Displaying first appearance of character?

[Ukase]

6 hours ago, lemming said:

Just a theory, but I think some people don't want to display their birthdays.  Might be something to do with any servers that have been added that were running pre-HC.

@lemming You've been so helpful to those that enjoy the labyrinth, as well as in other areas, it is likely you're onto something. I suspect you're one of those folks who, although may not do the whispering in the alleys, out of sight, but might be in position to hear those whispers. 

I think I read about a year or 18 months ago, that there was a server that was going to be merged with HC, Victory, I think. And that may have something to do with the naming policy update. 

Now, I'm not in the loop to understand HOW that could impact this, but anything is possible where coding is involved. The power of zeros and ones to ruin things is filled with potential. 

 

 

12 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

i also find number of badges is a good way to see if someone is experienced with their alt before starting an MO run or similar

I used to think this way. But, having seen folks that literally just come out of AE, run a 90 minute 4 passive accolade run, and then an MoTF/SF train...I kind of had to change my view, and be open to the idea I was in error. And I have only recently realized this. I have to be willing to appear inconsistent and change my mind when evidence tells me I'm incorrect in my assumptions. There's probably something to this, however. I'm just not sure how relevant or significant of a factor it is. 

The longer HC runs, the more players will have run the lower level content. And, well, the more likely they might get tired of doing it and just skip past it, either through farming, ToT or whatever. Some will stop farming at the teens, some at 30, some at 50. And some of these players are, sucks to be me, but better at playing their character than I am at playing mine. Not all of them, of course. I'm sure I play better than some of them, lol. 

It kind of makes me sad to think that people are so openly rude as to denigrate people who's character info doesn't align with their own specific ideals, whether it be creation date, costume, bio or badge count.
I completely get thinking that way, but to actually tell someone something negative based on something as benign as character creation date...that's harsh. 

 

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

Given the amount of pure vitriol that was put the way of some people

You must have heard something I didn't, or I forgot about. 
Whenever I hear someone said something unsavory, I tend to be more surprised about it than anything else. Even when it's me being unsavory! 

[lemming]

21 minutes ago, Ukase said:

@lemming You've been so helpful to those that enjoy the labyrinth, as well as in other areas, it is likely you're onto something. I suspect you're one of those folks who, although may not do the whispering in the alleys, out of sight, but might be in position to hear those whispers. 

Just a guess in this case, just happened to coincide with the other servers being folded in.

I think can also be the case of some people being discriminated against for being a "new" character.    Plenty of people might powerlevel a char to 50, outfit them out, and be great.   And for the opposite, I've parked a 50 for year, brought them out and forgot completely how to play them. 😄

[macskull]

6 hours ago, Ukase said:

I still think this was poorly implemented, no matter how sarcastic hedgefund gets. People should be proud of their character creation date no matter when it was. If people don't like it, tell 'em to kick rocks while they rub it in their chest.

This behavior was added after the NCSoft license agreement, once the "closed beta" servers moved under the Homecoming umbrella and were more widely opened up to people who weren't around before Homecoming. Why? Because the people who still have access to their characters from the live servers probably don't want to advertise that to players who will never be able to do the same, and because at that point people will realize that the "sorry, all your old characters are gone" line that they've been hearing the last five years isn't actually true.

Edited October 12 by macskull

[MoonSheep]

18 minutes ago, macskull said:

This behavior was added after the NCSoft license agreement, once the "closed beta" servers moved under the Homecoming umbrella and were more widely opened up to people who weren't around before Homecoming. Why? Because the people who still have access to their characters from the live servers probably don't want to advertise that to players who will never be able to do the same, and because at that point people will realize that the "sorry, all your old characters are gone" line that they've been hearing the last five years isn't actually true.

 

he knows too much, off to the HC gulag

[Excraft]

1 hour ago, MoonSheep said:

i also find number of badges is a good way to see if someone is experienced with their alt before starting an MO run or similar

 

Here is another good example of why certain people wanted the creation date kept private.  Badge count and create date are meaningless as they don't tell you anything at all about the player behind the keyboard.  Yet there are those out there who seem to believe low badge count and a 2 day old 50 are an indication of player skill.  For all anyone knows, it's a non-badging alt of a player with years of experience who could do MO runs of every TF in their sleep. 

[MoonSheep]

10 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

Here is another good example of why certain people wanted the creation date kept private.  Badge count and create date are meaningless as they don't tell you anything at all about the player behind the keyboard.  Yet there are those out there who seem to believe low badge count and a 2 day old 50 are an indication of player skill.  For all anyone knows, it's a non-badging alt of a player with years of experience who could do MO runs of every TF in their sleep. 

 

true, and it’s not always correct, but can be an indicator of who to look out for on a team.

 

i would never refuse someone from a TF based on their badge count, but if they haven’t got many and have all 4 travel powers i keep a mental note of where my bountiful supply of powerboosted veng will likely be coming from

[Greycat]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

You must have heard something I didn't, or I forgot about. 
Whenever I hear someone said something unsavory, I tend to be more surprised about it than anything else. Even when it's me being unsavory! 

 

Go to COH's sub-whatever on Reddit and mention Homecoming. Or SCORE. There are STILL people who treat anyone involved with that as the worst - there was a *lot* that went on that would make you definitely question how this could have been "the best community around."  It was, and at times still is, *bad.*

[Enchantica]

15 hours ago, Ukase said:

Privacy? It's when a character was created, not the player's address or favorite color. Hardly something to be kept private. 
It should be public by default, and if folks want to be all secretive and private, let them toggle it hidden. 

It's fine to have a choice. But the implementation is the opposite of the better way. But that's just my opinion. Now I have to toggle it on every character I play. I have to be inconvenienced because some folks want to keep this minute detail private? That makes zero sense to me. I do not understand why this would be something to keep private. Again, if that's what you want to do fine. But it seems to me the implementation should be the other way around. 

Won't be the first time this game did something that made zero sense to me. Won't be the last. 

I've got to add this, because, why not? 
Someone had to be irritated/irked/annoyed at having the day their character was created on display for this change to have been made. And they presumably made some sort of cohesive argument for it to be changed. 

I am stretching my brain trying to determine why they don't want it displayed, and all I can think of are the judgements that someone might have, when looking at team comp for something like a master of TF run. A leader looking at a players info and seeing they just were created yesterday, they don't feel so good about the character, thinking they're a noob or something because they were literally born yesterday. 
In some cases, that's a vet player who just pl'd. Fairly meaningless. I do not get it. 

Yeah, actually that makes total sense.

[Ukase]

5 hours ago, Greycat said:

Go to COH's sub-whatever on Reddit

That explains that. I might have looked at Reddit a couple of times, but it all comes down to yes, YTA for everyone, no matter what the situation. I'm not at all sure how that site ever caught on. 

Fun fact: Until HC opened the doors, I had never heard of Reddit or Discord. Thankfully, I'm not required to look at Reddit to play. (Don't think I'm required to look at Discord either, but there is at least useful information found there, and it is a very useful tool for certain badges.) 

[Ukase]

8 hours ago, macskull said:

Why? Because the people who still have access to their characters from the live servers probably don't want to advertise that to players who will never be able to do the same, and because at that point people will realize that the "sorry, all your old characters are gone" line that they've been hearing the last five years isn't actually true.

Now THIS makes sense. And while I'd like to have had access to my old characters, all my influence went into artificially boosting my SG's prestige to make my SG number 1. A solo SG was on top of the leaderboard on Liberty when the lights went out. 

And the characters I've made on HC to replicate them already have better builds and higher badge counts. I would have wanted them on day 1, but now..no need. It would be a curiosity, and a nice to have. Just not sure what I'd name them. 
Since someone has access, they could do me a favor and look up the original Ukase creation date. I'd be curious about when that was. But each server had one. Pretty sure the first one was on Liberty. But, it wasn't like I was an original beta for CoH and could proudly display the earliest date possible. I came into the game just a few weeks before Issue 4. 

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, The Trouble said:

There's an unfortunately vocal minority in this game that like to denigrate "farmers".  They see a level 50 on a character that's only 3 days old, and they like to call it out.

It's not the level 50 characters that are only 3 days old that are the ones to poke fun at, it's the level 50 characters that are only 3 days old who are posting "How do I get to [city zone]?" questions in chat that are the proper targets of denigration. Some of those questions are reasonable -- you can easily get to 50 without ever going to the Hive, or the Abyss, or one of the Shadow Shard zones, but a level 50 character asking how to get to Kings Row or Steel Canyon is just sad and laughable. At least with the removal of the AE buildings in Atlas Park and Mercy Island they have to become acquainted with the concept of changing zones, even if it's only to get to Pocket D, and they've never been anywhere else.

[Bionic_Flea]

23 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

It's not the level 50 characters that are only 3 days old that are the ones to poke fun at, it's the level 50 characters that are only 3 days old who are posting "How do I get to [city zone]?" questions in chat that are the proper targets of denigration. Some of those questions are reasonable -- you can easily get to 50 without ever going to the Hive, or the Abyss, or one of the Shadow Shard zones, but a level 50 character asking how to get to Kings Row or Steel Canyon is just sad and laughable. At least with the removal of the AE buildings in Atlas Park and Mercy Island they have to become acquainted with the concept of changing zones, even if it's only to get to Pocket D, and they've never been anywhere else.

 

My usual response to questions like that are "first, exit the AE . . . tell me when your done.  Now look for the 'T' on the map."

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

That explains that. I might have looked at Reddit a couple of times, but it all comes down to yes, YTA for everyone, no matter what the situation. I'm not at all sure how that site ever caught on.

 

That's just where it's still the most vocal (and festering.) Youtube, FB, gaming sites, probably some of the other social media stuff I don't bother with - it was bad.

[JKCarrier]

10 hours ago, Excraft said:

 

Badge count and create date are meaningless as they don't tell you anything at all about the player behind the keyboard. 

Can confirm. My "main" is currently sitting at 1283 badges, and I'm a scrub who runs at -1/x1 and folds like an accordion whenever I run into an EB.

[Excraft]

11 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

true, and it’s not always correct, but can be an indicator of who to look out for on a team.

 

i would never refuse someone from a TF based on their badge count, but if they haven’t got many and have all 4 travel powers i keep a mental note of where my bountiful supply of powerboosted veng will likely be coming from

 

No, badge count and create date and power choices aren't an indicator of player skill.  There are just as many "veterans" out there with hundreds upon hundreds of badges playing characters created years ago who simply don't know what they're doing as there are these mythical new players who don't know where a particular zone is.  This kind of behavior is bordering on elitism, if not there already. 

[lemming]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

Since someone has access, they could do me a favor and look up the original Ukase creation date. I'd be curious about when that was. But each server had one. Pretty sure the first one was on Liberty. But, it wasn't like I was an original beta for CoH and could proudly display the earliest date possible. I came into the game just a few weeks before Issue 4.

Just to put a pin in this.  They don't have access.   From my understanding is if you downloaded your character from live using a particular tool, you could have your character "restored", but none of the player data from live is anywhere accessible by HC.

I know I offloaded mine, but then lost it.  At this point, I'd only be interested in seeing how they would compare.  In any case, like you said, the new chars are doing just fine.

[Ukase]

Well, I have an old hard drive that's not being used; still has Windows 95 on it, maybe. Not sure. It has that character info on it. The program, I think it was called Sentinel. 

I should probably take a look in there, because I'm pretty sure I had the Blinky Finder program on that drive. A fairly useful tool that doesn't seem to exist anymore. It used Demorecord in some fashion to scan the map, and then would give a display with an x or something where all the NPCs and glowies were, floor by floor. (You had to re-run it at each floor) 

Very useful back on retail when quantums and voids were a lot worse than they seem to be now. Or maybe I've just gotten better at building khelds, lol. 

[Greycat]

2 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Very useful back on retail when quantums and voids were a lot worse than they seem to be now. Or maybe I've just gotten better at building khelds, lol. 

 

Qs and Voids have been nerfed, yes. Can't speak to your Kehlding ability, but Qs and Vs no longer do unresistable Nictus damage to Khelds.

[Indystruck]

Just push the button, Frank.

[Oubliette_Red]

19 hours ago, Excraft said:

 

Here is another good example of why certain people wanted the creation date kept private.  Badge count and create date are meaningless as they don't tell you anything at all about the player behind the keyboard.  Yet there are those out there who seem to believe low badge count and a 2 day old 50 are an indication of player skill.  For all anyone knows, it's a non-badging alt of a player with years of experience who could do MO runs of every TF in their sleep. 

 

Personally, I just don't like seeing it, most especially on characters that have back stories.

 

And while everyone is speculating on why they did it, I'm sure many of the RP'rs were equally annoyed by it's presence.

[High_Beam]

On 10/11/2024 at 4:09 PM, The Trouble said:

There's an unfortunately vocal minority in this game that like to denigrate "farmers".  They see a level 50 on a character that's only 3 days old, and they like to call it out.

I use badges to determine that 🙂

 

I know others have pointed out their lack of trust in it but when I see a 50 with no Lower level TFs or their defeat badges are low or they have less than a dozen explore badges, they are suspect.  I use that information for nothing other than my own purposes.  I don't go trying to eff with them and since I don't have a say in certain aspects of the game, I only express my opinions about it in depth when it is appropriate.

Edited October 13 by High_Beam

[ZacKing]

1 hour ago, High_Beam said:

I use badges to determine that 🙂

 

I know others have pointed out their lack of trust in it but when I see a 50 with no Lower level TFs or their defeat badges are low or they have less than a dozen explore badges, they are suspect.  I use that information for nothing other than my own purposes.  I don't go trying to eff with them and since I don't have a say in certain aspects of the game, I only express my opinions about it in depth when it is appropriate.

 

Badge count doesn't mean much, if anything at all.  I know sometimes I like to get into the 40s first before I start running all the TFs for the accolade, so it's entirely possible to be higher level with no TF badges.  I also don't actively get explore badges on every character either.

 

11 hours ago, Excraft said:

There are just as many "veterans" out there with hundreds upon hundreds of badges playing characters created years ago who simply don't know what they're doing

 

Absolutely true.

Edited October 13 by ZacKing

[Scarlet Shocker]

On 10/11/2024 at 10:38 PM, Snarky said:

i would kill for this lol

 

Probably has. Remember folks, @Snarky's not Holy, he's not Roman and he's not an Emperor!

 

To address the wider concerns expressed by the community in this thread, I can see both sides. Some want to display their "origin date" proudly while others wish it to be concealed. Both choices are equally valid.

 

Is there not a case for making that a toggle in options, to please all sides with minimal fuss?

[Digirium]

It used to always be displayed but then there was that announcement of a deal with NCSoft and a whole bunch of PR leading to an influx of players. From that moment, it became hidden by default. I deliberately went through all my characters and made it visible again. You would have to ask HC why they did that?

[Ghost]

9 hours ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

Personally, I just don't like seeing it, most especially on characters that have back stories.

 

And while everyone is speculating on why they did it, I'm sure many of the RP'rs were equally annoyed by it's presence.

Doesn’t it have to be activated, for your bio to be seen?

 

I could be wrong, but thought that’s the way it is now.