Ardrea

I'm also using GTX 295 w/ SLI on the same (current) drivers and I have seen it as well.

In fact, it happens almost all the time. I can set it to rights without a complete reboot by going to my nvidia panel and doing something that changes the screen res and back, but this is really annoying too.

I <3 this thread. It's nice to see interesting discussion that's fun and respectful all at once.

I've been confused by the exemplaring rules too. It's nice to see them discussed. My intuition would have led me to expect that slots would grey out as I exemp'ed down, but they don't. If the rule was, for most IOs, the IO works if the slot it's in had been taken at the level the player is exemped to or lower; and then as effective as the IO's level, but not more effective than three above the exemped level? To me this would "unlevel" the character to their exemped point. A higher level IO would never be less effective than a lower level one, but that difference would generally only be slight.

I also recall reading somewhere that the game doesn't record the level each slot was granted at.

Aww, Pocket-D isn't so bad most of the time, just some of the time. It's a nightclub, so you get nightclub-style RP there. The Cape Radio DJ's broadcast from the middle of the dance floor most nights, which is really neat, and you -can- find serious RP in the D, if you're patient.

Indeed. ... Outstanding! <3

I caught a screenie of as many people present as I could.

I took a screenie of the happy couple:



I presume that's their SG gathered around them.

"Earth First! ... We'll log the other planets later!"

There used to be a handy one-page summary checklist; "IO Memorization Badge Tracker" by MadScientist. It's hard to find.

I see both good and bad in this. Mostly good. I have to dig deep to find bad.

Sure, it changes the balance in the early levels, but unslotted these powers aren't that huge an effect. Slotted, well slots don't do a lot in the low levels, and even if they do, that's at the expense of something else not slotted. Not having to stop to rest so often, virtually gasping for breath, will improve the low level experience -- especially for new players.

I do think something is lost though. The ability to choose to have a character who's noticeably more athletic than the average superhero. Ninja run did this, for a start. Everyone and their grandmother is running and jumping like a ninja; even if it doesn't make much sense for their character as a concept. Now they'll all have swift and hurdle too, automatically. I'd give up other powers for the distinctiveness that swift and hurdle can give a toon. Sure, I can still slot them for effect, and since one or the other was a requirement for health or stamina, pretty much everyone had one of them anyway. It's a design critique I suppose; in practice it didn't work.

I think it might have been a better option to just take the prereqs out of the fitness pool -- when level 6 comes up, just take Stamina if you want it, and skip the other three.

All in all, I'm 99% happy with this. My criticisms are very, very minor.

I kind of wonder; does anyone feel that changing this aspect of the game, whether trivially easy or terribly hard, would prevent anyone who was planning on leaving the game from doing so, or convince anyone who wasn't going to play to decide to subscribe?

I get the same. All the servers show three grey dots.

We need between-levels.

We can expand the level cap to 500 in an instant, by upping people's displayed level-numbers with each bar of XP. Of course, powers and slots would only occur on the ones divisible by ten.

Later on, when a lot more fretting about 500 being too low a cap, we can divide the bars into pips, and have a 5000 level cap. Of course, powers and slots would only occur on the ones divisible by a hundred...

I wonder about the Arachnos costumes, myself. Perhaps side-switching a VEAT will limit the costume options for the VEAT slot.

I agree with most of what BrandX just posted.

There is a lot of RP that stretches and even breaks what I think is credible, even in a comic-book world of superheroes, and sometimes it does get exasperating.

Still, I think overall the best policy. for me, is to let such things slide, and quietly distance myself from RP that seems too far off canon, or over the top-ish. "You're Recluse's illegitimate son? Wow, really? Oh, excuse me, I see an old friend over at the other bar."

People will vary greatly in what RP they feel doesn't fit. For instance, I don't find it at all credible that the recent history of the world in CoH would have been anything like ours. World War Two was different; there's a very significant military power just off the east coast of the US (the Etoille Islands), large numbers of people have super powers, and criminal organizations rival some national governments in their power and ability to affect events. Furthermore, the progression of technology seems much more rapid than in our world (thank you science and tech-origin supergeniuses); heck, near-Earth space is littered with giant space stations, just from the various supergroup bases I'm aware of. Landing on the Moon in 1969? Puh-lease, it would have been far in advance of that, and likely in a big way, not a few footsteps. Who's to say the same sequence of Presidents have been elected, or even anyone in our world born after WW2 had the same parents, genetics or even names? Or that the same minor wars the US and Europe have been involved in since have happened, or even the same disasters have occurred? September 11? Oil spill in the gulf? Ludicrous. Some other disasters, maybe, but that exact same sequence of detailed events as in our world? To me, simply not credible. The same movies being produced? Not credible.

So.

A case could be made that introducing this sort of material is OOC. Yet... for everything above I've written, someone else could come up with a reasonable comic-book world explanation for why it -is- credible for them to have happened in-game, just as in the real world? Who am I to demand my interpretation be the one everyone uses? I'd like it if others agreed with my view, but it's silly to think more than a few would. The Devs haven't exactly gone to a lot of effort to make the canon history and setting all that consistent. Thus it's my choice to let these differences slide quietly. I think we all have more fun that way.

Generally, recipes will be cheaper for you. Compare the recipe price, going rates for salvage, and crafting cost against the going rates for the crafted enhancement. Go whichever direction is cheaper.

When the recipe route is cheaper, get two. Make one for yourself, and post the other one for sale as a crafted enhancement. Post it at a price that would cover your recipe purchase, the price you paid for the salvage and the crafting fee from the crafting table, plus maybe 10-20%. You'll likely make a decent profit when it sells. When your second one sells, you'll have the funds to move on to the next IO you want. Rinse, repeat. Be patient. Keep your eyes open for bargains. Don't get greedy.

When you're done, patience in this process will have IO'd you at a fair price, -and- left you with a tidy sum.

I can understand why Castle would be frustrated; there are two groups here with contradictory desires. They both can't be satisfied so long as the choice is between on-the-spot prompt, or not.

The problem isn't just Mystic Fortune, as has been alluded to here. If it were possible to restrict buffs that are targeted on one player from another player, including Mystic Fortune, Speed Boost, and so on, from everyone who's not on one's own team via an option setting; I think that would satisfy most everyone.

People who're happy to receive buffs from anyone at anytime, could set it to automatically accept, everything, all the time.

Those who don't want their play experience intruded on by people off their team, would set it to automatically decline the same buffs, everywhere, all the time.

There are places and views in City of Heroes and even Villains where the zone's been set up beautifully. Spots where it's hard not to stop and pan the camera around to grab screenshots; or stop and pause and think to one's self ... I'm so glad I found this spot, or how did I ever miss this? Places you can't wait to bring a friend or two to see and share with.

For me, the first time I found the amphitheater in Perez was on of those moments.

Which zones and spots do this for you, if any?

What're the most picturesque locations you've ever found? Which are the most bucolic? The most peaceful? The most romantic? The most urbane?

Off times are much better behaved. The new market interface's arrival appears to have coincided with a huge suite of new market bugs and severe lag issues. I have a suspicion the testing that was done on it never even approached anything like the load of the live servers near peak times, and something in the new system simply can't scale up like the old interface did.

Virtue go boom!

Okay, I gulped and decided to give the upgrade a try. I found the current drivers on nvidia's site via google, and downloaded the installers for both the current versions and the old version I had been using, in case I needed to revert.

The update went fast, less than a minute, and once the computer was back up I checked on CoH, and everything was fine. Another, older game I'd been having trouble with is now much more stable and decently playable again, and that was what I was hoping for.

Thank you everyone for the advice.

Last summer I got a new computer. It uses Nvidia GTX 295 video and runs Vista 64 bit. At first, I had a lot of CoH problems, which were eventually ironed out by reverting from the drivers it came with (I don't know what version they were) to a slightly older version of the Nvidia drivers -- my Nvidia control panel says they're version 185.85. Since then, with the compatible cursors turned on, it has worked well enough, and I've strictly avoided updating those drivers.

Now, here and there in these forums and even from red names, I see advice to update drivers. Is this unequivocal without regard to video cards, OS, and such? If I upgrade to the latest Nvidia drivers -- which the Nvidia site says are 197.45 for my OS/card, is CoH going to keep working? Or should I stay on these old drivers? I don't want to mess it up.

I think it's reasonable they might take a few minutes after maintenance to test a few things as a last check to ensure it's working right.