New efforts!

[Sinistar]

Oh you guys and gals... I think you fail to take into account that EVERYONE will be beta testing it,  I know for sure that I wont be sitting on the sidelines waiting if I have a choice, and I know the missing worlds team wont keep us waiting lol.

there is also the possibility that NCSoft wont allow time for a beta. Where they demand it goes straight into maintenance mode for all.

Also, For the sake of the game this time please don't use copyrighted or trademarked names! especially not from the start as when the game returns it will be returning with a noose around it's neck with a very short rope attached to NCSoft's hands that says "just in case"

we had all better be on our best behavior till the game makes them loads of cash, and the first load of cash doesn't count because that will probably just cover the servers and efforts to get it into maintenance mode.

I wouldn't pull anything silly like trademarked costumes or such until the game makes at least 50 or 100 mil.

Also when the game returns, PLEASE tell your friends and random people BE A PUSHER! hand out self made fliers if you need to.

the more players actively buying things the better, NCSoft probably isn't against completely opening the game even to new developments, the catch is there has to be the money behind it!

As an English teacher I will be introducing Chinese college students to the game as a method of teaching them English. and, well hehe, it will just spin out of control from there.

if the game becomes popular in China NCSoft will definitely create new developments. Edit; or at least finish the incarnate content and finish making i25 and maybe i26

Call it a hunch but I am sure the TOS will have the usual warnings about making copycat characters that violate trademarks and I'm also sure that the new owners will remind us of that fact.

That being said there is the old saying about "There's one in every crowd", either someone will not have read the TOS or just not care and want to test the limits of what they can build.

I lost track of all the Goku/Vegita clones I saw flying around, along with the occasional green or grey Hulks, Batman clones, even saw a copy of the Punisher, and of course The Ghost Rider...........

[Sinistar]

NCSoft would retain no control over the CoH IP.

Truly some of the best possible words to describe the hopeful return of CoH

[Ironwolf]

I am sure there would also be no end of volunteer GM's that would work for free to monitor character creations.

I still want to help with advertising once it gets started again.

[Sinistar]

I am sure there would also be no end of volunteer GM's that would work for free to monitor character creations.

I still want to help with advertising once it gets started again.

Raises hand to volunteer as GM

[Codewalker]

I am sure there would also be no end of volunteer GM's that would work for free to monitor character creations.

The trouble with volunteer GMs in that in community-run games, 80% of people who volunteer to be a GM do so with the intent of abusing GM power to give themselves and their friends free stuff, instant 50s, whatever.

So you then need trusted people to police the GMs.

[Sinistar]

The trouble with volunteer GMs in that in community-run games, 80% of people who volunteer to be a GM do so with the intent of abusing GM power to give themselves and their friends free stuff, instant 50s, whatever.

So you then need trusted people to police the GMs.

An unfortunate truth.  However aren't all things that GM's do tracked and logged? Such as getting players unstuck or causing a glitched/unkillable boss to be defeated so players can advacne, etc?

[AmberOfDzu]

The trouble with volunteer GMs in that in community-run games, 80% of people who volunteer to be a GM do so with the intent of abusing GM power to give themselves and their friends free stuff, instant 50s, whatever.

So you then need trusted people to police the GMs.

One way could be to have two levels of review for character creations. The first level would only be able to screen name issues and forward ones deemed serious to the subset of GMs who would have ability to act on them. The bottom layer could be volunteers, and any name complaint could be sent to say, three of them at random, so that no one volunteer GM could protect a friend's name, or such.

That's just off the top of my head specifically for name reviews, but I think the potential to have reasonably effective monitoring for whatever standards are set is there.

[KennonGL]

One way could be to have two levels of review for character creations. The first level would only be able to screen name issues and forward ones deemed serious to the subset of GMs who would have ability to act on them. The bottom layer could be volunteers, and any name complaint could be sent to say, three of them at random, so that no one volunteer GM could protect a friend's name, or such.

That's just off the top of my head specifically for name reviews, but I think the potential to have reasonably effective monitoring for whatever standards are set is there.

Technically, that's already in place.  It's the "report player" function.

[Battlechimp]

The trouble with volunteer GMs in that in community-run games, 80% of people who volunteer to be a GM do so with the intent of abusing GM power to give themselves and their friends free stuff, instant 50s, whatever.

So you then need trusted people to police the GMs.

This.  Oh soooo much this. The biggest problems with volunteer GMs is oversight and quality control. A long time ago Vivendi, I think it was, tried this with Everquest.  You had GMs abusing their power so much it caused so many PR problems that they finally had to get rid of them because of the backlash.  You had stories of people asking for help from a GM and when the GM would show up they might help with the problem but then have something like this happen

Player: hey thanks for the help
GM: No prob...hey that's a really nice sword
Player: Thanks. It took me weeks of raiding before I got it to drop
GM: Yeah, its hard to get. My friend wants one. Give it to me
Player: well he can raid for his own, like I said it took me weeks to..
GM: give it to me or I ban your account

Or there the was rampant
GMs friend: I "accidentally" deleted my starter armor, can I get a new one?
GM: I can't create the item,, but I can give you what its worth in gold... oops accidentally added ten zeros to that. My bad

Granted these are extreme but all it takes is for one or two volunteer GMs to ruin it for everyone, not to mention ruin the rep of the company running the game.  And then there's quality control, GMs who don't know the game as well as they claim, or even givig customers the same level of treatment, or same amount of knowledge. That is done by having all GMs be employees.

There's very little consequence for a volunteer GM if they go bad.  The damage they can do before they get caught is staggering. And a company would be foolish to trust their game and reputation on, even if well meaning, people who they can't have effective oversight on. ie having the GMs be in the same place as their supervisors.

[Ironwolf]

GM's in CoH didn't have those powers.

We don't have gear, they never could give you anything. I never saw one do anything more than teleport lost bosses or tp you out of a wall you were stuck in.

Customer service reps that you emailed could do more - but even then it took so long I never bothered.

I guess we would need to hear from a former GM as to what powers they had.

[Joshex]

The trouble with volunteer GMs in that in community-run games, 80% of people who volunteer to be a GM do so with the intent of abusing GM power to give themselves and their friends free stuff, instant 50s, whatever.

So you then need trusted people to police the GMs.

you need an accountability log to accompany the server change logs, every time you want to make a change as a GM the comment box cannot be empty, failure to enter a proper description of events will end in you losing privileges and possible in-game level, experience and item recalls. Then have a paid employee go through and skim the server logs every day looking for GM changes without a comment or with a comment that doesn't match or isn't allowed then halt GM abilities, question them about it and if necessary (or no response in a given time) remove the user's GM abilities permanently and undo any damages.

of course we should establish some rules like (brings up own case for the 'bug tester'? badge I got on my blaster):  for example if someone gets stuck in the floor of the VIP lounge in pocket D right in front of Trina the body builder and can't log out without a fear of having the character deleted so they have to sit there for about 6 hours while a gm tries to remove you and fails until they actually remove the floor panel the person was stuck in.

in situations like that there should be reward listings based on the amount of player time wasted. like, 6 hours in a floor? have 2 purples.

GM's in CoH didn't have those powers.

We don't have gear, they never could give you anything. I never saw one do anything more than teleport lost bosses or tp you out of a wall you were stuck in.

Customer service reps that you emailed could do more - but even then it took so long I never bothered.

I guess we would need to hear from a former GM as to what powers they had.

they can give you a badge if you report an actual glitch and they do restore lost things from WW and the black market that get 'eaten'. well it might not be the GM but they can make requests to the paid employees to do so maybe that is the better model.

[Battlechimp]

GM's in CoH didn't have those powers.

We don't have gear, they never could give you anything. I never saw one do anything more than teleport lost bosses or tp you out of a wall you were stuck in.

Customer service reps that you emailed could do more - but even then it took so long I never bothered.

I guess we would need to hear from a former GM as to what powers they had.

Honestly, it doesn't matter if they have those kind of powers or not.  It just takes a player to believe it for the extortion to happen.  I can certainly see situations where say, GMs friend wants to be Awesome Man, but someone already has it.  Bam. Suddenly Awesome Man is Generic Hero748267.  Or even if they don't have those powers, the threat of action against someones account if they don't comply can get someone to go along with it, even if its an empty threat is enough to cause problems.  All it needs is some to believe it for it to work. 

The potential damage to the company's and the game's rep far outweighs the benefit of the free labor.  Or think of it this way, you just spent a few million to get this game and get it running.  Do you want to risk that investment by giving people who you have no real control over , because as volunteers they have little consequence to bad behavior, be the ones representing your company to the player base?

As staffGMs they have incentive to act according to company policy. Both their job and rep within the industry. As a volunteer, you lose a game account. Big deal. As a company head, you want your employees to have some investment in the company you can't rely on volunteers to be the face that the public interacts with.  That's just asking for problems down the line

[Codewalker]

GM's in CoH didn't have those powers.

You'd be surprised what powers they had and didn't have. I have a map saved somewhere with all serverside commands and what accesslevel they required.

Off the top of my head, even junior GMs could grief people by repeatedly teleporting them around or sending them to random maps. Or make any character in the game do just about anything they want (including say things in chat). They could grant badges, make people invincible, start and stop shard-wide events, control things like the RWZ mothership shield, and so on. Not to mention level bumping people to 50.

Mid-level GMs could grant powers (even NPC powers), create influence out of thin air, and create any enhancement (the closest thing COH had to gear).

The same command to move critters out of walls (entcontrol) also could do fun things like set the HP of the target, or recharge the target's powers. entcontrol also allowed a GM to spawn any enemy they wanted. Easily exploitable to repeatedly spawn an AV, set it to 1HP, and defeat it in a single hit for full rewards. Or farm a map with your buddy and constantly recharge his incarnate judgement power every time it was used.

Senior GMs and developers had access to even more powerful commands.

However aren't all things that GM's do tracked and logged? Such as getting players unstuck or causing a glitched/unkillable boss to be defeated so players can advacne, etc?

Yes, all uses of GM commands are logged. This is true for any serious online game. That's probably the main reason you didn't see COH GMs or even developers use all of their fancy powers very often. However, you still have to have someone whose job it is to actually read all those logs and try to identify abuses.

[Sinistar]

Interesting that junior GM's could do so much.

as to the GM activity log, yeah I can see that as being a big log to review and audit but still it would have to be done.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

It's not all that surprising when you consider that you want someone who's going to be doing the GM job well, and keeping players happy. Also, If they started abusing their power they wouldn't have just lost their account, they would have been fired from their job.

Personally, I would never use that kind of volunteer GMs, not without some seriously rigorous applicant process. You end up having to spend more time and effort policing the GMs, and making sure they're not abusing their powers than you would simply putting in the time/money/effort to have trustworthy GMs.

[Talon Blue]

Post your builds in the mids section and I'm sure we will be happy to help you out.

It's not that I need help with the builds.1 It's just as I was going about it, I stopped and had the realization about an hour in that I had remembered how to slot most everything, purely from memory or instinctively, and I found it the notion rather spooky, so I just kept going until I had them all finished. And now I desperately want to play them. 

[Sinistar]

It's not that I need help with the builds.1 It's just as I was going about it, I stopped and had the realization about an hour in that I had remembered how to slot most everything, purely from memory or instinctively, and I found it the notion rather spooky, so I just kept going until I had them all finished. And now I desperately want to play them. 

I feel your pain, I have been working MIDS a lot lately since hope for a relaunch returned.

[Ironwolf]

You'd be surprised what powers they had and didn't have. I have a map saved somewhere with all serverside commands and what accesslevel they required.

Off the top of my head, even junior GMs could grief people by repeatedly teleporting them around or sending them to random maps. Or make any character in the game do just about anything they want (including say things in chat). They could grant badges, make people invincible, start and stop shard-wide events, control things like the RWZ mothership shield, and so on. Not to mention level bumping people to 50.

Mid-level GMs could grant powers (even NPC powers), create influence out of thin air, and create any enhancement (the closest thing COH had to gear).

The same command to move critters out of walls (entcontrol) also could do fun things like set the HP of the target, or recharge the target's powers. entcontrol also allowed a GM to spawn any enemy they wanted. Easily exploitable to repeatedly spawn an AV, set it to 1HP, and defeat it in a single hit for full rewards. Or farm a map with your buddy and constantly recharge his incarnate judgement power every time it was used.

Senior GMs and developers had access to even more powerful commands.

Yes, all uses of GM commands are logged. This is true for any serious online game. That's probably the main reason you didn't see COH GMs or even developers use all of their fancy powers very often. However, you still have to have someone whose job it is to actually read all those logs and try to identify abuses.

You know what's odd though - I never had a GM grant me a badge. I had times when they agreed i had completed the mission and din't get the badge - the most they ever offered was to reset the final mission for me. Perhaps there was a written instruction on what scenario allows you to take which action.

That would be the easiest way to do it - you make it clear with a checklist for each type action and who should take that action. A junior GM can free stuck characters or reset missions and little else.

Scale it up from there - so that yes you have that power but use it and you are gone.

[Ankhammon]

It's not that I need help with the builds.1 It's just as I was going about it, I stopped and had the realization about an hour in that I had remembered how to slot most everything, purely from memory or instinctively, and I found it the notion rather spooky, so I just kept going until I had them all finished. And now I desperately want to play them. 

I kind of felt that way when I started a couple months ago to work over some mids builds. Unfortunately for me, I was severely rusty on the kinds of tweeks that gave me some really nice builds when the game was live.

Some of my knowledge had even gone up in smoke. Like the interplay between -Dam and resistance. Had to relearn several  points in that vein. 

Fortunately,  we gots all sorts of smarties on the forum that relearnt me how ta du theengs rite.

[Ankhammon]

You know what's odd though - I never had a GM grant me a badge. I had times when they agreed i had completed the mission and din't get the badge - the most they ever offered was to reset the final mission for me. Perhaps there was a written instruction on what scenario allows you to take which action.

That would be the easiest way to do it - you make it clear with a checklist for each type action and who should take that action. A junior GM can free stuck characters or reset missions and little else.

Scale it up from there - so that yes you have that power but use it and you are gone.

But who policed the policing of the police?