If we start with no user data

[energizingion]

I did. There was about a two-month period when I didn't play, because I had gotten to the point where the game just seemed like an endless string of "Go to point A, and beat people up; go to point B, and beat people up; go to point C, and beat people up; etc." I'm looking forward to CoH's return, but I wish these games had more depth than just the combat. It'd be nice to be able to help citizens caught in disasters, or pull them out of burning or collapsed buildings, or something.

Agreed.  There was a good stint of 6 or more months (in a row) where I was getting tired of logging in and playing.  I think it was during the "height" of AE farming.  When I logged in, there was either not a lot of my sgmates on or if they were on, they were already engaged in a tf/sf/itrial, on for only a few minutes or AE farming.  Of course most others were just AE farming.  I don't mind some AE farming but it did bore me to death after the second or third run (depending on which farm).

I mainly logged in for the social aspect...

Then more and more new powersets were coming out and what not, so it was fun playing the game with new sets. 

[Blackshear]

If it means getting the game back, I'll start with nothing...however, I'd at least like to have Sands of Mu available from the get-go.  I get a lot of mileage out of that power at low levels.

Really, though, if we all have to reboot giving us a nice package of various vet rewards from the get-go would be a good idea.  How about two years' worth to mark the time since the game went down?

[Golden Girl]

I did. There was about a two-month period when I didn't play, because I had gotten to the point where the game just seemed like an endless string of "Go to point A, and beat people up; go to point B, and beat people up; go to point C, and beat people up; etc." I'm looking forward to CoH's return, but I wish these games had more depth than just the combat. It'd be nice to be able to help citizens caught in disasters, or pull them out of burning or collapsed buildings, or something.

That problem was noted a while ago when we started designing HaV

[Nealix]

Save the plane falling from the sky!  That would be pretty cool.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I think all of those are cool ideas.  Although, and this is just a guess, I could see them not adding too much of those things because people might stop doing them.  How often did people put out the fires in steel canyon after doing it once?  Or I think of single player sandbox games.  Where you have a side mission of lets say........saving civilians from falling trash after a plane full of garbage explodes.  It would be really fun the first few times.  But after awhile people would stop doing it.  That is what I have noticed with public events in MMO's and world events in single player games.

[Baja]

Pretty late to the ball game here, busy work week. All the bogus RL stuff aside so far it seems re-leveling is a none issue. As far as vet rewards go I think a premium pack is an excellent idea, even if it somewhat costly those of us who played from open beta till end know that it is a minor investment all things considered. Please for the love of god offer some sort of name saver special I would pay out the you know what to have my old favorite name back...

If there is anyway you can implement a feature allowing us to re-use names we already hold I'm sure the whole naming fiasco would be much more limited than what happened originally. I dread having to throw an "agent" or "operative" in front of a name I already have again. I'll do it, I swear I'll do it, I just would love not to . 

The more I think about the entire community actually starting from scratch the more excited I get. I miss the days where people accepted one another. The whole clique mentality would be revived instantly if you offered lvl 50's off the bat leaving new players lost and confused and possibly without guidance. If we all start to rise again I think we'll have a much friendlier and informed community/fan base.  Plus GALAXY PARK WILL BE COOL AGAIN! God I miss that being the main RP spot...

Anywho one last final thought, please allow us to reserve names -before- the game is released. Just one. That way the people who do connect first and go on a name saving binge won't totally ruin the parade. I realize this kind of ties into the other name stuff but we all know how crucial names are to our heroes/villains. Nobody wants XxBat_ManxX18939 it really ruins the feel/desire to continue playing.

[Power Gamer]

Save the plane falling from the sky!  That would be pretty cool.

This kind of stuff would be awesome. 

I so much enjoyed putting out fires. Very heroic. Oh yeah, there was combat but for me it was kinda secondary to putting out the fires.

[Ankhammon]

Pretty late to the ball game here, busy work week. All the bogus RL stuff aside so far it seems re-leveling is a none issue. As far as vet rewards go I think a premium pack is an excellent idea, even if it somewhat costly those of us who played from open beta till end know that it is a minor investment all things considered. Please for the love of god offer some sort of name saver special I would pay out the you know what to have my old favorite name back...

If there is anyway you can implement a feature allowing us to re-use names we already hold I'm sure the whole naming fiasco would be much more limited than what happened originally. I dread having to throw an "agent" or "operative" in front of a name I already have again. I'll do it, I swear I'll do it, I just would love not to . 

The more I think about the entire community actually starting from scratch the more excited I get. I miss the days where people accepted one another. The whole clique mentality would be revived instantly if you offered lvl 50's off the bat leaving new players lost and confused and possibly without guidance. If we all start to rise again I think we'll have a much friendlier and informed community/fan base.  Plus GALAXY PARK WILL BE COOL AGAIN! God I miss that being the main RP spot...

Anywho one last final thought, please allow us to reserve names -before- the game is released. Just one. That way the people who do connect first and go on a name saving binge won't totally ruin the parade. I realize this kind of ties into the other name stuff but we all know how crucial names are to our heroes/villains. Nobody wants XxBat_ManxX18939 it really ruins the feel/desire to continue playing.

First, let me state that I almost always play heroes.

Why is my first impulse, on reading this, to make sure I'm first in line for the game and steal all the major player names I can get? Holding them ransom until the player can provide me with a purple set or two.

[Burnt Toast]

I have the perfect name... you better not steal it...


W0lv3r1n3


HANDS OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

First, let me state that I almost always play heroes.

Why is my first impulse, on reading this, to make sure I'm first in line for the game and steal all the major player names I can get? Holding them ransom until the player can provide me with a purple set or two.

[Ankhammon]

I have the perfect name... you better not steal it...


W0lv3r1n3


HANDS OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

lmao. I presume  he had the burnt toast colored uniform from the 80s.

I was actually rummaging through my old names and I only had maybe a dozen that were decent. I made a lot of characters with crappy names.

[Gatecrasher]

lmao. I presume  he had the burnt toast colored uniform from the 80s.

I was actually rummaging through my old names and I only had maybe a dozen that were decent. I made a lot of characters with crappy names.

I will say that the silver lining to that was that sometimes the search for a name that wasn't taken led me to names a heck of a lot better than the one I'd been so excited for int he first place.  Exhibit A is my Electric Brute; if I'd left it at, well whatever it was I was gonna go with (that was taken), I wouldn't have found my way to OhmWrecker. 

[Baja]

When this finally does happen, cause it will or I will lose all faith in humanity, you will see an ohm wrecker running by you. I want you to know, it will be me. jk honestly though it is a great fit. I guarantee you the friends of the people affiliated with this purchase will somehow get first dibs on quite a few one word names, which are my favorite. I pray it's not mine but am willing to bow my head in sadness for the tenth of a second it takes me to recover and realize I'm actually playing CoX again.

I really do believe allowing the multiple characters on one account having the same name will save our lovely community a lot of grief. I know for a fact pvp'rs would only be using one the majority of the time. Rp'rs could even do so with the right concept/back story, which would open up a lot of new ideas that previously were rather difficult to pull off without the help of some farming friends. Anyway days off now woohoo!

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

If we start with no user data one of the first characters i will create will be Action Protagonist with the battlecry "I solve all my problems with violence!"
And at least a dozen other character concepts, most of them a bit more serious, like recreating Fumarole Pixie (Earth/Storm Controller) whose battlecry was "I like volcanoes!" 

[MWRuger]

I find the hue and cry over names to be a bit ridiculous.  I didn't start until 2008.  I never had a problem finding a good name that fit my concept and was awesome on any of 100 plus characters. If you need help with a name or origin, PM me. I wrote quite a few for people who had a great idea and didn't know it.

If I can get my characters back, of course I want them. They represent years of effort and I loved them.
If I can't, then I'll remake them.

Also i have to say if you think making everyone starting from scratch will somehow restore CoH to some mythical non-existent state of purity and happy hand-holding sunshine parties, then you have  an astonishing lack of understanding of human nature. There will be level 50's within a week if not sooner. People who always played together will continue to do so. Griefers will grief. I can't imagine why anyone would expect a different outcome.

The only positive effect I see is that the low level salvage will be generated to refill the market.

[Baja]

Starting in 2008 I can see why names were not a big part of your experience, not to be rude at all. Some of us though started this game with a name and literally played the entire time with said name, so you can imagine the attachment that happened overtime. It's not always about concept or fitting a certaint set of powers, it's about what you're known as to friends/the community. After seeing your name being typed out literally thousands of times by thousands of players, you begin to identify with this self proclaimed title. This gets to the point where you literally feel uncomfortable being called anything else. Now I realize that may be ridiculous but imagine if someone started calling you something other than your actual name out of no where simply because you changed something minor about your RL appearance, it would feel rather awkward.

Yes this game will not revert to sunshine and rainbows, but it is our chance to build the fair and balanced Eutopia this game could have easily been with the right guidance. After all the lessons learned by the long term players in our community I think it safe to say we will not be a stubborn pre-school teacher, we are more than willing to show how we came to these conclusions. Obviously people will fast-level, obviously there will griefers, gold farmers are kind of obsolete at this point (unless what I think is going to happen does, but at this point I don't really want to say what or who is behind it), that however does not mean the average everyday player will fall into these categories. It's up to us to provide proper introductions into this lovely universe, especially when there are so many vested interests in seeing it fail. People have spent years trying to build new games to replace this one, what's to stop those people from trying to ruin this great opportunity in order to become the ones who recieve profit. To me they are the most dangerous, although getting that to be admitted is an entirely different ball game.

Right now the positivity is at an all time high simply because people are excited to get back into the game they held so close to their hearts. I for one will be paying for just about everything I can in hopes to keep this game alive, so long as it isn't a pay to win scenario, I'm sure many other will be in the same boat.

[Little David]

With all due respect, Baja, people who started playing this game from 2008, or even later than that, can grow just as attached to the identities they created in CoH and the names that go with them. You don't need to be playing from 2004 just to develop that kind of attachment.

I know, because I'm pretty partial to the names of my guys as well, and I started playing CoH roughly around that time.

That said, I've always been bothered by the demands of yesteryear for regular "character name purges" and the like. Whenever a discussion like that popped up on the CoH forums, my input was to do things the same way Sega did for Phantasy Star Universe: allow duplicate names, make the global name the unique, important identifier.

Some people thought I was suggesting that CoH should ape Champions online and turn names into an e-mail address, but I actually wasn't suggesting that; Phantasy Star Universe didn't leave a user's Sega ID visible all the time. A user could make them pop up over characters with a button click, or by looking at the Partner Cards they exchanged with characters. They were also listed when looking for character rooms to visit.

[Ankhammon]

I just had a random thought.

If we do start with no user data, how are you guys going to handle the SO to IO conversion?

We won't really have huge sums of inf. to go purchase all the IO placeholders we normally did (or get them from the vast stores we have in our bases). You won't be able to borrow them from another character you have. No transfer of funds either.

Will you farm on SOs until you have enough for basic IOs and then just work drops for the recipes?
Will you AE farm for tickets or find that one mish you can handle solo and farm there for drops?
Or will your first character be a total farmer so that you can build back up your fortune?

Do you PL and trade that for drops/tickets?

Do you try incarnate stuff before finishing IOing out your character?

[tinkb]

I am just gonna be happy to have the game back, and to start over that's fine too it will be fun to start from level 1 again. always loved going thru the story modes,  i plan to stop all other games and just play COH again. 

[DarkCurrent]

I just had a random thought.

If we do start with no user data, how are you guys going to handle the SO to IO conversion?

We won't really have huge sums of inf. to go purchase all the IO placeholders we normally did (or get them from the vast stores we have in our bases). You won't be able to borrow them from another character you have. No transfer of funds either.

Will you farm on SOs until you have enough for basic IOs and then just work drops for the recipes?
Will you AE farm for tickets or find that one mish you can handle solo and farm there for drops?
Or will your first character be a total farmer so that you can build back up your fortune?

Do you PL and trade that for drops/tickets?

Do you try incarnate stuff before finishing IOing out your character?

If no one has inf you'll have no way to make money from the market.  Selling drops to the vendors has a horrible return, so that would limit your inf building that way also.

That would leave either running missions and TFs, and not speed runs / DFBing over and over, to build up an inf pool.  But then you'd have to buy recipes from the crafting tables (pricey), and have only the salvage drops from foes.  Street sweeping could work all right as well.

I'd say the AE system with tickets would be a faster method for getting salvage and recipes you want though,

This makes me think an interesting way to relaunch the game would be to activate events like a rikti invasion or ToTing would be a good way to boost availability of infamy and drops.  Would get players excited and teaming like crazy rather than just running a farm.

It also gives the new dev team a way to make money without resorting to making people buy powersets and ATs and character slots.  They could sell xp and infamy boosters.  Also could sell the superbooster boxes like they were that have ATOs and stuff in them.

[Ankhammon]

I do like the restart happening with a good old Rikti invasion or something. That sounds like a fun and appropriate way to restart the franchise.

My guess is it wouldn't take but a week or two for someone to start saying how they are over a mill inf. again. Making a Fire/Kin or a Claws/Elec and going to town on the PL. That's perfectly fine to me as it will start stocking the market with cash.

The rest of us get to a more normal leveling and by the time we get a purple drop or something we'll catch up pretty fast. I don't feel the need to be the first to a million/billion on a server. I get my kicks from playing less than well known combos and making something good out of them.

It's gonna take all types to get the game up and running again. I'm all for it.