New efforts!

[FloatingFatMan]

Some of the most fun I had was running in PUGS with my scrappers that could solo +4x8 content and I could do that per-incarnate  as well. People would be amazed at what you could do in game. Trust me I heard  do not have a healer; I would look and say hay we got bubbles and I like bubbles lets go; we do not have a tank I got that covered; or I say we have a kin they rock.

Sometimes the best way of teaching is just to lead in a friendly way by being positive that we can do this attitude. Then someone ask about build advice I give it to them if I knew the class some I referred to the boards on people smarter than I was.

My only question in PUGs was "Everyone good to go? Right, lets SMASH!"  and off we went.

I didn't give a damn what their AT's were, what their builds were, what their playstyle was. My only requirement was that people were having a blast. :)

I didn't even mind people leeching XP from time to time, as long as they chatted.  Silent leechers, however, got booted.

[HEATSTROKE]

And on another completely different note.. someone somewhere has everything we need.. this is my opinion. and not fact.. Im just saying I know companies I have worked with.. there is always SOMEONE who downloads and makes copies of everything.. even when they are not supposed to..

[Ohioknight]

I'm curious...why did you not direct those who have expressed a wish that we do not get our characters back to that thread?   Why just me?

Because they were talking about what they want for the game and you were talking about THEM. 

If you say "I hope everybody doesn't have to start over."  you aren't talking about other posters.  If you say "I hope everybody has to start over." you aren't talking about other posters.  If you say "Those people who say we should start over are saying I should lose my characters and that makes me mad" you are talking about their posts and not the issue.

And when you do it over and over and over people want you to STOP.

I, on the other hand am commenting about your posts, but in response to your direct question.

[FloatingFatMan]

And on another completely different note.. someone somewhere has everything we need.. this is my opinion. and not fact.. Im just saying I know companies I have worked with.. there is always SOMEONE who downloads and makes copies of everything.. even when they are not supposed to..

Of course they do, probably most of the former devs do, in fact.  You can almost guarantee Posi has it, for one.  They probably have older archives of it at Cryptic too, as well as the maintenance tools.

[hejtmane]

And on another completely different note.. someone somewhere has everything we need.. this is my opinion. and not fact.. Im just saying I know companies I have worked with.. there is always SOMEONE who downloads and makes copies of everything.. even when they are not supposed to..

They always put it on the shared folder buried that never gets cleaned up

[Relitner]

My only question in PUGs was "Everyone good to go? Right, lets SMASH!"  and off we went.

I didn't give a damn what their AT's were, what their builds were, what their playstyle was. My only requirement was that people were having a blast. :)

I didn't even mind people leeching XP from time to time, as long as they chatted.  Silent leechers, however, got booted.

Some of my best teams were PUGs. Always had the most interesting conversations and banter. There were occasionally those who would attempt to dictate play style (you know, the whole *this is MY team* shtick), or those who would go all leroy jenkins on the team. But for the most part PUGs were great!

[Azrael]

After the latest bit of information from Ironwolf...

Getting the game and then getting it up and running is the NUMBER ONE priority. I cant do anything without that.

...

GET THE GAME...

What he said.

Azrael.

[Luna Eclypse]

Some of my best teams were PUGs. Always had the most interesting conversations and banter. There were occasionally those who would attempt to dictate play style (you know, the whole *this is MY team* shtick), or those who would go all leroy jenkins on the team. But for the most part PUGs were great!

Or when you're running a PUG team with a friend and someone gets on you about they're style of play or that they're not doing well and tries to get you to kick them so one of their friends can join... had that one happen more than once. Sometimes even sending me private messages so my friend can't hear them in chat but what they don't know is it's a real life friend and we're in the same room. That always made me laugh.

[AlienOne]

or those who would go all leroy jenkins on the team.

Here's me going all "Leeeerroooyyyy Jjjjeennkinnsssssss!" (if you check the map, you'll see the rest of the team fighting soldiers at the entrance of the map while I'm going "YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Right in front of the AV...lol)

http://youtu.be/i8njlv6WLYo

[Deadflame2]

Of course they do, probably most of the former devs do, in fact.  You can almost guarantee Posi has it, for one.  They probably have older archives of it at Cryptic too, as well as the maintenance tools.

No doubt in my mind.

[Shadowe]

Towards the end I rarely ended up on PUGs. Did a fair few PUITrials, though.

One of my abiding memories of someone attempting to invite me was the same guy, every day for a week, asking "Are you a healer?" when I was playing my Rad/Psi defender. My reply was always the same:

If you want the enemy debuffed through the floor so they can't hurt you, I'm all for it. If you want someone to heal you after you get hurt, I can't really help much.

Oddly, never got an actual invite.

I spent most of my time soloing my Eng/Eng blaster, either doing repeatables or hitting Ourob to play arcs I'd missed. I was always happy to have someone along for the ride: mostly friends wanting some easy XP (my optimum solo difficulty was somewhere in the region of x6/+2 at 50), but I'd have anyone who didn't mind me just going all out to win. The only rule I ever had was pretty much the same as FFM: be involved, whether fighting, even with a level 1 (won't be for long...), or chatting. If you want to sit back and let me do the work, that's fine. I got this. I'm here for the company and the fun of mowing through hordes of bad guys without breaking a sweat.

Ah, the memories...

Dual-boxing to level up some toons.
Wall-clearing in Cim.
Making costumes for RP.
RPing in Galaxy City, Talos, Founders Falls, Pocket D.
The chalet at Christmas, listening to that godawful yodelling, and trying to notice the cow.
Badges. Oh, you could tempt me away from almost anything with the promise of a badge.
My SG base, first made over by a friend, then my wife: it was amazing.
Rikti invasions. Thirty minutes of constant blasting, even with the phantom-spawns.
And, one of my favourites, Power Push the Hellion. You could get some sweeeeeeeet air on those guys. Couldn't fit the power in after a while, but thank heaven for dual-builds.

[FloatingFatMan]

Rikti invasions. Thirty minutes of constant blasting, even with the phantom-spawns.

The Rikti Invasion spawns at GG were -epic-, thanks to there often being enough folks there for at least 2 teams; we always managed to get in a whole bunch of powersuits, too!

Funny though, I seem to remember constantly seeing you sucking gravel during those things, and Ellie never did... ;)  You so squeeshy! :p

[Wyrm]

Here's me going all "Leeeerroooyyyy Jjjjeennkinnsssssss!" (if you check the map, you'll see the rest of the team fighting soldiers at the entrance of the map while I'm going "YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Right in front of the AV...lol)

I was most apt to LEEEROY! on my stormies, especially my fire/storm corr.  My regular teammates would just groan over Skype when we'd open a door to a huge room on a Crey lab map and I'd turn on Hurricane and say, "Be right back - time to herd-icane!"

I think Storm was the only powerset I leveled to 50 on 3 different ATs.  It was just a stupid amount of fun, and the only powerset where if I got targeted by an ambush at the ass-end of IP by myself on a mid-level squishy, I might not end up face-down on the concrete for doing anything other than running. 

[drmanbot]

In regards to the acquisition -

Is is short sighted to hope that the Secret Cabal of Buyers (tm) go for the box in front of them (the imaged disc and work ahead ) as opposed to being drawn into waiting to see what's behind door number two (something that may or may not be found)?

As others have noted , there may be <ahem> other copies available of that information, and once the deal is transacted, could be surreptitiously transferred and utilized.

This is just me wanting this to go down. I'm not in high finance, I only audit them. But my gut tells me to get our foot in the door firmly and roll the dice on anything shaking out later.

Just my opinion.

And I used to Leroy with my Rad/Rad / psi defender all the time. Just ask anyone who ran the Keyes Badge runs on Freedom with Atomic Saint. It was a sight to behold.   

[Richpur]

*gives the horse a wakie*

So I'm complaining that someone expressed a hope that we all lose our characters (that does include me) for a personal desire to have more people in the low levels.   I cannot imagine a more selfish thing to hope for.
...
I continue to wonder how it's ok to wish for other players to lose their characters.   ...But wishing we all get our characters back is "selfish" or "greedy".      This logic is baffling.

I'll take that one.

Fairness.

I hope that we can get everything back, but - considering that 'everything' is spread across several different systems (Banks, SG storage, Wentworths, E-mail, etc) that weren't on the same servers - that seems very unlikely. So in the event that we cannot I hope that we start fresh. It is simply a lot fairer for everybody to start with the same blank slate than for some people to have everything they want and others to have lost most of it due to having a different playstyle.

Relatedly: most people weren't aware of the ability to export characters; so I would object to those files ever being used as a means to restore characters on public servers. Solely because I don't think having some people starting from scratch and others starting with a full stable of IOed incarnates is fair or conducive to a united community.

[FloatingFatMan]

Relatedly: most people weren't aware of the ability to export characters; so I would object to those files ever being used as a means to restore characters on public servers. Solely because I don't think having some people starting from scratch and others starting with a full stable of IOed incarnates is fair or conducive to a united community.

This part has already been "resolved".  The Sentinel+ files are not usable to restore characters on any kind of live system as they are missing a lot of information (completed story arcs, entitlement to unlockables, and so on).

They're not worth worrying about, really.

[umber]

One of my abiding memories of someone attempting to invite me was the same guy, every day for a week, asking "Are you a healer?" when I was playing my Rad/Psi defender. My reply was always the same:

If you want the enemy debuffed through the floor so they can't hurt you, I'm all for it. If you want someone to heal you after you get hurt, I can't really help much.

Oddly, never got an actual invite.

CoH proactive buffs/debuffs were generally so much more efficient that reactive healing but it was hard to convince some players of this, especially newer CoHers who came to us with certain expectations burned in from other MMOs.  And honestly it didn't bother me too much, if thats how they wanted to play so be it.  A few times I did try an experiment, hooked up with a PUG that highly desired (demanded) a healer, dusted off the emp, kept the team alive.  After a successful mission or two ask if I could switch characters to slowly wean them off of healing, start with a rad ("it has some healing and a rez too, along with buff/debuffs") then maybe a kin for some healing and very noticeable buffs, then maybe an ill/ff controller and see if anyone even notices the PUG steamrolling without any heals being fired off. 

Convincing folks could be done but it worked so much better by showing than telling.

[Richpur]

This part has already been "resolved".  The Sentinel+ files are not usable to restore characters on any kind of live system as they are missing a lot of information (completed story arcs, entitlement to unlockables, and so on).

They're not worth worrying about, really.

They don't have all the information, but they might have enough to be used as a key if the character data is found without the account data to link it up. I don't think it would be worth the extra development time or be fair to do so, but I imagine some people don't care about either of those things.

CoH proactive buffs/debuffs were generally so much more efficient that reactive healing but it was hard to convince some players of this, especially newer CoHers who came to us with certain expectations burned in from other MMOs.
...
Convincing folks could be done but it worked so much better by showing than telling.

People notice their health bar moving. If you were doing a good job with most support sets that didn't happen.  ;D

[Shadowe]

The Rikti Invasion spawns at GG were -epic-, thanks to there often being enough folks there for at least 2 teams; we always managed to get in a whole bunch of powersuits, too!

Funny though, I seem to remember constantly seeing you sucking gravel during those things, and Ellie never did... ;)  You so squeeshy! :p

Perception bias! Well, possibly.

Most of the time Shad handled himself fine during those insane times. He tended to faceplant if there was a poor ratio of support to damage (Heavies could make him kiss concrete, but not much else could), and a lot of us liked Blasters and Scrappers, so yeah, every now and then he'd become intimately acquainted with the chemical composition of the floor. But not every time, so I'd hardly call it "constantly".

On a side note, did you know that if you flew about 20 feet above the solid ledge on a war wall, invasion spawns would happen on the ledge? Really funny during zombie invasions.

[hufish]

CoH proactive buffs/debuffs were generally so much more efficient that reactive healing but it was hard to convince some players of this, especially newer CoHers who came to us with certain expectations burned in from other MMOs.  And honestly it didn't bother me too much, if thats how they wanted to play so be it.  A few times I did try an experiment, hooked up with a PUG that highly desired (demanded) a healer, dusted off the emp, kept the team alive.  After a successful mission or two ask if I could switch characters to slowly wean them off of healing, start with a rad ("it has some healing and a rez too, along with buff/debuffs") then maybe a kin for some healing and very noticeable buffs, then maybe an ill/ff controller and see if anyone even notices the PUG steamrolling without any heals being fired off. 

Convincing folks could be done but it worked so much better by showing than telling.

Loved me some buffs and debuffs!  Anything to make blastination work better!  ;D