golstat2003

One other suggestion is maybe more content for lower levels (more paths from 1-20) so that we don't have to do Frost Fire for the 1121212121th time. And maybe this should be one of the constant updates. But that will require the Homecoming team having the bandwidth to create new content, and I don't think they are quite there yet.

That’s actually the root issue. The “everyone needs to play what I want and how I want” players and posters really are struggling with interpersonal relationships in the virtual world. They believe that they should be able to log in and immediately have a bunch of people willing to play with them, doing the content they want to do and performing it the way they want them to as well. In short, the world revolves around them in their mind and it’s very disappointing to learn that they can’t force all other players to conform to their wishes. Thus they insist the developers force their will on the rest of us. The real issue is self-centeredness. Not leveling speed/rewards/powers/whatever. I think self-centeredness is the focus for most MMORPG players. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Let me be transparent - I don't play DFB, and I don't PL - I enjoy the grind. It's a badge of honor for me, but I don't expect it to be so for anyone else. I also don't think we should try to stop PL'ing - it's a reality that's going to be in the game no matter what. When it affects other players - then we should discuss. I don't support nerfing or changing DFB at this point - not where I would want developers to spend their time. Back to self-centeredness - for every player on this board advocating against DFB, I'm sure I can find a similar number of players complaining about AE XP being nerfed, or Vanguard Merits, or what not. And some of those AE folks don't seem to care about the server issues it causes - they just want their XP, the heck if makes the game unplayable for everyone else. Pretty self-centered. RP'er's play to role play and advocate for the name change policy to support time spent in toon, not the level, PVP'ers advocate for PVP changes and things that encourage PVP, PL'ers advocate for things that let them PL faster, Min/Max advocate for power changes that make them more uber, and grinders' like me advocate for more content driven changes. It's a game - we don't play it to be selfless, we play it to be self-centered. We aren't here to actually save the world. As for people "insisting" the developers do things - I haven't seen that behavior in the OP. It was a request. It wasn't "do it my way or I'm leaving". Not really clear why so many requests on this board that are made turn into people projecting that OP is demanding something of everyone else. It's a request...right, wrong or indifferent, it was just a request. Don't like - say so, love it - give it a plus one. But tell the OP they they are selfish, or demanding, or insisting, or hating unless that's what they are actually saying. Finally - It can be hard for people to team up. Again, we are all self-centered, we all want to find a group that plays the way we do. I was asking for people to team with me last night to help with my missions - no takers. Someone finally took pity on me I think and invited me to a group that was way overpowered for their missions and I was pretty useless. 90% of the damage was done in the first 10 seconds, and the remaining 10% in the next 10 seconds. It's not how I play. I thanked them (they weren't rude, in fact they were very nice) and went on my way. After asking 3 other people thru tells if they wanted to play, I got tired and gave up. Did I take initiative? Yes I did...How did I feel? Frustrated (though not at any person, just in general), and a just a little rejected. I don't take it personally, no one was rejecting me as a person, but it's still not a very happy ending to the story. So please don't tell people that it's all in their heads if they can't get a team they like. And you DFB players would be very disappointed if no one wanted to play DFB teams - so it's easy to cast stones on others because you've already got all the people teaming for DFB that you could want... See the thing is, you're not going to get the exact team you like at any time of the day at any time. The line of "your experience is subject to change" that had been used for years when developers describe their mmos is factual. Sometimes the teaming will be fast and sometimes it will be slow. That's just the reality. That does not mean there is anything wrong with the content that folks are doing at that particular time that you don't want to do. I think folks are just frustrated with being told constantly that their way is not the right way to play, just because they choose not to be available to play with everyone 24/7. MMO or MMORPG means you will be around players 24/7. It does not mean that all of them, or even some of them, or even a fraction of them will want to team with you.

Sigh. Do you know how to make friends? If so, make your own team to do what you want them to do. Unless everyone gets sick of you trying to force them to do ONLY what YOU want to do. In which case I think we have identified the real issue here. There’s so many of your type on these boards. Just like in the old Live instance of this game. And the devs will listen to you because they, in general, want you to play the way THEY coded the game to work. They don’t like it, and take it personally, when we find ways to avoid doing it JUST the way they wanted us to. It was this mentality that led to a never ending path of nerfs in the old game, to appease their creative egos and now its yours, and other players like you, who are destined to try and enforce your views on everyone else. Go play how you want. I will do likewise. You won’t see me mounting a campaign to FORBID everyone from trying to play the game the way they want it to be played. Because I enjoy all of it and consider this a sandbox, not a game experience on rails that can only be played the way you want it to be played. I hope selfish attitudes like this don’t ruin this game the way it did the first time. Agreed. What a lot of folks don’t get is this: 1. A lot of vets have done the sub level 20 stories to death. They are not going to do them again. If DFB is needed they will just move onto the next thing that lets them skip the first boring 20 levels. So folks who incapable of forming their own teams (which I find ridiculous) still won’t have them in the pool of people to team with. 2. Some folks are like me: We get to 50, IO out and the. Go back and use Ouroboros or do the lower level refs at 50. You’re not going to be teaming with these folks ever. Also complaining about it taking 15 minutes to find a team is a joke when you have the ability to form your own team at anytime. Here’s a hint: the folks doing dfb would never have teamed with you in the first place.

I prefer it this way, I don't have the time to do trials countless times to grind out abilities. If you don't like it, then do the trials a bunch before you acquire any abilities and it'll take you just as long as it used to! Stop complaining that other people aren't grinding as much as you think they should. And let's stop pretending grinding in a game to get rewards is some sort of accomplishment or great feat, it's not. It's simply grinding and it's not a notable accomplishment in any way and it's nothing to feel special about. It's simply grinding. If you enjoy it, cool, then do it. Agreed. Again if anyone wants the grind then they can do so, or they can find one of the i24 servers. They are not a secret where to find them. The installation guide clearly has addresses for them.

because dividing the community this way and not supporting other operations is obviously bad for the community the game came back by a miracle, we shouldn't be competing and throwing each other under the bus especially considering there's no legal way to benefit from these operations. We should be acting like a god damn community. Um yeah, no. Not just no, but HELL NO! If those other operators are doing things that could bring down NCSOFT upon ALL of us, then NO, the Homecoming team is under no obligation to support their shenanigans. Full stop. And folks can find those other servers. The installation guide clearly states where to find them. This team (and it's wonderful work) are under no obligation to advertise for them. (Especially with some of the toxicity allowed, as I've read, in one of the more, errr, anything goes servers) The i24 servers aren't some trade secret. Folks know where to find them if they want that. Clearly with the majority being here, they don't. I prefer i25, folks that don't have options other than Homecoming.

I like your "Think global but act local" view. And I have no reservations about people that do Power level (just missing out on some fun content IMHO), I freely admit to using DFB to get to my 20's (being an Altoholic repeating the same missions over and over can become tedious). My main (i guess) gripe is... Why? I get all these things handed to me where's the impetus for me to actually do anything in game? I can make my own Superbase better than the batcave. Why do I need an SG? I can open my Incarnate slot and get all the threads/shards/whatever I need just by doing RWZ until my eyes bleed. Why should I do anything else? Without the adversity of mission, the game (for me, your mileage may vary) looses the sense of accomplishment. and yes No one is talking about turning off XP. More of turning up the difficulty in gaining it. There is nothing that needs to be to turned up. If you want it more difficult that is completely in your control.

Tailor missions and badges. I think the tailor is also where you go for the body scuplting (changing your size...) I think the one in the Tiki Room of pocket D is the only one that lets you change your body type (male, female, huge, size). Thanks or the tip on the Tiki Room. I have a character that has her second costume stuck on different size than the main. I'll be heading there later to fix it lol. Where in the D is the Tiki Room?

DFB is playing a trial the devs specifically designed for lower levels. I don't consider that the same as AE.

I'll own up to misunderstanding what you meant by dbquery. I had assumed you either just meant generally a database query, or something like the bit of LINQ library that also generates database queries, not to an existing executable. I also got off my butt and looked at the source for the tool other servers are running, and yep that's what's going on. My bad. I wouldn't particularly worry about "the same format". As long as the data is parseable, somebody can always write a tool later to munge it to however it needs to look, especially if you open source whatever model code you'd be using to serialize it. If the concern is just security, it'd be pretty trivial to throw up a lightweight API server using a framework in your language of choice, toss nginx in front of it, and limit requests to a specific incoming IP. Then your public-facing web server can just query that. The amount of code difference there is pretty negligible. Actually using a replica would indeed generate more costs, but as I alluded to, I'd think you'd want a replica anyway. The alternative is all sorts of potential hilarity when you lose a drive on your db server and need to do a raid rebuild, or a rollback if the db eats its fingers. If the goal is stability, that should be pretty high on your list regardless of any export functionality. If you do your interesting logic in an API layer separate from the website to alleviate your existing security concern, then all you are rewriting is the ability to read and display the output from that backend API call. Burdensome is substantially better than nonexistent. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. It's perfectly possible to throw together something that gives us safety now and then still build those other, cooler things later. Besides, I bet if you create a crappy web interface, other people could throw together a tool to log in to your website, crawl through the character list, and scrape all of the characters without you having to build anything else. Given how the centralized control model worked out for me in 2012, I tend to think that doing it "right" in this case is at least throwing together something simple so your players can manage their own character data before worrying about whether you can get more than 2000 players on a shard, but you are, of course, entitled to your own priorities. Add me to the list of people who would rather see them do it correctly, then rush something through that is problematic or causes a problem for the servers. I agree with the devs approach.