Floss

Any chance you have an old text log file? I don't think I even have the hard drive I used to play on, but a log file would quickly sort out this debate as that would be stamped in it.

A board of directors that isn't independant from management is going to be much less effective. Usually a board is comprised of outsiders, industry experts, etc, with maybe 1-2 people from the company sitting on it. If your board structure is just the brass of the project, it's really not going to operate as a typical board should. Pulling some people with zero power (players) would actually create some sort of accountability. The day to day decisions should be made by management (devs), but major ones should be done by an independant BOD. With the brass on the board, it's too easy for them to just collude and have backdoor deals to get what they want, which makes the board worthless (this is hypothetical). There is also a lot of pressure on people to agree with the brass, as they could likely be "removed" from a project with just a little cooperation from a few individuals. (again hypothetical) Board minutes and financials (donations vs costs, surplus/deficit, etc) should also be public information if you are trying to show accountability. Again, the community doesn't need the details of everything, but major decisions (see board decisions) should be made public. Saying that "we have accountability to our community because we have a board" doesn't hold water with the current board structure. I'd be happy to donate time to perform an independant governance review and internal controls review if you want help. I get paid to do this stuff on a daily basis from small owner managed companies right up to multi-billion dollar companies. Even if the structure is seen to be acceptable, some third party assurance can probably kill a lot of the rumours going on. Also happy to sign an NDA and provide more detailed credentials privately. Project management is also something I can help with. The team appears to be IT heavy, which is great for coding, but a mix of skill sets can help out.

The actual damages would be zero, unless EA could prove that this somehow hurt their sales of other games which would be a ridiculous assertion. They could dig into the "donations" and view that as revenue, which could open a small can of worms. Also might be some tax implications for whoever actually owns the server/pays the bills/etc as it is income (even if it makes just $1 net over the fiscal year) whether you are incorporated or not, would hit a personal return for somebody. This really depends on the jurisdiction of the owner of the project (person paying the bills, renting the server, paying for the website, etc) and while I'm familiar and have practiced US and Canadian tax, I'm not going to pretend to be competent in other country's tax laws. I would assume whatever jurisdiction they are in is similar, where if the project makes nothing ($0 or less) on a cash-basis for the calendar year (assuming the tax system operates on a calendar basis), then there is no income to report and EA wouldn't have anything concrete to chase.

That's some nasty XP debt /approves of these screenshots

The simplest way to deter 90%+ of RMT is make "ubers" BOP (bind on pickup, non-trade, etc). Pros: Kills RMT Deters monopolization of spawns (no resale value) and gives more people a "fair chance" Cons: Makes cash relatively worthless at end game The Live game had some odd mix of the two, which never really made sense to me. Why is a Hellbore tradeable, but a Rage isn't? Who knows. Balancing the economy and stopping runaway inflation (seen it in eveyr mmo I've ever played) is obviously an afterthought right now, but maybe a mix of highly sought after craftable items could keep cash moving, and make the "ubers" BOP. Making some of the craftable components hard to get can keep some of the prestige to them. I tend to favour BOP for end game epic items, as that deters a guild/group from sitting on something 24/7.

I'm not sure how much spam or lag that would create (thinks of ammo if each piece was an item). Even if an item was just time stamped, that could identify who looted and who traded, assuming those sort of logs exist (again, no clue on this).

Win 7 home premimum 64 bit, and xp pro 32 bit.

Do items have tags? Is Hellbore #1242 distinguishable fom Hellbore #430?

Good to know that people still focus on the important things during testing --------------------------------------------- http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BWU_030510 Here's the full text of the submitted bug as published by Bungie: "Title: Teabagging / humiliation moves impossible Type: Bug Opened: 3/4/2010 8:53:13 AM The respawn camera flies back to the spawn location immediately after dying, so your opponents can't teabag / shoot / melee your body and have a possibility of you seeing it." ---------------------------------------------- ( if you haven't experienced Halo and XBL, speaking of communities...)

High health or lots of mobs is good. One-shotting players with lvl 9 shields is a bit dicey, unless it's clear that you need X resist items prior to tanking (more like a WoW flame resist tank, etc). Forcing a PW for example who is tanking to be properly buffed and equipped for defense is a neat idea, assuming he can effectively keep agro Hard but fair is important, though 6-8 groups based on current state and population might be a bit high, 6-12 players should be a reasonable expectation. Also to Sydo's point, I've had items lose 14% dmg in one "oops". This could probably be looked at before we get too crazy with wiping raid parties.

Check the bug forums Lots of work left but it is playable which is huge progress compared to even just a year or two ago.

Except EnB beat sins to market by umm... 6 years. I have a problem with the description of the talent, "Self Destruct", and the concept that your ship doesn't blow up. It should incap your ship if it is actually "Self Destruct". Naming it something else would be fine if it is purely an energy dump (shields/reactor), but anything that sugests you destruct or jettison a core is dumb unless that is precisely what you are doing, in which case you need a JS or a new reactor. Give it 50% dmg to trade goods and that stops trade run progen popping, that makes sense and brings it inline with wormhole and lvl 7 summon. If you don't want it to incap a ship, it really needs a new name or else it just doesn't make sense. Call it "Last Resort" or something, full dump for high damage, immobilized for 60 seconds but still vulnerable to damage, or else you have just created "Invincible". Gear damage is a terrible idea and will result on no one putting a point into it. No one voluntarily blows up their gear, especially at end-game.

That's exactly how I know it's wrong. A terran needs to dock for: 1) ammo 2) sell stuff In Antares, loot was non-stack, and there was no vendor or manu term there. You had to dock somewhere else to get more bullets and sell your crap. No way in hell could you go raid elsewhere without stopping somewhere else, especially a TW with more limited space. All of that aside, what is the purpose of auto-reg? The comment about trade runs effecting the economy is a joke, because the profits from trade are a joke. 10 mins of GSP > 10 hours of trade runs. SD needs to be corrected, so that can't be the reason either as it is unrelated. Doing a pro/con I get: Pro: none Cons: lvl 7 summon is crippled Thoughts? Whether it was/wasn't in live should be secondary to "how will this make the game better". The argument about shortcutting is also crap, wormhole destroys lvl 7 summon if that's the concern. WH to swoop > xipe > bbw is 3 mins, almost the same as QAR registration. Every game has travel shortcuts that are earned.

What would the recourse be if someone else used the Net-7 code to run a game server? (assuming non-profit) A civil suit = $0 in damages? Who would sue?

I don't think copyrighting anything holds any merit unless you legally copyright it? Even then, you could only sue for damages if their were damages, which implies profits, which would piss off EA in the first place. Encryption > copyright. I'm not a lawyer, but copyrighting actually requires ... obtaining a copyright?

It's still a bad system, whether that is the interpretation of live or not. (Which it wasn't, see: farming in Antares, and "oh #@$!@ I'm still regged in antares) I'm not sure of the purpose of making it this way? Live doesn't necessarily mean "ideal to make an enojoyable play environment." The impact or purpose of the change should be discussed and analyzed instead of just flipping it to how people think it was.

Big fish have the same problem, roughly 1.75k on the master, not sure about the others. Nags are the worst offenders by far though.

Not really fair statements given there isn't direction on what is to be tested. If the focus was early game, set a lvl 50 cap and let's test the noobie stuff. If the focus was mob AI and raid mob behaviour, don't close off BBW, and let's go test that with some people. A weekly "would you kindly go try X and report results" would be nice to see where the focus should be. One could assume that the current objective is faction grinding but that isn't logical based on broken faction bars, sort of like testing weapon damage without having operational weapons.

Although I understand that raid content shouldn't be soloed, given the population of 150's, it made sense to keep it easy for now for something to do. I'm not particulary interested in grinding chavez and get p-wiped down the road, nor lose 10% on gear everytime I get blown up in the fishbowl (RD faction is trashed to hell from killing broken-factioned drones). Making the 66's 2-4 player encounters would be a good balance.

Given the effort you're putting into this, you should create a new projectile launcher: Growlz' Gattlin' Gun lvl 9 projectile (insert creative buffs and text here) Stacks of 10,000 bullets, 0.3 fire rate.

I guess it depends on the player. Some people enjoy the destination, others enjoy the drive. I fall into the destination category (any game), so having a juicy reward that I can't get anywhere else makes the time investment worthwhile. Other people, give them an interesting quest, and they are happy just doing the quest. If you: 1) Skip game cutscenes 2) Mash escape through Bioware game chat trees just to get back to killing stuff 3) Do trade runs to level combat/explore 4) Got the WoW addon that auto-scrolled the quest chat then the reward is probably what drives you to do a quest. If you: 1) Replay cutscenes in the options menus 2) Replay open world games every which way to see different endings 3) Level explore by defending miners or mining 4) Read every shred of lore there was to read in the last MMO you played then the quest itself is probably what is more important to you than the result. Making both people happy is normally a challenge, but having a blend of quests that appeal to each type helps attract a wide player base. If it's a core quest like this one, I think addressing both groups is important. Perhaps creating a new item altogether would be a good solution, something woth the time (comparable to an Archos) but not something that should be dropping from raid bosses (Spitter).

Archos or Bile imo.

Just curious, if you don't have the build skill at time of completion = SOL?

Looks fine here, that's your iFail, erm iPhone

By saying this, you are suggesting we are better than all WoW people = the very elitism you are suggesting we should avoid. Eh? I said specifically that you should be nice to people instead of writing posts about the plight of a community on the internets. If you want to make something better, you can talk about it, or fix it. Roughly 67% (statiscally accurate to within 67%) of questions on Market get "go check enbdb.com". I think you misunderstood my post which had a blend of sarcasm and seriousness, but basically, WoW comparisons and forum threads won't change anything, doing something in game will. Also it's a MMO, and if someone wants to be an ass-hat within the terms of service, that's their perogative, add them to the ignore list, and move on. If everyone is deemed to be an ass-hat, and that bothers you, don't play. I'm not promoting ass-hattery, but it's inevitable, and people can't get bent out of shape everytime someone doesn't do exactly what they hoped for. Eventually most ass-hats will get ignored/driven out of the game, or form a collective of like-minded people which is also perfectly fine.