ShardWarrior

Whether people are farming in AE or a Portal mission, the result is the same. Farmers running across multiple accounts can and still would earn inf faster than your average player and can buy merits with excess inf if they wanted to.

Once again, removing AE entirely does not solve this problem. All it does is replace "AE of Heroes" with "Portal Farm of Heroes" or "Radio Mission Farm of Heroes". Farmers who spend all their time farming are not going to start doing TF content with others. If that means moving out of AE back to the old portal missions, honestly what is the difference?

Just being honest, I do not see any of what is being done here forcing people out of AE to run more "normal/right" content. People who enjoy farming are still going to farm or continue to solo. Were XP and inf to be removed from AE or AE removed entirely, those same people would just go back to farming the old missions. They are going to find the next most efficient way to farm influence and/or XP. Most players spending their time in AE is definitely not the case from what I can see. I play almost every day and see requests in LFG for all kinds of non-AE content. All weekend long I saw plenty of advertisements for TFs and story arcs advertised on Excelsior. I formed a few SBB runs and TFs myself and had no problem filling. We had two teams on a league running Synapse on Saturday. I cannot speak to other servers, however what I see on Excelsior and Torchbearer does not line up with what is being said regarding the majority of players just staying in AE.

Fair enough. Just seems to me that the goal is to get more people to do "normal/right" content as the general complaint from the "normal/right" content crowd is too many people are spending too much time in AE. Personally, I do not see having to run a few iTrials or DA arcs here and there to be that big of a deal, however I freely admit everyone is different. As I said, I never said this was a perfect idea.

There is not much they can do to prevent that short of shutting the game off. AFK farmers running 24/7 across multiple accounts are going to earn way more inf than the average player regardless of playing in AE or not. This is subjective to the individual. It all depends on what rewards they are after. You can farm special enhancements and reward merits fairly quickly by speed running TFs. Only speaking for myself here, but I farm only when I am short on inf or want to boost alts a few levels. Most of the time I will run non-AE content. It gets boring farming all the time.

Would be faster to run back to back iTrials to get everything you need to get to T4 I think. The problem seems to be EMP merits from Vet levels being "too good" in relation to "normal/right" play and buffing the EMP merit drops from iTrials does not seem to be on the table, so was trying to think of a compromise. I never said it was a perfect idea. 😁

Thinking about this a bit more, would it be possible to reduce the number of EMP merits granted by the Vet levels by half? So instead of like 10 per 3 Vet levels or whatever make it 5. Still provides the nice bonus with "normal/right play" content being the better source for them.

Absolutely nothing wrong with disagreement. It is a normal, healthy thing to see all sides of an issue.

In a way, it does. It is trying to actively bully people into playing alts for reasons that are specious at best. It also assumes that anyone who has low level alts that are not leveled up to 50 are just name hording. You did not pay for a name either. This is just the mentality of the entitled whiner who feels they have more right to something than the next person because they want it. Yes as it should. This is where the policy should be used - on accounts (not characters) that have not been logged into for 2 years or more. I understand that it would be more work to program this to go by account instead of character. It is more work, but a better solution overall. The ideal solution is to fix the code so that names global handles can be combined with character name, then this becomes a non-issue. There is no problem to fix from what I can see. I am very skeptical of the need for this. If any real data can be presented that anything less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of active accounts are using up all character slots on all shard across multiple accounts, by all means please share it. I will believe it when I see it. Trying to claim that anyone is going to use up every word combination of every available language by creating multiple accounts is also just plain stupid. Do you have any idea how many words there are in the English language alone and how many combinations they can be made into? How many accounts will need to be made before that happens? From what we can see here in the numerous threads available on these forums, there are people releasing names and sharing ideas for open names they have found. There has been an example of one player in particular being labelled a "name hoarder" who has already said that when contacted, they would release a name. I have not seen any data or evidence at all of these mythical hordes of accounts with all character slots on all shards used up just to troll people. All we have been told is there are over two million characters, many of which have not been logged into for a year or more. That tells us very little regarding names and how many of those are from inactive/abandoned accounts. For all anyone knows, the majority of the names being held up there are gibberish words or numbers that no one would even be looking for. If this policy is intended to help prevent name squatting, it does not work as the next person to get a freed up name can potentially sit on it just as the first person did. The net result is the same. Yes, the game is free. You did not pay for any names either, therefore you are no more entitled to them than the person who already has them. Nor does this game have the number of active players to even make this remotely an issue that needs addressing. If you can provide real data about how many active accounts have all character slots on all shards used up and what percent of those active accounts are of the total number of active accounts, by all means share it. Without real data, your arguments are just hollow.

Then that is on you. You have not read the entire thread, are being obtuse, contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, willfully ignorant or some combination thereof. Active players can be contacted by other players to negotiate the release of a name. If they do not want to release it, they should not be forced to do so. Inactive accounts that have not logged in for more than 2 years should get freed up.

There is and has been solid reasoning provided in this thread why it is redundant and completely unnecessary for active accounts, you just do not like it, which is fine. I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, I find the sense of entitlement some have appalling quite frankly. Getting this upset over someone else getting a name you wanted before you and causing you so much grief is just baffling. Just use something else. It just is not that hard. It is also truly amazing the arrogance several people have in wanting to dictate to others what an acceptable amount of play is.

I thumbed this down just because I could and I know it would entertain you. I hope you enjoyed it. 😁

The policy itself applying to active accounts is what is moot and redundant. There is no reason for it if an active player can be contacted by another active player. I see. Using a thesaurus is perfectly fine and only applies when it is the other guy. The person looking to use an already taken name should not have to. That makes perfect sense. 🙄

Have one on me! 😉 Enjoy! 😁

Any player harassing another player over a name can and should be reported to the GMs so they can be dealt with accordingly.

Making decisions in a vacuum is not always the best solution either. There is a happy medium somewhere.

Not a bad idea at all. I would also like to see an increase to the ignore list size as part of this.

Not all of them, just Regen scrappers. 😉

Agreed although I seriously doubt that the community at large will ever be brought in on the discussion on future issues.

I have to agree. If you are all categorizing whatever this is as abusive behavior, a rule change is in order. From the sound of things, you can detect it and can deal with anyone doing it accordingly. The sledgehammer approach that affects everyone seems a bit much here, although I realize at this point it is too late to make any changes.

That and intolerance.

May she rest in peace. She was truly an inspiration to generations of people. Condolences to her loved ones on their loss.

Thank you. At least this is something. I will respectfully disagree that AE is the best source of every reward in the game.

Forgot to add, my personal preference would be to remove Vet Levels from AE if we can keep the EMP to Reward Merit conversion. If that is not possible, then I would prefer some sort of cooldown on converting EMP merits to Reward Merits. As nice as most people are here, I simply do not want to be forced into teaming for reward merits and being able to convert EMP merits was a nice way to pick up recipes when inf was in short supply or to complete IO sets. It would be very nice to get that dev digest where the thought process behind this decision could be shared.

Again, not accusing anyone in specific however different accounts having an avatar and a post history is not solid evidence of unique individuals either. You can easily have one person using multiple accounts to post support or dissenting opinion to ideas to make it look like there is a lot of interest in a given point of view.