knightowl - Pinnacle serve

Actually... did someone administer the Turing test to these mobs? Until recently, I couldn't tell if there might be a human on the other side. Seriously, though -- for code-driven mobile objects, they seem to be of fairly average moral fiber. I'd leave their morals as-is.

This is the probably the main reason that I don't have more redside characters. Other reasons include my feelings of discomfiture with its arbitrary nature, because CoV was meant to represent (in spirit, if not in actual practice) the moral polar opposite of its predecessor, CoH -- and I've always viewed morality as a grey-scale spectrum, not a binary choice between black and white. There's as many different moral motivations to action as there are people who take said actions. The human brain just wants to put everything into simple categories, even if what is being categorized doesn't lend itself to such.

Excellent, thank you for the clarification. And if I was using FUD, then I beg that I err on behalf of ignorance, and not a deliberate attempt to mislead.

I'm approaching 150 alts, and I like all of them so far. I've re-created my old characters, and I like them as well. That said, I think Scrapper probably still best suits my most-frequently preferred playstyle. But diversity is the spice of life.

In the near-term, I could see using such a token when I'd reached level 47 and felt there was no significant reason not to do so. In the long term, well... I've got over 100 alts already, just on one server. I'm thinking the likelihood of getting them all to level 50 before they go "poof" is pretty slim. So I don't necessarily see anything amiss with a mechanism to auto-level them to 50 after I'd already done it countless times, just so I can experience combinations or situations which I haven't yet experienced. At the least, I'm open to the possibility.

When I learned that there was a Magic Carpet travel power, I deliberately created an Arabian-themed hero with the idea that I could then utilize this power in a thematically appropriate way, but I'm probably nowhere close to actually realizing it yet. Now I'm filled with trepidation.

And if they're willing to do it, then they should probably do one goldside (Praetoria) as well, since that seems even more sparsely populated than red.

The best non-exploitable incentivization would be like a one-shot promotional: +33% rewards for a weekend, or a week or two. Hype it up, advertise it, use whatever marketing tools are to hand. There'd still be some exploiters, but it'd be limited in duration. A perpetual or long-term imbalanced rewards system between red and blue would ultimately create bigger problems than the one it purports to solve.

If it were possible to opt-in / opt-out at the click of a button, it might be interesting. There'd have to be a lot more fleshing out of the mechanics and detail to make sure the match-up was at least somewhat balanced, or it would quickly be dismissed and forgotten.

Were some type of bonus granted, it'd likely need to be such that it only took effect were the player actually grouped, and since multi-boxing is a thing, even that condition is easy to bypass. If the rewards are greater on one side, then it's a pretty simple matter to find a way to turn that to one's advantage while circumventing the intended effect -- earn rewards on one side, send them to yourself on the other, and it hasn't affected one whit on which side people prefer to play.

Just tested it -- unfortunately it produces the same result: 'only works on the ground'. =(

The concept that you do the things you wish to do encapsulates all those factors. In other words, given freedom of choice, it's a reasonable assumption that you're ultimately going to choose based on whichever of a manifold of factors presents itself most strongly. If you're deliberately making a decision to play one thing instead of another, even though the second option offers better opportunity for some facet of gameplay (e.g. grouping), then the determinant in making that choice was that you were willing to sacrifice what you're losing in order to get something of greater value to you personally. Is that not how at least some decision-making works? You minimize the loss, or maximize the gain, based on personal preference. And in this case you can do BOTH-- the mechanic is already in place for you to play to whatever your preferred style at any time. You can play one way today, and a completely different way tomorrow, if that's your fancy.

Where did the monies come from for the last seven-odd years when it was one private server? I know the expense is greater with multiple servers - but that really has nothing to do with the question or where the question is leading. In essence, once the donation funds begin to dry up (which is inevitable as players grow bored, move on to other things, have to re-budget their available finances, or some combination of all of these), the outcome is a second shutdown, which means a repeat of the past - a situation in which there is only a private server (or more likely, multiple private servers open to some select clientele - assuming others are able to run their own versions of the server code, and choose to pay for the computing power and bandwidth in whichever manner they see fit to do so based on their own needs and that of their select clientele). For the first couple of months, it's a pretty simple matter to hit a benchmark of $10K for funding all but the most outlandish of ideas -- so when the donation level for Homecoming drops below a critical threshold, what is the expectation on behalf of the playerbase regarding what will happen?

I'd imagine the community would be as interested in these as they'd be in imaginary costume contests, maybe even more so.

You can change their color (albeit in a limited fashion) by substituting other pre-made icons for them in conjunction with the macroimage command. There's a huge list of available icon textures -- you might stumble across some that fit your desired colors better than the originals. But it would take a fair amount of experimenting (to find the colors you like) as well as typing (pointing the macro to execute the original power whose icon you wish to replace). The original list was obtained from Shenanigunner's page, but is also pasted here for convenience.

In my mind, this raises an even more interesting question: what is the general expectation that players have regarding what they can do, vis-a-vis what they're allowed to do (both by the game generally, as well as by those who are now managing, implementing, and overseeing the game's rule set via modification of its original code). For whatever admirable qualities can be ascribed to the community, it doesn't strike me that this situation is exactly a democracy, certainly not a case where if enough voices are raised, they'll be heard, and change will be the end result. I find it quite interesting to cogitate upon this.

If this is correct, then it's the matchmaking infrastructure that needs correction -- which doesn't entail there needs to be incentivization beyond providing a matchmaking / grouping interface that works efficiently and/or optimally.

Assuming that individual players will play the content they wish to play, coupled with the fact that alignment can be changed at will, why would playing one side or the other need incentivization?

I echo the sentiment expressed in the op. Just out of curiosity, would it be possible to make a bind that would combine temporarily landing and summoning as a clunky workaround? Something like:* /macroimage Inherent_RedWispPet RWP "powexecname Fly$$powexeclocation me Red Wisp Pet" *assumes that Fly is currently toggled on. edit: I just checked in-game, and this won't work -- the system message 'only works on the ground' appears. Apparently it's a timing issue (i.e. your feet haven't actually touched ground before you attempt the summon). Bummer.

Pinnacle was my main server, ran a small SG there. I currently have more alts on Excelsior than I had across all servers during live.

The biggest mistake I made was not kicking someone out of my supergroup, who (either deliberately or purely coincidentally) subsequently logged in after my daily login routine had lapsed for whatever the duration of the default 'change leadership' number of days was, then having that person, with their newfound SG leader role, effectively lock me out of access to my own SG base's storage -- I could see what was in storage, but I couldn't remove it. This was problematic because they took the further opportunity to rummage through said storage in order to take out and sell on Wentworth's the Hami-Os that I'd collected and placed there. Live and learn, I suppose.

If the refresh rate on the updated sell price queue is low (or is otherwise somehow bugged) that wouldn't preclude average sale prices ranging from 5m to 30m, would it?

Maybe it's selling for 5m to 30m over a very wide sample of units sold per unit time.

Running a bit behind schedule, perhaps? It's at least 8:30pm EST as of this post. edit: I'm sure this was a great contest, wherever and whenever it actually happened.

Admittedly, it was frustrating (to say the least) to be able to slot a SO Taunt Enhancement into the power, only to discover later (i.e. after I'd bought the recipes) that it wouldn't take Taunt Enhancements from a given set. =\