Zloth

Yeah but.... there are no hard numbers in MMO's. Sure, the power might do X damage in a Y radius sphere this week. Next week, after a patch, it might do X-10 damage in a Y+3 radius sphere. For me, no big deal. I trust you guys to keep my powers pretty well balanced. For the min/max'ers, though, that MUST have the most uber powers at all times, this is horrific.

You're going to need some sort of patron respec (patron betrayal (sp?)?) or you're going to have to suffer through unending masses of "my character is now totally useless!" posts/pm's.

Oh Cuppa!!! How about the badge name for getting 200 badges, suggested on these boards by a gal named Jo???

Good info on corners but I've got to echo Dork Man, why take the high ground? The few heroes that do run do not run slower uphill or faster downhill. Your ranged attacks don't shoot further. Really, for purposes of this game, the high ground just doesn't matter. Now a cliff, on the other hand, is another kind of corner and should be treated as such. Hilltops can be, kinda, if they are somewhat sharp. If you have two supers facing off against each other on the same side of a large hill, though, it isn't likely to matter much. Even on the very unlikely chance they stay on the ground, about the only advantage I can see the higher player having is that knockback will be more likely to give a little falling damage.

Seer Marino is a bit special. Once you get to level 15 you can simply go to her and she will start handing you missions, no introduction needed. Can you also be introduced to her?

Back in beta I talked to her before I was level 15 and she became a contact but wouldn't give me missions until I got to level 15. She sure acts like a badge-locked contact.

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Has anyone else come across this issue? Are yall using the Omega drivers instead of the real ATI ones?

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Omega has Fast Write on the Smartgart tab. Not only is it off by default, it's disabled so you can't turn it on! Fast Write has been around for years and, as far as I know, has never ever worked well. I think having it off by default may be the biggest reason why many people do so much better with Omega drivers. (There's definitely a story behind this "feature". Did the CEO's son think it up or something??)


I show what most of the graphic options look like in this thread. I recommend turning ON the Shader option if you have it while you're travelling around, training, selling, and like that. Turn it off when it's time to start fighting.

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Nahh, because like every other Star Trek game ever created (except possibly Star Fleet Battles) it will likely suck.

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BIG exception! The exact size of that exception is outlined in rule D5.7.11p, right after the exception for Wild Weasels.

By the way, notice how Castle didn't answer the "please don't kill me" bit? Muuuhahahahahaaa!

But but... that's not just *A* cave, that's the cave under the tree in the Croatoa TF! It are cool, it are!

Hehehe the first "head gets dumb" shows Windy sans head. That happens for me, too, when I vew the demo but only for a couple of seconds while it's loading. Funny effect!

I think I've made the connections for just about all the lyrics - that's actually been a real fun puzzle! I'm still stumped around where it's talking about getting some change for gas up until 'we could all use a little change' which has a Peacebringer changing into dwarf form.

Heck, I think I can take a shot at some of those, Red Zero:

The first two (melee powers and range differences) are really the same question. Why can't a blaster just stand at some max range and blast away with all powers? Because that would make them too strong. With it this way then you've got levels of strength according to range. You can stand out at 80ft and do reasonable damage. Get a little closer and you can use a few more. Get up close and personal and you can dish out some very heavy damage. It's far more dangerous close up, however. (Assuming you haven't held/drained all the remaining enemies.)

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What do blaster get, being a primary combatant, for not having a support/defense powers to defend against aggro and mitagate damage?

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1. You do more damage.

or

1. You do reasonable damage at range, thus taking much less damage yourself. (You definitely take much less damage from many enemy types at range.)

2. You can mitigate damage. Many blasters have holds and/or stuns and/or knockback.

P.S. Timelines from Cryptic are rare and subject to vast change. See the history of the Super Secret Non-Combat System. Oh, and the I7 info won't be posted for another two weeks. Such is the nature of programming.

Regarding Elec/Elec

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Balance: This set was supposed to be killer in PvP but we understand that isn't the case. The damage seems to be lacking. Most notably, it has only two single target attacks and a snipe.

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It probably was killier in PvP - which is why it got balanced downward. Powersink is (or at least was) auto-hit and could rip out most all endurance. Serious tank killer, that one, especially if Short Circuit follows it to lock endurance down. And remember that, in order for the arena match to 'really count' you had to do it starting with 0 endurance and no inspires. <drool>

I can see why endurance drain was quatered. However, we also got hit with several powers out there that could give resistance to endurance drain (like O2 Boost). Plus the whole no-inspire thing never materialized to my knowledge. I think we got over-balanced. Honestly, it seems far easier to me to just kill off an enemy. Maybe, just possibly, I might do well against a tank with it but that requires getting into melee range and surviving for a good while.

(Watch out for that top level Ice corruptor power, though. AoE endurance drain could work out very very different.)


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Endurance drain is an all-or-nothing gamble on the Blaster's part. It is said to be in design that enemies do not use certain attacks once their endurance drops below a certain point, but this is rarely noticed as the enemies have an impressive amount of endurance recovery. The only way the drain is often effective is that the enemy's endurance recovery is also killed, which is much more difficult to come by. (This is much more an issue in PvE than PvP.)

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I haven't done it much since I6 and ED but that's not what I was seeing at all. Power Sink + Short Circuit = heavily porked enemies. Particularly bosses which have much more endurance heavy attacks. Some enemy types are more endurance hungry than others - keep your eye on their bars and you'll quickly learn which is which. (For instance, Freakshow self-rez'ing tend to pop up with half endurance to start. Easy pickins!)

Now against AVs, that's another matter. You may as well not have endurance drain against the monsters and AVs. I'm not sure about elite bosses or AVs-reduced-to-elite-boss.

Yep, Malthaeus and Fuzun are up next to Ruludak. That blast didn't knock either one of them down! The other 6 people in the team got one-shotted. (Fuzon gets knocked down a little later but it's pretty obvious he's just doing it to make us feel better.)

Oh darn, I'll have to watch it again!

OK, so who gave the Dark Carnival guns??

The green guy near Back-Alley Brawler is the beta version of Zloth. Not a great costume which looks even worse from the front. But look at the other costumes there! Blah!! This game is definitely teaching us something about how to dress up a hero, isn't it?

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COW!!!!!!!! growlllllllllllllll

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Now don't get all bull headed on me!

Holy Cow! And I don't mean Warface! Well, actually I guess I do, that guy looked like something out of the old Insane Cow Posse, great costume! Huge thanks to the Abyss family for this video, I'll be keeping it for a very long time!

Ready for the next one? I think my submissions are already in. &lt;grin&gt;

P.S. One of those blades near Founder's Falls MIGHT be the blade of Cmdr Dhit. If so, this is the first dev ever caught on film! And if not, it's close enough I'm going to count it anyway.

Ooops, did find one problem. When Anti-Aliasing is turned on, demodump for turning demos into a jillion screenshots doesn't work right.

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Did you turn off Bloom, Depth of Field and Water FX, load the 6.1s and enable AA in the driver? (Or have I already asked you that? If so, it's late, my apologies.)

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Yes, yes, yes, yes, and no. I'll try that tonight.

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Seems to be working but I'm missing my water effects in those sewer missions! ATI must fix! MUST F I X!!!

Thanks for the tip BillZ!

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Did you turn off Bloom, Depth of Field and Water FX, load the 6.1s and enable AA in the driver? (Or have I already asked you that? If so, it's late, my apologies.)

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Yes, yes, yes, yes, and no. I'll try that tonight.

Because I get this sort of craziness when I turn on AA! I used to keep it on all the time but I turned it off when that sort of thing started cropping up. Hopefully ATI can fix it real-soon-now. (If they can tear themselves away from fixing Beyond Good and Evil bugs.)

Actually, I don't run at quite that resolution. My monitor has to cut down to 60Hz at that size and that drives me nuts. I keep it at 1920x1440 and 75Hz. The jaggies aren't as bad at high resolution because the pixels are so small. However, I can occasionally get some craziness if the jaggies form some sort of pattern. (Arg, can't remember the term for that. It was often done on purpose back in the old Apple ][ days, though!) 2x Anti-Alias is enough to fix those patterns.

P.S. Ooo, irony - that character in the first shot is a warshade I made on Test so I could see the early parts of the Kheldian story arcs. I made her costume as a precursor for City of Villians - which then showed up (more or less) on my main in CoV beta, which you see in this post's shot.

Or higher at a bit less FPS &lt;evil grin&gt;

I thought it might be handy to see what some of these options are doing for ya. Some are subtle, some are pretty obvious. I'm doing all these with an ATI x800 which does not have the snazzy Shader 2.0 effects but it still has a lot of options.

Here's a simple, basic shot with most of the options turned off and details set at 100%.

Here I add debth of field and high quality water effects. The water is kinda hard to see in a screenshot because it adds animation to the water. Debth of field is easy to see, though - notice how the more distant objects got blurry? That's what DoF does.

Now I add Anisotropic filtering. Notice how it gets lighter? That's got nothing to do with Anistropic filtering - that's just because the sun has been rising while I take these screenshots. Check the texture on the railing on the right side and how far along it goes. Anisotropic filtering lets that texture go further into the distance. I think it's helping on those knoby things near the rail, too. I turn Depth of Field off in this shot.

Here I turn off Anisotropic filtering and turn on Crisp textures. Crisp texturing is what you use if your card can't support Anisotropic filters. You can't turn on Crisp textures if you have any A-filtering going on.

Now I crank up the World Detail to 200%. Lots of distant objects that weren't visible before can be seen now.

Next I cranked up character detail (which didn't do much in this situation with just some wandering NPC's around) then cranked the World Texture Quality all the way up. Sweet eh? This is where your video card's memory starts to come into play. I think you need a 256k card to use this setting.

Now let's really play - I turned on the High Shader option. Hello!!! Those reflections on the Archon and on my character's helmet actually move, too. They aren't real reflections (they look the same no matter what is around) but they sure look nice. No clue how I'm getting them with an x800 card - maybe something is faking the Shader 2.0 effects in software? Quite a few Arachnos look different with the shaders (before and after) as do caves.


The best thing to do with these graphics settings is just experiment. Use the "/showfps 1" command so you can see your framerate and start playing with things. Your graphics card is NOT the only thing that determines frame rate - if your CPU is slow your graphics card might just be sitting around twiddling its digital thumbs until the game has time to send it a new frame to render. That means you might be able to add effects with no FPS hit at all.


Clarification.... Refresh Rate is how fast your monitor is refreshing. Even at 60Hz (60 per second) people often get headaches after prolonged use. 70Hz should be much better and 75Hz should be just fine. Much over 80 is getting to be a waste. FPS is the rate at which the game redraws - low FPS should not cause headaches, at least not physical ones. Low frame rate does mean you'll have slower response times to your actions and the game will not feel as 'smooth'. With a high FPS you'll have no trouble turning to face an exact direction but with low FPS you might find yourself overshooting and turning a bit too far. (In first person shooters that's death incarnate so you want a real high frame rate in those games. Here it's not such a big deal, though you'll probably start to notice it when FPS gets in the low teens.)

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In the right hands, a Gravity Controller can do more on the battlefield with just three or four powers than a Mind Controller can do with all nine.

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Hehe, in the right hands, a Mind Controller can do more with three or four powers than a Grav Controller can do with all nine.

Containment: Note that only your base damage is doubled. If your attack normally does 100 damage and you hit a red inspire to bring that up to 133 damage then shoot a held enemy, you do 233 damage not 266. Also, it sounds likely that the rain powers will start getting the extra damage starting with issue 7.


Critical Control happens about half the time. Like containment, it's only a Controller thing, not a Dominator thing.


Dominate: This is what dominators get instead. As the Dominator hits enemies, a bar slowly fills. (Unlike Brutes, Dominators do not get credit for being hit.) When the bar gets near the top, the Dominate power button lights up. When you click it there's a bright flash and you get to go wild! Your damage is increased (doubled?) and the magnitude of your holds is also doubled. That's DOUBLED, not just +1 like controllers get! I think hold duration is increased, too. The effect lasts, oh, a couple of minutes I think. Once complete the bar resets to 0 and you start all over again. The bar depletes over time but pretty slowly - it's quite possible to get to another mission with most of your bar still full. Note that Dominate does not increase your accuracy or give you any mez resistance or defense. You can go wild with Dominate but pop some inspires if you plan to go crazy hog wild.


I'm pretty sure Lift does not cut off fly powers. Note that knocking down an enemy in any way on a steep ramp will make them slide down the ramp, taking away even more time. One lift on those sloped sewer pipes can keep an enemy busy for over five seconds! Lift is also a nice power to use when you want to pull single enemies.


Propel: This power is a pretty silly one to get for a Dominator with a secondary powerset full of better attacks. Copy to test, get the power, play with the fun animation for a few minutes, then go back and pick something else - probably the first pool power for your travel power.


Crushing Field: Yep, this is where we start to distinguis those 'hands' from my first paragraph. People who think they can just spam powers are going to get dead very fast. Even if the tank (or whatever) manages the agro for them, this power can burn some real endurance. The recharge is pretty fast (especially with haste) so people just mashing buttons will find themselves out of endurance in no time. This is a good power but use it only when you need it. (By the way, using this in the deeper parts of the Shadow Shard to drop several enemies into Oblivion is great fun. No xp but still fun. Some super-reflex scrappers may even pay you just so they can watch groups of eyes fall. )


Dim Shift is particularly handy at low levels when you don't have a lot of other control options. Once you get your GDF and Wormhole up and slotted it starts to get a bit pointless, though - still handy for the occasional panic button but not nearly as handy as it was earlier. I haven't gotten to test it much but I think this power should be pretty handy in PvP - all those anti-mez powers the melee folks have don't work at all against phasing. More to the point, though, a lot of players won't have a clue what has happened to them. Phasing out empaths can be particularly satisfying.


Wormhole: My controller only just recently put disorient enhancements into the Wormhole power (because of the Enhancement Diversification thing). She just went for range and accuracy, treating the disorientation as a bonus. This power is the best pulling power ever! You don't pull one enemy at a time, you pull entire groups (including the bosses)! You don't have them run to you, you put them exactly where you want them! From here on out you fight battles where YOU want to fight them.

This power can also be handy for sending away those little emminator pets the Devoured Earth like to drop. Not as handy as it was when it was a single-target power but still definitely handy.


Another Singularity tactic - stand inside it. Kinda annoying graphics but any melee attackers that try to get to you get shoved back. Kinda like a poor man's hurricane power.


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If you don't take Stamina, be prepared to slot endurance reduction enhancements into most, if not all, of your powers. It's more than possible to manage your endurance with any combination of powers, but Stamina will make things easier if you can bear to part with the three power choices required to get it.

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My Grav/Storm controller recently respec'ed out Stamina and it's working quite nicely. If a group is moving very fast I have to turn off combat jump and acrobatics but, if it's moving that fast, I shouldn't need them anyway. I don't think I put many slots into endurance reduction at all - just a few of the toggles and I think O2 Boost in the Storm secondary. This stamina-less build really wouldn't have worked out before Issue 6 but the new reduced endurance costs have really helped.


Note to teleport - you can still teleport around just fine even when slowed or immobilized.


Nice guide there Arinara! I've slacked off pretty bad with my old grav/storm guide, glad to see you picking up the slack!

"People come and go so quickly around here!"

--- Dorothy Gale

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Recently, a radio station in my area sponsored a jukebox charity. You call in and pledge $25, and they'll play any song at all that won't get their license revoked by the FCC.

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Oh my! Here's $100. Tip Toe through the Tulips by Tiny Tim. Four times in a row. Die top 40 pig dogs!!

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5. They Might Be Giants - Istanbul

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Ooooo, an educational song!

HONG KONG PHOOEY!?!?

Well, two red names posting, can't very well leave this one alone now can we? Let's see... loading.... loading... loading.... Shuffle! Nah, that one wasn't that great. Shuffle... ah, here we go!

1. Red 5 "Space"
2. Dvorak "Schertzo (Molto Vivace)"
3. Mano Negra "King of Bongo" &lt;woot! this one is great fun!&gt;
4. Handle "The Trumpet Shall Sound" (from The Messiah)
5. Cocteau Twins "Iceblink Luck"
6. Alanis Morissette "You Oughta Know" (recorded off MTV so heavily censored - arg)
7. Atari Teenage Riot "Riot 1995"
8. Smashing Pumpkins "Bodies"
9. The Undertaker "The Man in Black" (from a really horrible World Wrestling Federation CD - Dance with the `Taker!)
10. Bach "Prelude and Fugue for organ in E flat major ('St Anne'), BWV 552"

Regarding #9, I have developed an immunity to these songs. A CD or two like that proves very handy in college when you need to clear the room to get some homework done. Not sure why I'm still keeping that immunity built up but there it is.