of understanding the problem and have the skills to fix it. Maybe they can take on something bigger like that with more people helping to code. I don't think that's a bad thing for them to work on for the long term health of the game. That's just my opinion though. You may feel different and that's ok too. Free and open discussion and sharing of ideas and opinions should be allowed here without others immediately pouncing on someone who disagrees with something done here.

Absolute no to anything even remotely like the old prestige system and absolutely no to any new kind of prestige system. The game is far, far, far better off without it. Spend some time taking a tour around the servers to the beautiful bases people have built, many of them freely open to the community for use, that never would have been possible under the old prestige system. Hard no on prestige.

Thanks for the efforts here. Appreciate the work you've all put into this.

I don't know, I think that projects like making it so names don't have to be unique or being able to check on names based on account (not character) activity, stabilizing the architecture so that the server doesn't explode when there's a high number of players on it are a hell of a lot more important than "diversity bonuses". Not everyone is going to universally love every little update made. There's nothing wrong with having a different opinion. We all get that they're a volunteer staff. That doesn't mean they're incapable of more involved projects. Seems to me they're just as, if not more, fluent in the code and architecture of the game than Cryptic was. I'd argue that HC has the advantage here in that I don't think they've had the turnover that Cryptic had so they've got more people who've worked with the code longer. I also take it they're far better at documenting code than Cryptic was. So adding more story content, power sets, modernizing the code and such isn't to improve the game or attract new players?? Everyone knows they're volunteers. And I don't know about you, but seems to me they've had the manpower to grow and evolve the game over the last five years because that's exactly what they have been doing. Maybe I'm wrong, but seems to me if the goal wasn't to improve and grow the game, they'd have just left it like it was at sunset and just kept it up and running and stable so people could log in and play. No need for new content.

That's a stretch IMO, but I suppose it's possible. You have more people with better, more powerful rigs now that can handle dual boxing than there were back in the day. Free server transfers and unlimited character slots on free servers are a Homecoming decision, not design decisions from Paragon Studios thing. Those are contributing factors too. Guaranteed a very big chunk, if not all of the "players" being shown in the stats are people dual or triple boxing to PL alts. Yeah, this double xp thing will work in the short term as a band aid, but its just creating a situation where players are taking advantage of the free above and beyond XP boost to pl alts even faster that they'll eventually transfer back over to Excelsior or Everlasting once things quiet back down. Hope you all can figure out a more permanent fix. Must be quite a challenge for you all to pick through 20 year old code that will need to be rebuilt in order to fix a lot of these problems. I wish you good luck with it. I'm sure you'll think of something.

People can disagree with you and there's nothing wrong with that. There's things this server does ok, there's things other servers do way, way, way better. Maybe if you looked into what other servers are doing and have to offer, you could have an opinion on the topic, just like others have. Yup. Yours stinks too. 😉

Hey if they're not interested in hearing from people why they've left playing here for other servers or all together, that's their choice. Are they looking to keep people here, bring some of those who left back to give the game another try or just let the population drop to the point where it's a ghost town?

Yup. Have been for a long time now. I don't log in much here anymore since most people I know moved on to other servers or just stopped playing because of poor design decisions that outweighed any of the good stuff. Playing on those other servers gives you a pretty good perspective on the game though. All of the servers are doing good things and bad things. Last time I checked, it's still ok to come here and let the people know what we think they're doing right and what they're doing wrong, if that's ok with you of course?