Zolgar

It's not rose colored glasses, it's hindsight. I will agree, WHEN IT HAPPENED, ED was a pretty bad move. If it hadn't happened though, you basically had two choices for how to build your character, that was with HOs or SOs depending if you could do enough Hami raids to get HOs. If you were using SOs, well, you 6 slotted a few powers entirely with one type of enhancer. If you felt particularly squirly you might do 5/1 dam/acc in your attacks. Without it we probably never would have seen IO sets, we probably never would have seen incarnate powers, there are some power sets we probably never would have seen.

Hm, technically there is a finite number of options. What is the maximum number of characters for a character name...? ;) In all seriousness though, I completely agree. If you cant think of a name that works in English, try another language. German, Italian, and Latin all make good character names. I had characters named "Shadowcat" "Hellcat" "Radiation" "Beautiful violent death" ... and that's just the ones I can remember off the top of my head, in other languages The last one, I am particularly fond of her name. I may remake her, or if not remake her reuse the name for someone else... I digress. Another great resource for character names is baby name sites. Not just for real names, mind you, but again delve in to names in other languages and you can find some names with really cool meanings that have a good sound for a superhero name.

This is why you play a Titan/Bio scrapper and just ignore the rest of the team until you get to the AV ;)

We have no way of knowing the odds at the moment. Here's what we KNOW: NCSoft knows we exist. A group is talking to NCSoft regarding the existence of private servers. So far NCSoft has taken no action against private servers. So far NCSoft has made no official statement to any of the news outlets reporting on the existence of private servers. Decision could go either way at this point. We might lose everything we've have here. However, the code is in the wild now. If this, or any other, server gets shut down, either it will rise again under a new name, perhaps a little more quietly, or if not... another will take its place. The existence of CoH servers is a given now.

Part of why Howling Twilight is at once the best and worst rez in the game. :) The other part is because that clutch moment, half the party is dead, you hit HT... and MISS. >.>

Sounds like a perfect solution! All names expire after 30 days, if you can't log in, have your friends do it for you.

A note on this: Many, if not all, of the anchored debuffs now stick around until the body decays, which means they basically always last the entire fight unless you're fighting ghosts, so it's not as important as it used to be to leave the anchor for last. I've been playing a rad/ defender a lot recently, and even if the anchor is the first to fall in the fight, it's down to mopping a few errant minions by the time the toggles drop.

I actually agree here. I'm just saying that if we have a system that protects character names, it should account for all play styles. If someone has 100 characters they can't be arsed to actually play, at all, I don't give a damn about their character names. My point on the hours thing is protection against life getting in the way of your gaming, which I said in my original post on the subject. There's a lot of things that can happen to lead to a person not being able to log in for 30 days or more; military deployment, sudden illness or injury, chronic illness, computer failure, moving, loss of internet, etc. Allow me to provide two scenarios: I build a new character for PvP, I PL them to 50 (not that every 50 is PL'd, at all, just bear with me please), in all of 4 hours. I realize I need to farm more merits and/or inf to complete the build, so I shelf it. I plan to get back to it in about a week after I am doing farming up the resources for it, but my laptop dies. I can't afford a new computer for at least a month. Three friends and I decide to play through Praetoria's story arcs and get the badge for switching alignments a ton. Because we want this badge, we need to turn XP off quite a bit. Maybe we're also roleplaying through, which slows us down on leveling even further. We play for 4 hours every Monday. After the second week we're still only level 5 because we had to turn off XP. Again, my laptop dies (I really need a new laptop if it dies this much ;)). In the first scenario, it doesn't matter how long I am away from the game unable to log in, I will not lose the character name. In the second scenario, if I can't get a new computer in 30 days, I could lose the name. Even though I have spent more time, and probably have more attachment to that character's name than I do the character in the first scenario. As far as I understand it, the idea behind using character level as a metric for how long a character name is protected, is to provide a player with protection for their characters when life happens based on how much work/how attached to a character you are. My suggestion adds a second metric to check for that protection, to account for other play styles. We cannot measure a persons attachment to their characters in any meaningful way, if we look at the metrics of what level they are and how much time they have spent on the character though, we can get an idea. Are they a high level? Then they probably really enjoy playing that character. Have the clocked a lot of hours? Then they probably really enjoy playing that character.

Maybe stop assuming everyone who is remotely opposed to this change is a name hoarder. For MY part, this new policy will basically not effect me. At present I have all of .. 6 characters, most of whom are already past the 20 mark so are safe for a year, and even then most of my characters have names that I could probably let lapse without losing them, anyways. I am someone who plays the game many different ways. I farm, I power level, I slow roll, I roleplay, I badge hunt, I may even get back in to base building... so I see this policy from the perspective of all of these things, which is why I posed the adjustment of making it level OR hours played, it offers the same protections to multiple play styles as opposed to making someone feel they need to change their play style to ensure they don't lose their name. I completely agree there needs to be a name release policy, because great names going unused because of hoarders or inactive players kinda sucks. I just think the name release policy shouldn't almost exclusively favor people who play fast.

Sure they can, if a significant amount of people play that way, that portion of the population deserves recognition. I have just as much right to be attached to the name of a character who is only level 6, but I have spent over 100 hours roleplaying, as you do a 50+ fully IO'd character you played for 10 hours and then decided to shelf for some other project build. Note, I do not say I have MORE right to the name. I said I have just as much right to be attached to the name, and I should not be forced to powerlevel the character to 50 to get the name locked in, any more than you should be forced to spend 100 hours playing a character to get the name locked in. This is why my suggestion was to add a second check. Is the character x level? If yes, pass. If no, has the character spent y hours logged in? If yes, pass. If no, the name is released. It benefits a subset of the community, offering them the same protection without forcing them to change their play style to get said protection.

We know we can, but we may not want to for character concept reasons :p

I agree. Perhaps they could add an "Either/Or" method. Either you play a character for 12 hours, or you level to them 21. Player a character for 40 hours, or you level them to 50. Something like that. Granted people could abuse that by just keeping the character logged in for hours xD (Pretty sure you wont be afk-booted if you're in a SG base or a mission) Start an AE arc. AE arcs are considered TFs and you will not auto-log if you're on a TF. >.> Systems could easily be put in place to combat this, if it was really seen as any worse than powerleveling to lock in a name.

If it still requires it, there is a huge grace period, so I don't think it does.

I was just calling him out for making erroneous claims about copyright law, while saying "If you are going to argue copyright law, please show some familiarity with copyright law." Thank you for proving my point. If you do not think copyrights can be lost you should talk to the Estates of Tolkien, (who defend theirs) vs Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sax Rhomer and, well, anyone who’s work fell into public domain and had Disney turn it into an animated feature because they did not. Copyright expires 70 years after the death of the creator, or if that is unknown, 90 years after publication/120 years after creation. This is different from "if you don't protect it, you lose it." and requires a LOT of clout to fight. (I believe though Disney has been finding ways to fight it for fear of ever losing copyright on anything they own) In all my research regarding the matter (that is specifically researching copyright law) I have not found anything which indicates or states that if you do not protect your copyright, it becomes public domain. While trademark has that, trademark is a different beast. Were there such a precedent within copyright, then guess who is public domain now: Every Star Wars character Every Disney character Every Marvel character Every DC character Every anime character Why? Fan art, my friend, fan art. If they could lose their copyright by not protecting it, they would have needed to go Scorched Earth on basically every convention in the world. Next time you're at an anime/comic convention, see how many people are selling fan art of basically every big IP out there. If I am wrong, please provide resources to support your claims. I would be very interested to see them as, while I am no lawyer, copyright law is something that I find interesting and like to stay informed on.

I share some concern with the naming policy, but I also think that SOMETHING is needed. Yes, you can get a name permalocked at 50. Yes, you can get a name solid for a year at 21. Yes, you can easily get to 6/21/50 in very small amount of time, if that's your style. Yes, it's easy to log in to a character every x days to make sure you don't lose that sought after name- if life doesn't call you away. Life can call you away on more points than just military or chronic illness. Sudden injury/illness, computer asplodes and you can't afford to fix it, familial/vocational commitments, unemployment leading to needing to cancel your internet for a while, etc. "If the name means that much to you, powerlevel them." It's not the NAME that means so much, it's the CHARACTER who bears that name. On live I had a character who was meant to level slowly, and I loved her name- because it was a perfect name for the character. She was the Symbol of Freedom, she never broke level 20, but I clocked quite a lot of time in her doing missions solo and a lot more time roleplaying. I spent more time playing that character than some people spend on their 50s. As such, I would personally like to see something implemented where you also gain protection for a name based on time playing the character, to offer roleplayers and content runners the same protections offered powergamers at a quicker pace than they might get it otherwise, since as-is the policy rewards powergamers an inordinate amount. Yes, that would mean someone could just idle while doing other things to get their character's place secured... but is that really any worse than sitting in an AE farm for 5 hours* with dxp on to get your level 50? *5 hours is just a guess as to how long it takes with the nerfed AE XP. I know it can be done in about 2 with normal AE XP and boosters.

Titan Weapons is, quite frankly, a superbly powerful set. I dislike it on brutes, personally, but on scrappers and tanks it's amazing (those crit numbers...) It takes a while to come in to its own, and you have to learn to play with the momentum mechanic. As far as melee sets go, it has the steepest learning curve of any of the melee sets (not that most melees have any learning curve). It also does need a good pairing, Bio and Fire are good partners for it, because dear god is it an endurance hog... but this makes it no less amazing, and worth every drawback to the set.

You forgot one: In global sending you influence or enhancers because a couple million influence is nothing to them.

I am pretty sure when they removed the minimums of TFs they removed this too, as this change was made by the SCoRE team for a much smaller server.

Absorb/Share pain is one of those powers that can be super useful sometimes.. but I rarely see a need for it. It's the only power in Empathy my Empath mastermind is skipping.

Some of them are. Some of them are mindless slogs of another era of MMORPG mission design. >.> Do you even bother to read the mission text? Sure. Some of it is great. Others are "hey so.. hellions are bad, go arrest a bunch of them? kthxbai" I have been playing MMOs for more than 20 years now, I have seen the industry evolve. Early City of Heroes mission arcs (and task forces), by which I means the ones that have been in the game the longest, often fall prey to the trappings of MMOs at the time. Go talk to person (why can't I just call them on their cell phone?), deliver this to person (what do I look like, a courier?), go killarrest an arbitrary number of bad guys "because we need information from them", etc. Basically a lot of fluff added to superficially extend the duration of the story arc that doesn't really add a lot TO the story itself, yes, there is story text there, but that text doesn't need a mission! Especially when it is "Go talk to this person in another zone, where you will do NOTHING ELSE for this mission arc, and when you're done come back to me." - which in modern times isn't as bad because of Ninja run/level 4 travel powers/inherent fitness, but back when the game launched pre-level 14? the "go talk to..." missions were a major time sink. This isn't to say that the STORIES THEY TELL are bad, not at all. Many of them still tell good stories, but HOW they tell said story isn't very good by modern gaming standards, and the arcs can be painfully sloggy.

Some of them are. Some of them are mindless slogs of another era of MMORPG mission design. >.>

A divergent timeline where Fronty was a Hydra agent? :p

You forgot the AE farms. :p

Yes, you could even on live. I had a Ranma inspired character. Switched between teenage boy and catgirl sorceress. >.>

These were live changes, travel powers available at level 4, and inherent fitness. You would need to go to a several set back quite a few issues to play without those in effect.