ZacKing

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?

Uh huh. Losing Vet XP in AE or losing the emp merit conversion or both wasn't a compromise though. It's still getting nerfed, the players just got to sort of pick which one and told that is a compromise because "we listen." Solo players who primarily are interested in solo play lost out on those bonus merits from converting and are being told "just run iTrials now" as compensation. That's trying to herd people into a specific way of play. I know you all don't see it that way so whatever. And for free incarnate powers, so what? That's great if it's what you're into. Quite a lot of players aren't chasing incarnates. As for the rest, I'm sure all that stuff is on your chopping block at some point. Gotta make the game a boring grind! That'll really draw in the big crowds.....

Not to be disparaging but the game is still a small population. It's always going to be a small population. Thinking you're going to have huge numbers of players is a pipe dream. You're only listening and taking direction from one group though. The complaints of the second group you're talking about here are a direct result of listening only to the chosen few in the first group. It's not hard to see that.

They don't care if it hurts regular players like yourself. For everyone now complaining about it, where were you when this was in beta testing? That was the time to say something. It's too late now. Maybe start sending in support tickets in game or notes here on the forums to let them know this change really does suck and needs to be reversed. Either that or do what was suggested above, just move on to New Dawn and enjoy playing the game again free from the inner circle here. New Dawn has one free level 50 with all badges and accolades unlocked and whatever IO sets you want per account with free 2 bill influence. Maybe when the population here drops even further the message will start getting across.

You can put anyone on ignore that you want and never have to read another doom post again.

Yeah I'll determine for myself how big or small an impact changes are on me thanks. Population has been steadily declining for a while now and none of the new and super cool content seems to be changing that.

I don't care what they say. Not saying they're lying, just I don't completely buy it. If you want to believe every word they say, more power to you. I saw where reward merits are getting added to iTrials and such. Thanks? That doesn't help the soloer out all that much if needing to wait on full leagues to make up for those merits they lost from converting emps they could get solo.

Yeah it also impacts everyone who isn't doing that. Having the option to convert them into some quick reward merits was a nice bonus if you had a few spare emps lying around and needed some merits to fill out a build. Or you could convert them into other stuff to sell for some quick inf. You got those emps natively from vet levels doing any content, not just AE. I think people forget that. Not everyone is getting those emps from vet levels doing AE farms.

If that's true then it's clear that the need to remove the emp merit conversion is BS. Farmers are going to farm tons of inf whether they convert the empyrian merits or not. They're a drop of a drop of a drop in the bucket. They're being removed to try and push solo players out of AE who were converting them to reward merits. Plain and simple.

No interest in hard mode. Too long a slog for me and not my idea of fun. I never see this advertised in LFG or in the various team forming channels I belong to on Torch and Excel. No issue with it being available to those who want to try and tell others how to play though.

Of course! Gotta do something to keep the narrative alive. Next it will be you can only compare AT to AT using the same power sets and same exact builds running the same specific content. Of course they want to include that because that's one area where AE is going to be better in that narrow situation because you can control what map you run. It's utterly hilarious that when you asked for criteria, you got belittled and berated for it. Now all of a sudden that others are posting their findings that don't jive with the bullshit "AE is the best!" narrative trying to be forced on us, the goalposts must be moved and all kinds of restrictions need to be put into place to make sure it rings true. It's all hypocritical nonsense. Nope. What other goal posts would you like to move now?

Just saying 😉😁

And the fact that you want to bullshit everyone into believing anecdotal evidence is equal to hard facts shows that you're an even bigger idiot than me.