If we start with no user data

[Surelle]

I will just add my voice to the din, even though CoH may or may not ever return.

If Team Hail Mary does manage to dredge up CoH from the smouldering embers, how about unlocking all the cash shop power sets and all the vet rewards through the end of tier 9 for subscription players, while leaving the purely free players to purchase things a la carte?  The team is going to need income to support CoH and work on CoH2, so subscriptions would be reliable income, without trying to force everyone to completely blow the bank investing many hundreds of dollars or more just to get back to where their accounts were back when CoH was originally live?

[Young Tutor]

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?

Back in the day I leveled up a few characters w/o influence transfers, and it was pretty easy to get decent IO builds if you were patient and actively tried to generate good rewards. Starting from zero, here's what I'd do.

1.) I had a SS/Fire Armor/Mu brute for AE farming. She was kind of mindless, but a lot of fun. It wasn't too difficult to kit her out in IOs. If you have a character that can farm AE tickets efficiently, you'll generate a ton of influence and tickets (which basically gives you a metric ton of recipes). In particular, you'll generate all the "frankenslotting" recipes you could hope for (and depending on what you are rolling for, you could just get sweet uncommon sets like Crushing Impact or Thunderstrike which work too).

2.) Alignment merits via SSAs and Morality Missions were a great way to get specific rare recipes. It is pretty easy to get enough alignment merits to purchase the Performance Shifter +end Proc and Miracle unique on every character when you hit the low 20s, and have enough saved up to get the Numina unique and maybe another high-end rare IO (LOTG +recharge, etc) without excessive farming. Of course, if you were running alts you could use their Alignment Merits to fund your main.

3.) I will use the market to try and amass wealth, but I imagine in the early days there won't be a ton of spare change floating around. There will still be opportunities, however, and hopefully I'll have enough liquidity to take advantage of it.

[Baja]

Another hint to add to the above is if you have patience you can easily just AE farm and buy up rare salvage. Save it, sell it at a later date for 100x the price you acquired it at. I made close to a billion doing this except ae was not around at the time so I just bought a holy sh*t ton of rare salvage off the market thinking I'd wait a couple weeks for prices to spike and re-sell. Well I forgot about all of it as I bought it all up on alts, a year later and my jaw dropped when I got bored to play them obviously with how many players know about proper farming these days you won't have to wait a year, more like a couple months.

[erich]

Another hint to add to the above is if you have patience you can easily just AE farm and buy up rare salvage. Save it, sell it at a later date for 100x the price you acquired it at. I made close to a billion doing this except ae was not around at the time so I just bought a holy sh*t ton of rare salvage off the market thinking I'd wait a couple weeks for prices to spike and re-sell. Well I forgot about all of it as I bought it all up on alts, a year later and my jaw dropped when I got bored to play them obviously with how many players know about proper farming these days you won't have to wait a year, more like a couple months.

AHHH, good ole AE farming how I miss thee!

[saipaman]

I'd like to see some kind of 'head start' period for those of us that can submit valid Sentinel+ files.

If we have to lose everything from the old game, we should at least have a 'first shot' at recreating our stuff before a flood of newbies show up, and then later vanish, tying up good names.

[Teikiatsu]

I'd like to see some kind of 'head start' period for those of us that can submit valid Sentinel+ files.

If we have to lose everything from the old game, we should at least have a 'first shot' at recreating our stuff before a flood of newbies show up, and then later vanish, tying up good names.

And what about those of us who played just as much but didn't put our characters on Sentinel, or lost their files to virus/corruption/drive crash?

I liked one suggestion for people wanting their Sentinels uploaded: only on one server accepts Sentinel.

Suggestions:

1) Low initial purchase to download the launcher, no more than $15 - This makes everyone a 'Premium' player
2) Discounted purchase of Paragon Points/Tokens/Codes/Etc before launch, then go back to standard prices after launch - maybe 2 to 2.5X the benefit
3) Low VIP subscription - $5 per month

Or just make it a $15 purchase with a $5 monthly subscription with enough points/tokens/etc that you'd start out with at least 30 rewards tokens (ie 72 month veteran)

[Kistulot]

1) Low initial purchase to download the launcher, no more than $15 - This makes everyone a 'Premium' player
2) Discounted purchase of Paragon Points/Tokens/Codes/Etc before launch, then go back to standard prices after launch - maybe 2 to 2.5X the benefit
3) Low VIP subscription - $5 per month

Or just make it a $15 purchase with a $5 monthly subscription with enough points/tokens/etc that you'd start out with at least 30 rewards tokens (ie 72 month veteran)

This all sounds pretty half decent. Another thing really feels like maybe we should reevaluate what is and isn't VIP. For example, I owned Going Rogue and that made the alignment system open even whilst F2P, but no one will own it now so... why not just pretend we're all owners of going rogue? It feels like it's more fair than expecting everyone to have a box, receipt, etc.

Personally I really think IOs as a premium thing is kinda mean when some powersets shine soo much less without them - but if its a low sub, like 5$/mo, then it doesn't feel so prohibitive.

Just to make sure even as I say this nothing gets misunderstood though: game at all back > no game, just preferences. I doubt if it's revived from this effort anyone involved will set up a situation that hurts the vets - after all, all of those involved are part of that same community

[hejtmane]

I have one common name on all my toons and it was actually great name for the toon. My only non scrapper 50 was a controller I made on Pinnacle (that was the server I played on) was a Illusion/rad and I got the name Hypnosis. Somebody please make sure to take that name because that means I win because we are playing COH.

 

[Teikiatsu]

This all sounds pretty half decent. Another thing really feels like maybe we should reevaluate what is and isn't VIP. For example, I owned Going Rogue and that made the alignment system open even whilst F2P, but no one will own it now so... why not just pretend we're all owners of going rogue? It feels like it's more fair than expecting everyone to have a box, receipt, etc.

Personally I really think IOs as a premium thing is kinda mean when some powersets shine soo much less without them - but if its a low sub, like 5$/mo, then it doesn't feel so prohibitive.

Just to make sure even as I say this nothing gets misunderstood though: game at all back > no game, just preferences. I doubt if it's revived from this effort anyone involved will set up a situation that hurts the vets - after all, all of those involved are part of that same community

I'm working off the premise that they can't alter what Premium or VIP provide, so make everyone at least a Premium.  Keep the monthly costs low to reflect that this is a static game.

[HEATSTROKE]

 My issue isnt getting names.. or even leveling.. Its getting all 67 slots IO'd all over again..  on 40 plus toons..

 Im really really hoping for character data.. because it will seriously affect my commitment to play going forward.. especially with the long term future unknown.. I would hate to build all that back up again and in a few years.. POOOF gone again.. especially if there is no way for met to host or run my own server.. no way..

[Kistulot]

I'm working off the premise that they can't alter what Premium or VIP provide, so make everyone at least a Premium.  Keep the monthly costs low to reflect that this is a static game.

The only reason I say Going Rogue more solidly is because it was something that was already disentangled from Premium somewhat. Of course, if you put it in the store for 0 cash moneys, this also works out to be the same

But definitely, static game, lower cost, and hopefully some way to recover from losin' loads.

[Harpospoke]

My issue isnt getting names.. or even leveling.. Its getting all 67 slots IO'd all over again..  on 40 plus toons..

 Im really really hoping for character data.. because it will seriously affect my commitment to play going forward.. especially with the long term future unknown.. I would hate to build all that back up again and in a few years.. POOOF gone again.. especially if there is no way for met to host or run my own server.. no way..

The best part might be that you won't be alone.   Something tells me that there will be huge efforts to get characters back to where they were.   This will be invaluable to me.   A group effort to get our characters back kinda sounds like the CoH spirit to me actually.   I plan to jump right into the middle of it and be a "dirty PL'er" with all my heart. 

[HEATSTROKE]

 Ok I narrowed it down.. out of 48 toons I would definitely remake 32...

[Teikiatsu]

The only reason I say Going Rogue more solidly is because it was something that was already disentangled from Premium somewhat. Of course, if you put it in the store for 0 cash moneys, this also works out to be the same

But definitely, static game, lower cost, and hopefully some way to recover from losin' loads.

Hmm... I was also working from the premise that CoH/CoV/GR were all part of the Premium access package.  So access to GR goodies needs a retail code?  If so, yeah $0 to no more than $5 for the code would be fine.  There's a lot of fun toys in all that.

[Burnt Toast]

I have a feeling, aside from my main which I plan to play to 50, all my other toons will be PLd. I know what I want.. I know what I had...so that whole "You won't know how to play your toons blah blah" crap won't be an issue (Not that it truly ever was for me). I think I have my toons narrowed down to 12... so aside from my farmer and my main... that's only 10 toons I will be PLing. I will prolly just dual box it and farm most of my toons myself.

The best part might be that you won't be alone.   Something tells me that there will be huge efforts to get characters back to where they were.   This will be invaluable to me.   A group effort to get our characters back kinda sounds like the CoH spirit to me actually.   I plan to jump right into the middle of it and be a "dirty PL'er" with all my heart. 

[Kistulot]

Hmm... I was also working from the premise that CoH/CoV/GR were all part of the Premium access package.  So access to GR goodies needs a retail code?  If so, yeah $0 to no more than $5 for the code would be fine.  There's a lot of fun toys in all that.

I just know that there was something in the database that could be flicked for GR that gave you access to new prae toons, alignment system, etc, without being subbed if you'd bought it before Freedom's conversion. This makes me think that if that could be found, everyone could be given Going Rogue as a bit of a "hey, welcome to the game" sort of similar to the way CoV was rolled into CoH.

It's not exactly the same mind you, but it's just a thought

[HEATSTROKE]

i can see the influence sellers making a mint..

[saipaman]

And what about those of us who played just as much but didn't put our characters on Sentinel, or lost their files to virus/corruption/drive crash?

I'd say that was unfortunate but not a reason to deny those who had better fortune an opportunity.

[Teikiatsu]

I'd say that was unfortunate but not a reason to deny those who had better fortune an opportunity.

Sounds to me that what you are saying is that possession of a data file (be it original, copied, modified, or new) is valid reason for a person to start out loaded with everything they had while the 'less fortunate' can go pound sand.

If something like that were done, I'd suggest the option to upload a previous character should be an additional cost based on what the toon was carrying (influence, IOs, Incarnate levels, salvage, etc).  The devs could look at your character, determine how much that character should cost, then send you an invoice. 

[Safehouse]

There are also those who had no clue that Sentinel even existed, even those who were incredibly attached to their characters and loved them. I don't see it as a fortune or misfortune thing. I see it as a potentially very small population of players who used Sentinel. Honestly, I didn't know about Sentinel until it was brought up on this thread. If I had known about it, I might have backed up my characters. But that's a moot point; spilled milk not worth crying over. I think that the Sentinel idea is definitely a good START to getting our character data back, but I also think it leaves some people (maybe more than some) who also want their character data back out.

So, if we have a way of getting data back for those fortunate enough to have kept that data, what can be done for those who were less fortunate (myself among one of those)?