Samuel_Tow

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The intensity of a fight.

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lol! Right, the battles during the invasions are real intense...

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That's really what kills the invasions for me right there. The battles are static, boring and mindless. I'm not really that big a fan of "tactics" and so forth, but when all it comes down to is finding a target you can attack then fingering your number keys like you're playing the guitar... I lose interest. Even worse, as a Traps Mastermind, all I ever did was let the Henchmen run wild and occasionally lay down a trap as it recharges. Bo-ring!

And even if it were more involved than that, it doesn't look impressive. It looks like a gigantic mosh pit waist-deep in pea soup. I don't enjoy standing around and hitting buttons against the first thing that isn't an illegal target and having to assume I'm accomplishing something. I enjoy battles where anything I do (beyond "activate powers") actually matters and where I fire powers because I feel it's the right time to fire them, not because they're recharged anyway and I might as well.

Rikti Invasions, Zombie Invasions, Hamidon Raids, Rikti Ship Raids, huge teams... They're even MORE boring that going solo, because at lest when I'm solo I'm tangentially involved.

To be fair, after-the-fact height customization is something I feel should have been put into the game as standard, not as a booster, because inability to change height SUCKS. But given how they implemented it, I can see why it was impossible to give us height changing without giving us model changing - they're both on the same page of the editor...

A large-scale declinable buff actually sounds like a good solution to the problem. No moving in and out of range, no falling behind, and you only have to refuse it once. It might take away from the flavour of the power, but I'd take that over being uprooted and not being able to use... Well, Rooted

As for speed, I believe the problem was that "customers" of Group Flight are affected only by the fly speed buff provided by the power (and what buffs they may have, themselves) whereas the "host" of Group Flight is affected by the buff from the power AND whatever other fly speed buffs he may have which do NOT filter down through Group Flight into the rest of the people, so the host is often faster than his customers and leaves them behind. For instance, if the Group Flight Host activates his GvE Jump Pack, he'll fly way ahead of his customers and they will drop out of the sky.

How that can be solved, I'm not really sure.

That sounds a lot like Sonic Blast, actually.

"People call NC Soft and the devs greedy." They're not greedy, they're simply running a business. I was agreeing with NancY

It's not greed, it's business.

What would be greed is like what "free" MMOs like 9Dragons do - you can play the game, only you will suck and take forever to level... Unless you BUY temporary buffs and BUY temporary double, triple or even quadruple experience, BUY items and so on and so forth.

Buy a few extra cosmetic costumes now and then? Why not? Don't want to? All the same.

Video, absolutely. When I look at this, I see either a dying or a DEAD video card. It's what happened to my GeForce 6600GT a couple of years ago. Verticals shoot in all direction and your machine freezes completely. I'd check heat first, then probably take the PC in for a service.

Generally, anything that causes corruption followed by a total machine freeze is hardware-related, and I know that particular effect to be caused by a failing video card.

That's definitely heat, I would say. I noticed your GPU was running at 75, as well, and I'm told anything above 70 is dangerous. Mine runs at 51-52 idle (or when browsing or doing anything other than gaming) and climbs up to around 62 when I run something graphics-intensive. Yours is running hotter idle than mine does under load, and that sounds like a problem.

96 for a CPU, as well, seems pretty much massively over the top. If that hasn't fried your processor, it probably will in short order.

Generally speaking, any time your computer restarts itself directly back to bios, hangs such that keyboard input doesn't work or gives you a blue screen talking about devices or their drivers, it's something hardware-related, either a fried board or an overheating problem. Or it could actually be insufficient power, like I had a PC restart because my power supply wasn't powerful enough, but that doesn't sound like it's relevant to your problem.

Get a programme to monitor the heat of your CPUs and your GPU and run it from time to time when you expect to do some gaming, just to keep an eye on things.

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Figure out what? That when you bid on things then go to chat this is very reproducible? Or that movement keys also show up?
Where do you use movement keys? In the non editable sections.
There was never an indication that the non editable section was the big missing piece.

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Let me guess - you've been working in software development for 20 years?

To me, the problem is that the support for setting up traps in this game is so very, very limited and the time invested in setting them up will NEVER be worth it or bring an equivalent return in the end. I can't say if setting up the bombs is too slow or if they don't do enough damage, but the cost-to-return ration just isn't there.

I don't know what could be done about this. A lot of these powers' drawbacks come from the want to enforce their use outside of combat, making them slow and awkward to use IN combat. Even assuming you could convince a team to sit on their hands while you mine and pull, however, the return is going to be less than what the team could have done in the same time if they'd just gone out and shot the things dead. Hell, even the Devices Blaster himself can do more damage in less time than it takes to lay down and detonate a Time Bomb. Oh sure, it's safer that way, but you're trading a LOT of speed for that safety.

Personally, if I were looking for an abstract solution, I'd make both Trip Mines and Time Bombs NOT placable when an enemy is within 10 feet of you. Simply having an enemy present should interrupt them. In return, however, Trip Mines would do a lot more damage or have less recharge, and Time Bomb would be detonatable. Just make it targetable and let me shoot it. Simple enough.

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And while we're at it, could we maybe make the Time Bomb a bit more impressive than "Trip Mine with an antenna?" If we're going to be targeting it, it would do well to be a bit bigger anyway.

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As well, if it'll be triggerable, it might do well for it to have an even longer timer. If you can trigger it early, it makes no sense for it to risk self-detonating early.

New animations need to be made. It's as simple as that. The technology to swap them obviously exists, as Martial Arts and Super Strength will be allowed to swap animations, presumably with animations of the same duration and timing. But just being ABLE to switch animations does not mean there ARE animations to switch TO.

As with "an engine overhaul," the game isn't going to look better or have more options just for having the technology to support alternate options. That will only happen when more options are made, and even just a single alternate for every animation in one powerset is pretty much the equivalent of one brand new powerset.

Group fly never had the potential to be the coolest power in the game, nor will it ever have that. Even aside from the to-hit penalty, the power is slow, people are prone to falling out of it, it has a VERY large radius and a VERY long duration, making getting out of it difficult, and it lifts you off the ground, meaning any powers that require you to be on the ground become instantly unusable. Like, say, half of Stone Melee, or Stone Armour, or even Earth Control, a couple of powers in Super Strength and so on.

I wouldn't go as far as to say "Remove it!" but something ought to be done to make it suck less as a general concept before we start balancing it on power numbers.

Hmm... That's actually a pretty good idea, one I hadn't thought of, myself. I remember Quake 3 Arena allowed you to pick your Railgun colour, and one of the options was either Random or Sequential, where every shot came out a different colour. So, yeah, that could be cool. I'd definitely support this.

I should add - pretty much the only things I wanted from the Science Pack were the face details and the Super Tailor.

Face details I already put to good use, replacing Nathaniel's goggles and ninja mask face with a full face plate and gas mask, and he looks AWESOME!

I haven't changed anyone with the Super Tailor yet, but I have a giant woman and a humongous cyborg to make bigger, and I will, as soon as I get around to playing them.

One thing I can GUARANTEE power customization will NOT change is animation duration and power effects. The old Storm Kick is slower than absolutely everything in current Martial Arts, with the possible exception of Eagle's Claw, and it's mostly DoT, which no Martial Arts attack does. It's highly unlikely such a thing will come true.

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Actually I think Garrets weapon is closer to a Longsword.

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No, it's an Arming Sword, which is usually confused with a Longsword or a Broadsword. Regardless, it's a sword used by Stalker-like character.

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Considering the Broadsword powerset has access to weapons anywhere from a greatsword to a short sword, with a longsword in between, I'd say this is very much a no-brainer for Stalkers. I'm interested to see what the Assassin's Strike animation will be, though I fully expect it will be a copy of Ninja Blade's animation. It's the rest of the "Urk!" swing animations that will look really cute on a Stalker

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Also, I imagine that the new animations for MA are a street fighter type dealio. Punches, hopefully.

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If that's the case then I'm going to be one happy son of a [censored].

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HADOKEN!

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That's very likely the ONE thing they won't get, as it's an energy fireball and a ranged attack, to boot. I am almost positive, however, that we're going to get a version of the Shoryken. Count on it.

I actually suggested this two, maybe three years ago. I think I was punch-drunk on a Scrapper at the time, just having gone through ripping up double-boss spawns in Crey's Folly, and I can't say I see it as a stellar idea now that I've begun playing less self-sufficient character. But hey, I asked for it, and I'm getting it

I honestly don't care what this does to powerlevelling as long as it keeps genuine new players from getting sucked in like in a black hole. Let people farm all they want. They'll just buy my salvage for more.

Two easy decisions that I don't even have to think about.

One will be to adjust my Energy/Energy Blaster's Energy Manipulation to blue to match her blasts. Easy decision.

The other will be to adjust my Fire/Fire's Brute's fire to a rancid green, to reflect the fact that it's not real power, but the tangible form of the energy of destruction. Plus, I want him to look like a Scourge Infernal

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So, being in Brazil and all I simply can´t buy this Super Booster... The frigging company that sells CoX franchise in here haven´t even put the Magic Pack up for sales yet.
Anyway, for what I´ve read no glass helmet yet?

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Why not buy it online in the PlayNC store? It's what I did, because in the country where I live, these things would NEVER ship at all, and even if they did they'd be the EU version I don't need.

As for the question at hand, I actually prefer booster packs, because costumes added to the game as normal get locked behind some inane, stupid requirement like defeating 100 Overseers or completing a 35+ TF or grinding out 1000 Vanguard merits for a full set or some such. $10 every few months isn't a lot compared to trudge and heartache on EVERY DAMN CHARACTER WHO WANTS THEM. And don't even get me started on veteran costume pieces. I have 'em all, and I STILL think 50+ months is a bad criteria to unlock a costume piece.

I cleared it now, and it seems to have made a difference, but I can't say if it won't loop back to the 26th again. It does that sporadically.

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Aaaand... Back to last month. Clearing my cache doesn't seem to have made a big difference.

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Its been said many places, but we'll say it again.
Check the bottom of the Status page across from the RSS logo...
if the datestamp shows 2009-06-24 xx:xx:xx UTC or any other date then todays... then the server are not up and the status is stale.

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I know the page says you don't have to do it, but if everyone would just refresh the server status page....

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If everyone would just refresh the page, it would kindly reload on June the 26th all over again. Trust me, I tried. It don't work.

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If you fire TB and only hit one target you stand a good chance of being completely drained. But...who fires their nuke at ONE target anyway?

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Someone COMPLETELY AWESOME!

Seriously, though, I haven't used Thunderous Blast myself (I think) so I knew I was probably wrong. City of Data lists it as costing 15 points of endurance and then draining another 40, so I didn't know what to think.

I would DEFINITELY like to see body art on tights with skin options. However, as I've gone into before, the reason it isn't there is technical more than anything else. Tights and, by extension, tights with skin are nothing more than patterns over a base skin in whatever colour you picked. Not only can the engine not display two levels of patterns over the same texture (nothing ever has that) but patterns only look respectably like clothes over very smooth, plain textures. Patterns over detailed textures look not like fabric glued over them, but rather like paint sprayed over them, so even if we altered base skin to hold either the tattoo or the tights and then patterned the other over it, you'd still not be able to get the tights to overlap and hide the the tattoo where it should be under fabric.

I'm not sure I can think of a workable solution to this, but I would very, very, very much like to see body art available with the tights with skin tops.

I agree with your assessment and redistribution of powers completely. I'd really like to see that proliferated to Scrappers at some point, because it really looks very exciting. I'd still like to see Battle Axe ported over to Scrappers, but that's on another subject