Oklahoman

I've said before that I sound like a needy customer at a restaurant with a bad waitress. "Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss."

We're veering off topic a bit with this - but this is in response to the notion that someone "needs" to post to LFG more than once a minute because their team is filling up fast. Taken at noon central time on a Monday, and understanding player counts are higher in the evenings, and I refuse to argue over the definition of "hundreds" or the intent of what I said. This practice is "spamming" and is pointed out in conduct guideline #3, as alluded to by a GM in the linked post at the top of the thread. There's no hard and fast criteria for what is "spamming" and in an ideal world we wouldn't need one. Somehow, I suspect we will get to argue about it pretty quickly, though. To the larger point, this is just 1 example of why someone may want to temporarily ignore another player, so let's not get hung up on it. Even if we fully agreed on what "spamming" is there are numerous other reasons why someone may temporarily want to ignore someone, even - I suspect - on Indominable with all 74 of it's players right now.

It's much more complicated than that. Unless you have a specific partnership with something like BetterHelp, then you are probably looking at interfacing somehow with PsychologyToday. Then, you're talking about a pretty narrow filter - show me all therapists licensed in the state I am currently in, available now, who accept my insurance. Honestly, PsychologyToday even struggles with that, because therapists themselves, by and large, are usually not very technical. Rather than take down a profile or flip a switch to say they are no longer accepting new clients, they are more likely to simply include as part of their intro statement "***NOT ACCEPTING NEW CLIENTS***" and how do you code for that? Some seem to have forgotten they even have a monthly subscription to PsychologyToday, as evidenced by the listed contact info not working at all. You may not be aware of the therapist shortage we have right now, so getting into see a therapist may not be possible for weeks or even months. A lot of therapists are having to turn away client right now. Depending on how urgent your need is, you may not be able to tolerate a delay in seeking treatment. So, now we need to consider if an inpatient stay is appropriate, in which case this whole command really needs to refer you to your closest ER for evaluation, or maybe the new 988 service. Assuming you've managed all of that, now you are looking for a therapist with training in your specific age group, and this supposed problem you have with getting along with strangers on the internet. Quite honestly, I'm not aware of any specific diagnoses in the DSM related to "not getting along with strangers on the internet" so there's not a lot of call for training to be available. You could round that up, I suppose, to a larger addiction, but maybe it's just an adjustment disorder of some kind. Now, you are overtreating the client, which is unethical. Really, without a full intake and assessment you don't know if you are talking about the psychological equivalent of a cold or something more serious. Anywho, I'd guess the implementation of something like that is a lot more difficult than what's being suggested here, otherwise I'd totally go for your suggestion. -Oklahoman, LPC

I suggested this a couple years ago. In general, I think the biggest objection was potentially not being able to post that a team was "full" quickly enough. Why? When there are hundreds of people online, why do I need to know that your DFB is 5/8, 6/8, 7/8...?

Only a Sith deals in absolutes! I was joking earlier when I said it was a terrible idea, given that I suggested the idea in the linked thread. I've even documented here in the forums where people get tired of MY LFG ads (can you imagine?), and they would likely love to /timeout me for a bit. That's cool. Sometimes, you just need a timeout. In general, I'd love the chat system to be even more robust so you can ignore posts with terms, too. /ignore #DFB, or /ignore #farm

I think this is a terrible idea and I'd rather have bards.

I appreciate your supportive response. However, I generally don't do this for a number of reasons. I won't go into those reasons here because they're not helpful to this discussion, but in general I have found that any petition like this relies heavily on which GM gets to respond. I appreciate all the work of our GMs and others supporting this community, and I'm appreciative every day I get to play this game. Maybe another feature we need is a way for the community to "flag" a post so GMs can get alerted if someone is flagged, say, 10 times in a 10 minute span or something. Maybe some flea will come along and steal that idea, too. 🙂

Don't even get me started on this type of spam. How invested is a server full of 800+ people supposed to be in your 8 person DFB? As a personal rule, I post to LFG every other minute. I have a hint of OCD, so it helps to think "I'm posting on odd minutes." So, there should always be 60-120 seconds between each of my posts. I suggested one time another feature that you shouldn't be allowed to post to LFG more than once every 30 seconds, and the idea was generally shot down - moreso because it would hinder someone from immediately advertising when they are full. Anyway, I tolerate this a lot better than I do the conversations that break out in LFG. It's tough getting old and grumpy.

This has NOT been my experience. Sure, there are the defiant jerks who - when someone tells them to take it to general - will start shouting in LFG about their freedoms and stuff. THOSE are the people I ignore, because I can't imagine a scenario where I would want them on my team or league. But by and large I have found that when someone asks people to move conversations elsewhere, they do. Consider this little ray of sunshine from the last time I played: And... it stopped. Absent @Neutrophil's short and polite message, who knows how long that little carnival would have went on in LFG. What you describe is the classic shushing the shushers at a movie theater scenario. Pretty soon, as the theory goes, everyone is shushing each other, and if we'd all just ignored the original jerk in the first place maybe he (and you KNOW it's a guy, not a girl) would have just read the social cues of the room and decided to be quiet and watch the movie. My experience has been that rather than shush themselves, other people join in the conversation, like we see above until someone does come in and shush them. I could give you several examples from literally everytime I have played over the past several days, I believe. It's routine. People get caught up in it, and it takes players like the one above who is brave enough to take the heat and encourage it to go elsewhere for it to stop. I've said before that if I had the option to ignore people for an hour, without having to manually remove that ignore myself later, I would heavily use that feature. As it is, when I do ignore someone I document a reason for myself later, because I know that means that person may not be able to run stuff with me. In the example above, you would ask me to ignore something like 15 different people, 14 of which were just responding to a comment that should never have been put in LFG anyway. I wouldn't have a problem ignoring the instigator of this had he come back at the end shouting about "MY FREEDOM!", but he didn't - he respected the request and moved on. Because someone politely asked them to stop.

Yes, you are correct. Gives you the same info as /getglobalname ShardWarrior A couple thoughts here. It would helpful (to me, anyway) if I could right click the character name and select "Email Global" or something like that. I prefer to email prize money for MSRs, and my process right now is to right click the name, select Get Global Name, copy that global from the system window, open e-mail, create new email, and paste into the To field. I love doing DFBs with kill shot prizes for everything, but it is a tremendous pain to go through that process for 7 people. Second, some players have a standard base for all of their character names - WeaponX Air, WeaponX Mez, etc. So, I know all those characters are the same person. A suggestion like OP is making would help me piece together the rest of us - for those who choose that option.

I've never converted emps to reward merits that I can remember, so that part of this isn't really resonating with me though I am sure there is probably a problem to address there. I guess where I am hanging up is for the regular players, who I hope make up the majority of the player base, who just log on and have fun... how many MORE reward merits they are going to have floating around. And, if that's a good thing. On those days when I have the chance to lead everything I like to, here's what another player running with me would walk away with if they didn't alt (just an example): Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial = 18 Reward Merits (KeS badge) BAF SnP badge = 0 Reward Merits Lambda Sector Trial = 20 Reward Merits (Antacid badge) LAM Well Stocked badge = 0 Reward Merits LAM Looter + Synchronized = 0 Reward Merits Dilemma Diabolique Trial = 30 Reward Merits The Magisterium Trial = 22 Reward Merits (Ready to Rumble badge) MAG Triple Threat badge = 0 Reward Merits Plus an MSR where you can convert vMerits to Reward Merits and end up with 40-ish Reward Merits. (Talking averages here for the zoned event - I understand instanced can get 70-ish.) That's 130-ish Reward Merits per day that they are collecting, on top of whatever they may be collecting already just through normal play. I'm told, though I can't verify, that some players do play with other leaders besides me - and those leaders may be running a similar pattern of iTrials. I'm talking about people who aren't chasing Reward Merits, they're just playing the game and having fun, and now they have 100+ Reward Merits falling in their lap a few days a week on top of the rewards they've been used to getting. Then you've got the people who WILL chase Reward Merits - maybe for the first time, since they are given out easier with this update - who will alt a lot so they can maximize their rewards. I'm trying to think about what this game looks like if the majority of the players (well, Level 50, really) now have a few hundred Reward Merits each week, on top of their normal haul. Because 100 Reward Merits for me usually ends up being 20+ million inf.

Not a complaint here, just an observation. I think almost all of the iTrials listed can technically be done in a single run to get the Master of... badge, though you may not want to try that with Magisterium. (Came darned close one time, tho.) Lambda requires at least 3 successful runs to get Master - there's just no way around that. Same with Minds of Mayhem, where people end up just farming that after the first completion, instead of completing the trial each additional time. Overall, I think this change would encourage the "iTrial train" model of leaders not running BAF on repeat (for instance), which I think is good. But it creates an annoyance for Lambda where a player is incentivized to use Character A on the Antacid run, Character B on the Well Stocked Run, and Character C for the Looter and Synchronized run - then rotate all those the next day to eventually get Master on all 3 characters several days later.

Double check my understanding on this: I can run a speed LAM which takes about 12 minutes, and on top of the rewards I'm already getting I would ALSO get 20 Reward Merits? Per run? That seems crazy to me. For MSRs, can we drop 20 reward merits to the league just for finishing the raid?

Have you not met the internet before?

New content aside - which is wonderful - I wonder how many of these changes were made based on posts in the Suggestions and Feedback forum?

I am not excited about the idea of adding yet another currency to the game. If anything, I think we should be looking to simplify in this respect. For instance, I'd like to see us get rid of shards and incarnate components entirely and just have everything run off threads. I know that's not a popular opinion.

Even back on Live, people were asking for Empathy to get some love. I like some of your ideas, just like I like some of the ideas in these other threads. Hopefully, we'll see some long overdue attention to this powerset soon.

But, wouldn't it work better for your cats if that was a toggle?

I've always kicked around the idea that a team/league leader should have some special ability, but never have been quite sure what. I've thought it should probably be a buff of some kind with a long recharge. I wonder if Fold Space would be a good candidate for a team/league leader power? Thinking of DFB (and some of the other examples given, that gives you a way to dislodge a problematic bad guy.

Some of the discussion here looks like it really belongs over here: It's a problem when a DFB is stuck because no one has a way to damage a bad guy stuck in a wall. It's downright infuriating when Tyrant gets taken out too quickly and Baby Tyrant falls out from under the earth. GMs can't do anything about the latter in-game, and my experience is that it's difficult to summon a GM for something like a DFB. For Magisterium, if there could be some kind of "beacon" a player could hit in the bowl once every 5 minutes that would TP Baby Tyrant to them, maybe that would solve that. Or, just remove Baby Tyrant entirely and have everything finish after taking down Tyrant.

I agree, it doesn't help to zoom in on one specific metric then blow that up to something larger than that. Better, with this game right now anyway, to foster an acceptance among the community that knockback is simply part of the game and you may need to chase down flying bad guys that someone else knocked back. In everything I run, there is only 1 badge run (BAF Strong and Pretty) where I specifically ask for one team to not use knockback. I just don't see it as meriting this many threads on the subject.

Yeah, but not since, like, a year ago, right? That horse might be moving again.

People who are just playing the game and not reading chat don't bother me near as much as what was mentioned in the thread here - someone who is obviously sabotaging a run by hanging on to a Pacification Grenade until the last second and using it then. Or running straight out and using a Molecular Acid (seriously, who even uses those these days?). Or sneaking away from the group to destroy either the Containment Chamber or Weapons Cache outside. I don't understand the joy in intentionally sabotaging a badge run.

My signature has a link to where I documented a way to discover who is ruining Lambda badge runs like this, using the demorecord option. I'm sure you can use the demorecord option more broadly for other places in the game where griefing is possible. Best practice in Lambda badge runs is to insist that all temps get passed to the league or team leader after TP out of the munitions depot or training facility, so you know where all of them are. You are then on high alert if you don't get all 10. For griefers, you also have to watch the weapon cache and containment chamber outside, as well - those are pretty easy, but also pretty obvious, for a griefer to prevent a badge run from succeeding. I let it be known to my leagues what the demorecord shows, and let them decide what to do from there. Often, as someone else mentioned, it's not intentional, but when it is you will see them run for the hills.

Found a bug with email and sending influence. If this has already been documented, please include a link below. PLAYER B sends PLAYER A an email with any amount of influence attached to it. PLAYER A sends PLAYER C an email with any amount of influence attached to it. PLAYER A replies to PLAYER B's email before clicking claim. The email to PLAYER B will automatically include the influence amount from step 2 as an attachment. I documented this with pics in a support ticket, but it keeps getting marked as "resolved" with no explanation. Perhaps I was unclear. Thought I would post it here to gain visibility.