And the mask comes off.

[Harpospoke]

Isn't the question moot since Codewalker (who should know) says it is not useful for this purpose? That being the case the ease of hacking or who knows about is a pointless discussion.

Hmmmm...you should also read the post I was replying to.

This wasn't about using the Sentinel files to actually load a character into the game.   CW explained why that is not a good idea.

[opprime2828]

And I wish it had a "dislike" button.  You're really pounding this whole voiceover thing into the ground.  No one cares at this point, the CoT devs have said forget it, CoX isn't even remotely ours yet and it's only a snapshot with no source code coming (so no changes to CoX will happen) if it ever goes back up, and Revival isn't planning on voiceovers either.  Enough already, give it up.  Like this thread isn't clogged enough.

 
 
O.o 
 
Pretty sure I wasn't the only one in the discussion, and actually didn't even start the discussion about voice acting(or come in to it until several pages in.) We're just having a discussion about a TON of "possibilities" to what the future may hold.  I guess if it's interrupting other discussions in here about...what the future may hold or what we'd like to see/not see/wonder how they'll fix stuff...
 
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I also said that I was moving on and was happy with the Devs regardless, yesterday, so I'm not sure why you're being rude now.
 
*shrug*

[AlienOne]

I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

Yeah, I heard about it in plenty of time to back up all the characters that were important to me. I have no idea how it will ever be useful that I spent the time to do that at this point in time, but yeah, I was in charge of 3 different quite popular TF channels, and you couldn't go more than 30 minutes at a time without having someone pop in and say "have you guys heard of this Sentinel thing?"

[MWRuger]

I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

Yeah, I announced it every time I logged in on Liberty. But you know, even on the last day there were still people who hadn't heard about it. I gave out the link like 2 hours before it closed. I think there were people who just didn't know.

[Codewalker]

Isn't the question moot since Codewalker (who should know) says it is not useful for this purpose?

Whining about it to the buyers is pointless, though since they're relative amateurs and closer to the community compared to most corporate behemoth-run studios, I wouldn't go far as to say it's completely impossible, just extremely unlikely.

Discussing it in the community is less so, because it is still relevant to the future of the game.

As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.

The 38 level 50s aren't even that big a deal as most of them except a couple are effectively retired, it's the 80 or so in various stages of progress that it would sting to lose.

[Blondeshell]

Say what? Then why did I spend all that time helping TonyV set up a SSL MITM proxy so that he could capture store traffic for... reasons?

(actually the reasons were to try to snag the item images for use on the wiki, but anyway)

You could've just done what I did to get item images for the wiki: cropping screenshots in Photoshop. Low-tech, sure, but it worked.

[Ankhammon]

I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

I guess I didn't know everyone you knew. I'd never heard of Sentinel until reading about it through titan.

It is possible that I heard someone mention Sentinel on the in game chats, but it wouldn't have been any kind of explanation of it just halfway through a conversation... I don't remember hearing about it at all.

I used several chat channels but missed most of the last couple weeks of the game because it made me sad to play. And that's not really the point of playing a game, now is it?

FYI, was playing since I2. Mostly on Infinity, but some chars on lots of other servers.

[opprime2828]

And allowing some players to use backed up characters that hardly anyone else even knew there was a way to get is unfair to the general player base (and I have Sentinel backups of all 38 of my characters, so I'm not saying this for my own sake).  It would put a lot more people off than it would ever help.  Not to mention that Sentinel was not ever meant to be functional for a commercial release, and is not.

Let's hope we do manage to get CoX up and running again someday.  At that point I think most people willing to come back will be willing to level again from scratch anyway.  Maybe they could run a double XP event for the first month of launch or something.

 
From the talk I've heard, more people are concerned about losing their vet rewards and the "pool" they'd built up of inf/recipes/etc. to make leveling easier than they are the actual level 50 character him/herself. 
 
I'm really wondering what the answer is.  I don't mind starting over from scratch.  I kinda mind starting over from scratch and not having that pool of inf to fully SO my character as soon as I hit 22, cause man...I hated the days of having to try and figure out which SO I was going to buy with my measly little funds, and I REALLY mind the idea that my characters, recreated, will be super gimped compared to before because there just aren't that many Numinas or LoTGs or fully crafted sets out there anymore, and even if there were, those Archetype IOs are simply non-existent.
 
 
I'm sure there's an answer somewhere to get us, not back to where we were, but close enough that once the "we're home" feeling wears off people don't settle into a "but it's just not the same" feeling.  I just don't think any of us know what it is yet.

[MWRuger]

Whining about it to the buyers is pointless, though since they're relative amateurs and closer to the community compared to most corporate behemoth-run studios, I wouldn't go far as to say it's completely impossible. Discussing it in the community is less so, because it is still relevant to the future of the game.

As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.

The 38 level 50s aren't even that big a deal as most of them except a couple are effectively retired, it's the 80 or so in various stages of progress that it would sting to lose.

Well, more power to you if you can make it happen. I would gladly do both. If SCoRE can manage it, I'll gladly use them!

[Harpospoke]

As an example, if I had the choice of playing on the official servers and starting over from scratch, or importing all of my characters on a private server with a dozen of my friends, I can tell you that I wouldn't be spending much time on the official servers. The canon and continuity of my small group is more important to me than the overall population, and I know I wouldn't be the only one to make that choice.

I gotta admit that sounds interesting.   The ultimate "family".

[Last Known Hero]

Quite, but it also becomes an issue of maintaining documentation on assets changing hands, etc.

More than once in my career I've had a project hard core hit the breaks because COTS dependancies didn't move forward or were otherwise just not available.

Now, I'll grant you that this might not ultimately be a huge issue. Texture library  unavailable? Sound library unavailable? Replacable. Not optimal, but replaceable. 

Code libraries may be a bigger deal. 

Not to mention just the general negatives we'll have to deal with if we shutter and cannot for some reason release absolutely 100% of a "roll your own CoT server" on shutdown day +1.


What we want to do and what we are ultimately able to do in the end may not be compatible. I'd rather not commit to something I cannot be certain is at least 90% attainable. I'm funny that way.

I can agree, I wasn't talking day 1 but I would like to see it. To me as it stands I don't know if I'm willing to invest all over again for something that can be taken away. Completely my personal opinion but I don't think I'm interested otherwise, which is also why I'm dying to get special community of really Eager players back to us all, even with missing content. I'd rather invest time and money into giving control to ourselves, especially if it could have us creating content.

Not holding my breath but I'm a dreamer. Works nicely in my fantasy land but that's about it.

[MWRuger]

If it happened I Would probably recreate only some of my many alts on the official server. There were many that I was soloing anyway so A private server would be fine for that.

[Surelle]

I disagree with the bolded part. If you were in any global channel or teamed at all after the shutdown announcement, you'd be hard-pressed not to have heard at least somebody talking about Sentinel. Everyone I knew was going out of their way to try and spread the word. You'd have to have either stopped playing prior to that or have your head buried pretty far down in the sand to not even be aware of it.

Choosing not to use it is another matter entirely.

The only people I would use the word "unfair" to describe would be those who got their VIP status jacked up by billing cycle, and ncsoft refused to fix it. They couldn't get into many of their characters to save them.

I was thinking more of the players who came and went over the years or even within CoX's final year, but weren't active near the time of the shutdown or had given up and moved on.  Many players could still have characters of value to them that they'd like to play if CoX ever starts running again.  Sentinel backups would cause more harm than good (and I have mine!  But I'd rather forgo using them than aggravate other potential players-- the CoX i23 team is going to need all the money it can get so CoX doesn't get shut down once again!).  Luckily, Codewalker, like you said, they could never be used for a commercial relaunch of CoX anyway, and that's not what Sentinel was meant for.

[Power Gamer]

I plan on resurrecting my A-list of toons, about a dozen or so, eventhough I played several on every server.

Starting over is fine, but I wouldn't mind getting my entire account back either.

[Sinistar]

Was there ever a gold farming problem in CoH? Seems to me they gave up almost the instant they started.

There were gold farmers, yes.  However as Codewalker states once they shut down chat and email functions for the trial accounts it got better.

That's why I say that if the game returns, no trial accounts: period.
That helps cut out gold farmers, and those that used trial accounts for name griefing.

[opprime2828]

Hmm....what about a "Legacy Pre-launch" week where they work public beta-testing with helping to restore some of our older characters.   Former players can "sign up" for beta-testing by submitting their old global handle to the new Devs. I know, the devs have no way of verifying, but it makes it "feel" legit in some small way.  They issue an invite to the open beta weekend/whatever, and the former players are given "rewards" for up to three characters they recreate.  These characters get faster XP, the drop rate is increased, and access to all tiers of vet rewards on their account.
 
At the end of beta those characters and their belongings are brought to the live server at launch, where XP rates and drop rates are readjusted back to normal.  Suddenly a large group of people have restored some goods in the market, have 50s ready for end game content, etc. but a small enough number they'll likely be re-rolling more toons again very soon to help rebuild the community.
 

Very rough idea, but it could be a way to kill two birds with one stone: beta testing and restoring some of our characters to their former, truly superior glory just in time to help the rest of the community. 

[FloatingFatMan]

Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.

[Felderburg]

My question for APR and any direct successor (taking place in Paragon itself, in the same universe) would be how they're taking care of the old missions. APR I guess I can see including them, but I kind of think it would be nice to start fresh. Rather than including older "go here, kill 10 guys, go there" type missions, start from the very beginning with more innovative stuff. And build in a way to accommodate changing NPCs / story - whether that's phasing or what, I don't know, but making the NPCs of the world a little less static.

the veteran stuff doesnt bother me.. Id like to see a way to regain the levels and IO's but that gets very close to Pay 2 Win which I realize a very large majority have an issue with..

For me, Pay 2 Win is only an issue in PvP, which is supposed to have players starting at a level playing field, as far as in-game gear etc. goes.

If NCSoft is just leasing the ip then couldn't they if CoT included CoH cannon...couldn't they shut CoT down later then? :S

I still don't get why the other two games turned down the licensing deal. They don't have to include CoH lore, right? And it'd be pretty hard to do anything other than "this is an alternate dimension" at this point, given the work that's been put in specifically to make the lore different from CoH.

So why not take the licensing, slap on an "Official CoH successor" sticker, and go with that?

[Sinistar]

Also folks, I wouldn't count on getting the same number of servers we used to have. Those of you with 80+ chars might have to settle for way less.

Aye, I would anticipate the number of servers being halved, and the ones that do return would the names of the servers that tended to bigger populations such as Freedom and Virtue. 

I can't see the euro servers returning, one of them maybe.

[Blondeshell]

I'm really wondering what the answer is.  I don't mind starting over from scratch.  I kinda mind starting over from scratch and not having that pool of inf to fully SO my character as soon as I hit 22, cause man...I hated the days of having to try and figure out which SO I was going to buy with my measly little funds,...

(Don't know if this has been mentioned on one of the hundreds of pages recently.)

One idea might be to do a one-time inf grant to the first character created on an account. I'm thinking something reasonably small, like 5-10 million, that would give a nice cushion for starting characters, but not enough to be worth creating bunches of fake accounts to transfer to your main.