And the mask comes off.

[Mandrake]

Huh. I actually liked the store, but then again, my exposure to MMO stores is extremely limited, so I'm probably not a good judge.

Agreed - wife and I were actually just discussing how our 'high speed' internet is pretty crappy (1.5M/s in the boonies) and neither of us recall the store ever being terribly slow. My wife played LOTRO and it was a horrendously slow process.

I loved the way that CoH had costume pieces right there 'on the rack' with everything else. If you wanted it, you could buy it from right there, but no constant sales pitch. The ability to buy was very easy but unlike most game stores - CoH never got into the whole shove it in your face method of sales. Plus, it was all fun stuff! Costume pieces, boosts, inspirations, etc. It could make the game more fun and perhaps a little quicker, but you could not just blow a ton of money and go stomp people.

Although, my wife especiallly did blow a ton of money in the shop for costume pieces mostly. LOL

[Remaugen]

And your response made me think of my new favorite song by Weird Al!

That was freaking wonderful, thank you so much!


We're almost there!   

[Lava-Lad]

That's a pretty nice scenario, IMHO.

Personally I'm hoping that the new IP corporation makes it possible that fans who know the SCoRE are empowered to help all the rest of us... as a new  CoRE to the community.
 

Agreed!

[Arcana]

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?

I can guess.  The successor projects have already invested a lot of time and energy into developing their own lore.  In fact, its probably the case that a significant percentage of the developers in all successor games are primarily or in some fashion lore writers.  Given that, opening the door to the possibility of integrating original CoH IP would be a tremendous distraction for them that can only lead to bad things happening. 

For people who think options are always a good thing, I invite you to watch the original version of the Poseidon Adventure.  What options did was turn forty survivors into six survivors and thirty-four corpses.  That's surprisingly analogous to how development teams often react to being allowed to entertain too many options.

[lapucelle]

That's my job! Picking the best out of the options I see. Or making new ones.

[Arcana]

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.

There were many different concerns the dev team had to balance with regard to character slots, but I believe the only really important one for a maintenance mode server (or servers) is disk space to hold the character information.  And disk space is not today what it was when CoH released, or even when it shut down.  If they wanted to allow everyone to have a hundred slots per server, I don't think that would be difficult to do.  It would cost more to have more storage online, but it wouldn't likely cost a lot in absolute terms.  There might be hard coded slot limits in the code, but I'm sure CW could just patch those away if I randomly posted that I thought he couldn't do it.

[Sinistar]

From my understanding 1.5 will be almost (not exact) carbon copy of CoX with a clean code. The almost is factored by the limitation and possibility from translating over engines. The plus side of having 1.5 they said they can then make updates to the game. The i23 version can't be manipulated. That was my take on the conversation so far.

This is my take also.  I would expect that holiday events and anniversary badges should still be doable on legacy ish 23, but for lore changes, updates, patches, possible character restoration, we'd need 1.5

[Felderburg]

I can guess.  The successor projects have already invested a lot of time and energy into developing their own lore.  In fact, its probably the case that a significant percentage of the developers in all successor games are primarily or in some fashion lore writers.  Given that, opening the door to the possibility of integrating original CoH IP would be a tremendous distraction for them that can only lead to bad things happening.

I get that the lore is beyond changing at this point, I still think it would be worth it to get an "Official CoH Successor!" label on a game, even if that's the only thing they "license".

[Sinistar]

Huh. I actually liked the store, but then again, my exposure to MMO stores is extremely limited, so I'm probably not a good judge.

Here's what I remember about the store: when I needed it, it worked. I never suffered any temporary missing costumes or powers when the store glitched out.  Guess I was lucky.

[Sinistar]

It's both. Sentinel files contain the costumes (mostly; it needs some massaging to get to back to an editable costume), builds as in powers and enhancements, XP totals and level, influence, inventory of savlage/recipes/enhancements, and badges.

It's not a complete record of the character as there is some serverside state that the client doesn't have access to, like story arc completion and reward tokens, but it's a close enough approximation for a small or medium sized server of trusted friends.

Well not to flog the dead horse or anything, but your description still makes me think that sentinel files may be able to semi restore characters if at all possible.  If I'd have to go out and regain the badges all over again, that's fine.

1. I won't make certain mistakes like I did originally
2. As a restored 50, many of the badges would be a snap to get.
3. I wouldn't mind rerunning the incarnate arcs to regain the badges and reopen my incarnate powers.
4. If the costume can't be restored, toss some tailor tokens and go to the tailor shop.

Now granted there is something in the files that can indicate the file was edited/altered but of course that won't stop some people and thus yes it is possible for "bootleg Sentinel files" to emerge. There will be always people that want to cheat the system.  However those that receive submitted Sentinel files would have to check and compare them to previously submitted files for example

John Smith submits a file for a blaster that was 50, 2 billion inf, fully purple slotted, 9999 of each salvage item in the game, 9999 reward merits, 9999 rikit merits, etc  and the blaster is named The Duke of Nuke.  First off I suspect the restoration team would raise an eyebrow at such a character whether they restore it or not.

Then sometime after someone named Jake Riley submits a Sentinel file for a blaster named Nuke of Duke and aside from the name, the rest is the same..... somehow I don't think Jake would get his character back as such a file would like be "bootleg".

As to those that didn't hear of Sentinel or didn't use it....well that it is too bad, however that shouldn't be a reason to stop those that did use Sentinel to use the files to at least somewhat restore their toons.

But anyway, we shall have to wait and see.

[Ankhammon]

Here's what I remember about the store: when I needed it, it worked. I never suffered any temporary missing costumes or powers when the store glitched out.  Guess I was lucky.

Personally, the worst I ever experienced with the store was a lag of about 3 minutes between buying a power set and it being delivered to my account.

But if there was no SSL connection on it, or it was faulty that is a huuuuge red flag. Either the purchases are secure or it shouldn't be allowed.

[ivanhedgehog]

Well not to flog the dead horse or anything, but your description still makes me think that sentinel files may be able to semi restore characters if at all possible.  If I'd have to go out and regain the badges all over again, that's fine.

1. I won't make certain mistakes like I did originally
2. As a restored 50, many of the badges would be a snap to get.
3. I wouldn't mind rerunning the incarnate arcs to regain the badges and reopen my incarnate powers.
4. If the costume can't be restored, toss some tailor tokens and go to the tailor shop.

Now granted there is something in the files that can indicate the file was edited/altered but of course that won't stop some people and thus yes it is possible for "bootleg Sentinel files" to emerge. There will be always people that want to cheat the system.  However those that receive submitted Sentinel files would have to check and compare them to previously submitted files for example

John Smith submits a file for a blaster that was 50, 2 billion inf, fully purple slotted, 9999 of each salvage item in the game, 9999 reward merits, 9999 rikit merits, etc  and the blaster is named The Duke of Nuke.  First off I suspect the restoration team would raise an eyebrow at such a character whether they restore it or not.

Then sometime after someone named Jake Riley submits a Sentinel file for a blaster named Nuke of Duke and aside from the name, the rest is the same..... somehow I don't think Jake would get his character back as such a file would like be "bootleg".

As to those that didn't hear of Sentinel or didn't use it....well that it is too bad, however that shouldn't be a reason to stop those that did use Sentinel to use the files to at least somewhat restore their toons.

But anyway, we shall have to wait and see.

I had a friend with 87 billion inf and a base full of high quality purples. what are the chance he would get restored?

[FloatingFatMan]

Pinnacle player here.  If we aren't quarantined given a server of our own, drunker badgers will be everywhere on the servers.  I think you know the only reasonable answer to this.

A cull? :p

[FloatingFatMan]

Mark me down as another who never heard of Sentinel until after the shutdown.  I pretty much only grouped with a small circle of friends who had all quit by the end.  I am not too upset about having to start over but I am quite sad that I will lose many of my names.  I had quite a few names that were 'grandfathered' and would no longer be available if the character was reset.  I can only assume that I will not be able to get the names again if/when we get I23 back.

You'd only lose them if you were slow getting back into the game and re-creating them.

[FloatingFatMan]

Yes, its my understanding that the Atlas Park Revival project is aka 1.5. I'm suggesting that they be the ones to run the i23 servers as well, if that wasn't the plan already.

ARP is 1.5, but they will not be running the legacy game. That is planned to be run by whoever runs the holding company that will own the IP.

[Goddangit]

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.

[Dreamy eyed look] Private server... Heaven...[/Dreamy eyed look]

[Zubenelgenubi]

 

I had a friend with 87 billion inf and a base full of high quality purples. what are the chance he would get restored?

I'd say zero, as 2 billion influence was the max a character could hold.

[Taceus Jiwede]

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 am one of those people.  I knew about it right after the shutdown announcement.  And yet I still never backed up my character's.  Woops.

[ivanhedgehog]

I'd say zero, as 2 billion influence was the max a character could hold.

I would say you are wrong. there were ways to hold it in 20 billion chunks. I saw him pay the guy that built his base for him with a full set of armageddons

[JanessaVR]

I'd say zero, as 2 billion influence was the max a character could hold.

Your point?  I ended the game with about 15 billion INF.  Hint - it wasn't all on one character.