Titan Network
Graveyard => Save Paragon Retirees => Save Paragon City! => Topic started by: jacknomind on September 02, 2012, 11:44:00 PM
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I don't mean to split anyone's focus; getting the game itself running, either via acquisition or emulation, is the most important thing. But I feel that there's a strong argument to be made to put some effort into acquiring the existing character database(s).
I play for the game, but I know many people play for the story and history of their characters and accomplishments. We can to some extent artificially restore that after the fact, but I believe it will help us retain or entice back quite a few players if we can offer them their old characters, old SG bases, etc; "just like it never ended."
The timeline for this is short but we do have a few options. One is simply include it in our requests to NCSoft when negotiations have opened (if negotiations have opened). If this proves impossible -- if they aren't willing to deal -- there are two other methods available to us. One is to acquire the databases from the existing servers. I don't think this will be easy, but it might be possible if anyone has contacts with NCSoft Austin. I'm... pretty skeptical of this, but, well. If we can hand somebody a few TB of storage and they're willing to even just mothball this stuff for us for a little while after November, it could make all the difference in the world.
The last and most desperate option is to just tell people in the last couple of weeks to screenshot their badge lists, and possibly costume selection options, builds, SG info, and banks or AH (we *can* just write a blank check for returning players, but without things to work for no one will actually play).
But I think by far the best option to retain a substantial portion of the playerbase is to promise them: We saved everyone. We have your stories, they're here waiting for you. Come back. If we want to run this as a business, and if we want to develop new things we'll have to to at least a small extent, this is the best way to start with as many subscriptions as we can.
(...Not that there isn't something to be said for a brand new world...)
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Guy is working on a way to capture what info we can in a "time capsule" file. Basically a specialized Sentinel+. Now mind you, it won't be *everything*, but would be enough so that if we lose the character database you could at least re-create the basics.
For bases, the best way to go is to demorecord them. Little known secret: The entire base is saved in a demorecord file, including the contents of storage bins...
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I'm presently working on a utility to extract state information on characters for integration with some future game system/server. It can pull out most information pertaining to a given character, as it is a culmination of all the technologies developed for the Sentinel project.
The /demorecord slash command in-game can be used to dump a copy of a super group base, complete with the contents of the storage containers. The combination of my utility and that slash command can provide a means to rescue characters and bases from the void over the next three months.
However, I don't want to be in the business of getting any hopes up, as for the time being, there currently is no target system to integrate these exports into.
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Alright, that's excellent, if we're left with no options besides re-eng or nil. I hope it doesn't come to that.
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Oh yes!
If we could save the player database, that would be a guarateed way to get the COH masses behind the project.
None of us want to see our players lost to the cold dark abyss...
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One problem that might come with trying to acquire the player database is privacy.
How do we handle it? What would we need to, legally, to ensure that it does not fall into the wrong hands?
etc, etc, etc...
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This is a key question, and I agree that it will matter to a lot of people.
What to do about it has a lot to do with the response from NCSoft. If they're willing to sell the entire operations of the game, that very probably includes the character databases. If they're not, we're likely to have to try and archive them somehow.
It's been two days since the announcement; we simply can't know yet. I'm sure TonyV and a bunch of others are scrambling to find out, but it's not a surprise that we haven't heard back yet.
I am impressed that there's already a tool being discussed to create these things, and really pleased at the thoughtfulness and professionalism of the people working on it. I need to dig in a little deeper and find out how I can help them more.
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Just throwing my 2c's worth in here. I don't want anyone to think I'm ignoring this thread, I'm just deferring to Guy for all talk about this topic. Guy is, to put it mildly, crazy smart specifically at what is being discussed here. He is literally the be-all and end-all of Titan Sentinel, which does something remarkably similar to what you guys are talking about. In fact, we have a crazy beefed-up version of Sentinel almost in the can, and the reason it's not already in the can and out there on your machines is because it's waiting on the back-end development of our web server to process the data that it is capable of collecting. I hate to say this because I know his head will be all swollen next time I talk to him after he reads this, but confidence in his abilities here is well-placed.
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If the Sentinel+, demorecording options do exist they will need to be encrypted so the players cant modify them.
If the demorecord can be edited who'se to say I dont put a bucketload of Purples, ATOs, PvPs in my bins so when you reload them up I get more than I had.
Sorry to add this to the pot :(
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We're already planning to cryptographically sign the output of the Sentinel+ tool, so that if we are able to host an official, licensed server, we can import character data without much chance of cheating. It will still output plain text or XML so that you can preserve the information yourself if you just want it for posterity.
As for bases in demorecords... Well it's possible that someone could deduce the format and modify one, however it's unlikely given that it's encoded in a fairly esoteric way (and if they can pull that off then they definitely need to contact us about working on the project!)
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Awesome :)
I was sure it would have been thought of but wanted to add it just in case. Im surprised how often at my work I say "Why isnt X included?" and the answer being "we didnt think of that" /headdesk.
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o.o err... a Sentinal+ would be great.. but in the meantime, and just to be safe, the titan network can be used to record a lot... CIT stores a characters lvls, bio, cash, badges, primary/second/origin.. mids can grab a person's build.. and with in-game, icon can save all your costumes (I suggest doing this format "charname_cc#" to keep things straight..). Sure, it doesn't get your souvenirs, sg contributions, contact list or progression and whatnot, but its something that can be done right now and might give some peace of mind.
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I've heard of an off-game costume creator... It's out there... it only needs to be updated to all the new stuff that's in-game now.
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o.o the off-line costume creater was made back with City of Hero. it was pre-i2. it had at best the i0 costumes and maybe the ones made for us by the Lineage 2 ppl (clipping issues like mad...). It was never released stateside, much less kept up to date... there where ways to sneak newer costume bits in, but.. that all ended around when CoV came out, they altered the costume engine a tad bit with that, and have several times since. Even if you had a copy of it, the CC in-game now is so different there's no hope. we have at least a third more options in the costumes alone, ignoring the power customizing
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Dunno if this has been thrown around yet, but one suggestion is that if someone can throw together a program that saves the charterers data, to another online database, ie, the one to be used for new operations, one could since their NC Coh account data successfully
haven't read the full thread so just throwing my idea, im also not aware how easy or hard it would be or even how legal
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We got some folks workin' on it.
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I'm presently working on a utility to extract state information on characters for integration with some future game system/server. It can pull out most information pertaining to a given character, as it is a culmination of all the technologies developed for the Sentinel project.
Brilliant!
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Is anyone else reading this and thinking how incredibly sexy coders are?!
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Okay, I've got the utility pretty much finished up. Its output looks like this:
http://cit.cohtitan.com/sentinel/Example.xml
I won't be releasing it to the public just yet, since we don't know how NCsoft will want to approach the situation going forward. But in a worst case scenario, in the event the servers are going down for good, everyone will have plenty of opportunity to produce one of those for each of their characters.
But as you can see, various information pertaining to characters was pulled right out of the game, so there's no risk of losing all your work. In some form or another, regardless of what happens, we can rescue our characters from the end of days. If it comes to that, people will produce these XML files and keep them handy, to be used in a future CoH system for importing characters after the end of the world occurs.
__________
But what's to keep someone from, say, typing in a bunch of purples in all of their Enhancement slots, you ask?
Take note of the very last line of the file:
<!-- VKEY 7DADDF5E -->
This "VKEY" here is the validation key, a cryptographic checksum that will be used to detect whether the file has been edited at all. Every file will have a different validation key, and this can be checked to guarantee whether the rest of the file is the same data that was produced alongside the key in question.
Consider the following line:
<salvage quantity="2">S_Fortune</salvage>
After producing this XML file, I deleted one of my Fortunes and ran it again, meaning the only difference in the entire file is that quantity="2" there became quantity="1". In doing so, the validation key became 0212E2BB. That's nothing like the previous one (7DADDF5E), despite only one byte of the entire file changing its value by only one unit. That's the beauty of cryptography. This particular scenario is known the avalanche effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalanche_effect).
The algorithm being used to produce these validation keys is a custom one not in use by anyone else in the universe, in this time period or at any point in the past or future. It is unique to this one application. If someone makes any changes to their files, it won't work because the validation key won't match, and because they won't know how to make a new validation key.
Each file has exactly one possible matching validation key, and there's a total of 4,294,967,296 different possible validation keys. So that's one in almost 4.3 billion that can work for each file. And trust me, if someone attempts to upload 4.3 billion different XML files in an attempt to cheat the system, they're not going to get very far. (-:
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Now, witness the power of this fully-armed and operational Sentinel!
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Now, witness the power of this fully-armed and operational Sentinel!
I'm thinking we should name it Kronos.exe. ;)
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thats a very nice readable format, will definitely do this for my toons if there is any way possible i could play them again, i might try to do a demorecord with my sg base to keep that around as well if it could at all be possibly reinstated in some way
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Guy, this sounds like an awesome piece of work. Is there any way to prevent someone from simply moving huge chunks of cash and Purple IOs from one character to another, and doing the export such that each guy has a full wallet when this is done?
Later on,
Gate
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o.o this yanks not just slotted enhancements but everything they've got in their inventory right? the various salvages, temp powers, the works? and no issues with ppl having all sorts of different storage sizes at this point?
^^ pls pardon my paranoia!
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That's purty, Guyperfect. And do you do anything besides logging in?
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That's purty, Guyperfect. And do you do anything besides logging in?
If it looks anything like the current Sentinel, there's probably an "export character data" button or something similar that copies all of that to your clipboard and allows you to paste it into a file.
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Guy, this sounds like an awesome piece of work. Is there any way to prevent someone from simply moving huge chunks of cash and Purple IOs from one character to another, and doing the export such that each guy has a full wallet when this is done?
Later on,
Gate
This is actually a fairly legitimate concern, my only suggestion would likely be to find some way to take a flash of the info for all characters on a single server at once, then time stamped for added security.
Whether this would be possible or not I'm not sure as I'm not nearly as familiar with the code as i would like to be.
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If it looks anything like the current Sentinel, there's probably an "export character data" button or something similar that copies all of that to your clipboard and allows you to paste it into a file.
Ah! Thank you. I'm unfamiliar with Sentinel so far.
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Is there any way to prevent someone from simply moving huge chunks of cash and Purple IOs from one character to another, and doing the export such that each guy has a full wallet when this is done?
This is actually a fairly legitimate concern [...]
There's effectively no way to prevent it, and I wouldn't say it's much of a concern. Even in the event someone did decide to cheat, it'd be, what, a few dozen extra Enhancements on the new system when it's all said and done?
I wouldn't worry about it. Most people will be honest regardless.
o.o this yanks not just slotted enhancements but everything they've got in their inventory right? the various salvages, temp powers, the works? and no issues with ppl having all sorts of different storage sizes at this point?
Everything but temp powers, yeah.
That's purty, Guyperfect. And do you do anything besides logging in?
If it looks anything like the current Sentinel, there's probably an "export character data" button or something similar that copies all of that to your clipboard and allows you to paste it into a file.
The release candidate (in testing now) looks like this:
(https://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y255/bgng/FinalExtract.png)
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This is actually a fairly legitimate concern, my only suggestion would likely be to find some way to take a flash of the info for all characters on a single server at once, then time stamped for added security.
Whether this would be possible or not I'm not sure as I'm not nearly as familiar with the code as i would like to be.
I don't know if there's even a way to do it that doesn't veer this project into grotesque overcomplication. I only bring it up on the off-chance Guy can say, "Yeah, I can fix that with 5 minutes' effort." To me, if some jerk hacker is going to take this time of crisis to start dupin rares in earnest, let him. The alternative is that the game is gone to a lot more than the Americans.
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Holy schnikees, UniqueDragon was some sort of crazy prophet!?
Later on,
Gate
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Holy schnikees, UniqueDragon was some sort of crazy prophet!?
I believe we need to start referring to him using his full name: Mender UniqueDragon.
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This Sentinel+ is seriously awesome ! Love you guys !
Mids dump + costume file + badges + bio all in one go !!
by the way, I noted that the current sentinel seems to have trouble with accented characters (I'm smelling UTF-8 issues in there..) and also if the bio contains this character ' then anything past that character is not imported (I'm smelling string termination here)
not that this needs a fixing, because for bios written in plain english, this works fine !
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o.o the off-line costume creater was made back with City of Hero. it was pre-i2. it had at best the i0 costumes and maybe the ones made for us by the Lineage 2 ppl (clipping issues like mad...). It was never released stateside, much less kept up to date... there where ways to sneak newer costume bits in, but.. that all ended around when CoV came out, they altered the costume engine a tad bit with that, and have several times since. Even if you had a copy of it, the CC in-game now is so different there's no hope. we have at least a third more options in the costumes alone, ignoring the power customizing
Slightly off topic question. Has thought been given to a possibly divising a way that after launch the client could be loaded and 'spoofed' in to thinking it was connected to a server and allow us to just play in the costume creator. As I understand it, everything in the CC resides in our local machine, so the game would just need a way to be spoofed into thinking it was logged in. Crazy idea, and I'm very unknowing about the specifics of it. Just wondering is all.
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Slightly off topic question. Has thought been given to a possibly divising a way that after launch the client could be loaded and 'spoofed' in to thinking it was connected to a server and allow us to just play in the costume creator. As I understand it, everything in the CC resides in our local machine, so the game would just need a way to be spoofed into thinking it was logged in. Crazy idea, and I'm very unknowing about the specifics of it. Just wondering is all.
I'm already planning to do exactly that. :)
The first phase of the reverse-engineering project will give us pretty much the ability to do that. It'll just be a matter of wrapping it up in a launcher. So keep those client files around!
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For bases, the best way to go is to demorecord them. Little known secret: The entire base is saved in a demorecord file, including the contents of storage bins...
Wait, WHAT? HOW?!?!
I've sorta asked for this only thought it was usable only for video archiving purposes. Perhapse we can get a team to work on creating such files or a 'How-To' thread posted if it doesn't already exist. As much as we do need to focus on moving forward, a full game backup (or as close as we can get) would be a top priority as well even if the end result of this turns into simply using that data as a template for a new IP.
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o.o err... a Sentinal+ would be great.. but in the meantime, and just to be safe, the titan network can be used to record a lot... CIT stores a characters lvls, bio, cash, badges, primary/second/origin.. mids can grab a person's build.. and with in-game, icon can save all your costumes (I suggest doing this format "charname_cc#" to keep things straight..). Sure, it doesn't get your souvenirs, sg contributions, contact list or progression and whatnot, but its something that can be done right now and might give some peace of mind.
The problem with costumes right now is that many of us who recently went Preem or simply didn't resub have tons of locked toons that we can't access. Granted, I have most of my toon's stuff backed up from before, but we won't get the chance to do one last CIT upload because of that unless by some miracle they actually unlock all toons.
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I'm smelling UTF-8 issues in there.
Hey, Guy, that sounds familiar. ;D
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The problem with costumes right now is that many of us who recently went Preem or simply didn't resub have tons of locked toons that we can't access. Granted, I have most of my toon's stuff backed up from before, but we won't get the chance to do one last CIT upload because of that unless by some miracle they actually unlock all toons.
Yeah, the premium problem is unfortunate. We may be able to get some limited information from the character select screen, like the one costume that is displayed, but that still means losing a lot...
Hopefully they'll unlock those characters, or make the store free which would let you "buy" character slots and get all of them except the ones on Exalted or over the 36 limit.
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This Sentinel+ is seriously awesome ! Love you guys !
Mids dump + costume file + badges + bio all in one go !!
by the way, I noted that the current sentinel seems to have trouble with accented characters (I'm smelling UTF-8 issues in there..) and also if the bio contains this character ' then anything past that character is not imported (I'm smelling string termination here)
not that this needs a fixing, because for bios written in plain english, this works fine !
Considering the quite varied background of my toons, this has been a long time problem for me. The game records values correctly, but exporting to CIT always results in screwy characters. Luckily I keep a file for my toon bio's!
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Yeah, the premium problem is unfortunate. We may be able to get some limited information from the character select screen, like the one costume that is displayed, but that still means losing a lot...
Hopefully they'll unlock those characters, or make the store free which would let you "buy" character slots and get all of them except the ones on Exalted or over the 36 limit.
Yeah, I've posted in many places the 'Hope' that they'll do one last global unlock for all Preem players. I can't imagine it being too much hassle to flip the VIP/Preem switch. Obviously you don't want to up and make Free-2-VIP as then....(lost thought track)
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A couple of questions re Sentinel+
-Can it handle multiple crafted incarnate powers, even if the slot may not yet have been unlocked?
-Can it handle invalid costume pieces? I'm sure some of us have toons that have costumes pieces that have moved or apparently disappeared.
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Guy will have to field the question about incarnate powers, I believe so but I'm not sure.
As for costume pieces, it will dump the raw representation of whatever you're wearing. It doesn't check to see if it's a valid entry in costumes.bin or not.
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Yeah, I've posted in many places the 'Hope' that they'll do one last global unlock for all Preem players. I can't imagine it being too much hassle to flip the VIP/Preem switch. Obviously you don't want to up and make Free-2-VIP as then....(lost thought track)
Seriously, they already did some "get back" week-ends for veterans that didn't play anymore, they can do it again. And this is a NCSoft-database switch (is the player paying), not a gameplay Server one.
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The problem with costumes right now is that many of us who recently went Preem or simply didn't resub have tons of locked toons that we can't access. Granted, I have most of my toon's stuff backed up from before, but we won't get the chance to do one last CIT upload because of that unless by some miracle they actually unlock all toons.
<.< yeah... about that... don't be surprised if everyone if made "vip" in the last month that we're allotted... might well be sooner, but NCsofts policy on sunsetting usually has the game go full access in the last month.
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-Can it handle multiple crafted incarnate powers, even if the slot may not yet have been unlocked?
Guy will have to field the question about incarnate powers, I believe so but I'm not sure.
Once again, I refer you to the example file:
http://cit.cohtitan.com/sentinel/Example.xml
In particular:
<incarnate count="11">
<ability slotted="true">Incarnate.Hybrid.Support_Genome_6</ability>
<ability slotted="true">Incarnate.Destiny.Barrier_Total_Core_Invocation</ability>
<ability>Incarnate.Destiny.Incandescence_Total_Radial_Invocation</ability>
<ability slotted="true">Incarnate.Lore.IDF_Total_Core_Improved_Ally</ability>
<ability>Incarnate.Lore.Longbow_Total_Core_Improved_Ally</ability>
<ability>Incarnate.Interface.Paralytic_Partial_Core_Conversion</ability>
<ability slotted="true">Incarnate.Interface.Reactive_Total_Radial_Conversion</ability>
<ability>Incarnate.Interface.Degenerative_Total_Radial_Conversion</ability>
<ability slotted="true">Incarnate.Judgement.Pyronic_Total_Core_Judgement</ability>
<ability slotted="true">Incarnate.Alpha.Spiritual_Core_Paragon</ability>
<ability>Incarnate.Alpha.Nerve_Total_Core_Revamp</ability>
</incarnate>
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Thanks Guy, I missed those. Just trying to think of potential problems but, as usual, you are several steps ahead :)
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As for costume pieces, it will dump the raw representation of whatever you're wearing. It doesn't check to see if it's a valid entry in costumes.bin or not.
This is something that I'm checking with all my characters as I'm going through them. Many were created several years ago, and the costume creator doesn't recognize some pieces because they've been recategorized or renamed. Most every piece is still in there somewhere, though. Yes, it does take a lot longer, but I want them to be as current/accurate as possible before exporting them.
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On the bright side, I noticed the other night that they appear to have added a little padlock icon in the upper corner of any costume with invalid options when you view the Costume window. Makes for very quick visual ID of any costumes that need to be fixed.
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That is one sexy output.
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On the bright side, I noticed the other night that they appear to have added a little padlock icon in the upper corner of any costume with invalid options when you view the Costume window. Makes for very quick visual ID of any costumes that need to be fixed.
That's true, but I'm finding some costumes change to default options when editing that don't have the padlock. And some recently-saved costumes even have to be fixed if you reload them right away. Makes me go a little >:(
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The problem with costumes right now is that many of us who recently went Preem or simply didn't resub have tons of locked toons that we can't access. Granted, I have most of my toon's stuff backed up from before, but we won't get the chance to do one last CIT upload because of that unless by some miracle they actually unlock all toons.
I have that problem with a significant number of my characters. I can't access ANY of the free to VIP power slots or any of my Praetorians. I'm hoping that they simply decide to unlock all characters, but I'm not holding my breath right now. I can get almost all of my mains, but there are a couple of characters that I REALLY want the background pulled up, and I don't think I got them into Titan Sentinel earlier. (I might have, I have to check.)
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The thought of a restart will acces to all of the things in the game now is extremely appealing to me, however, I agree that it will be easier to retain more players with the current database. It should work either way.