Ashlocke

Some more details that I have noticed recently which may or may not be related to the above bug.

Recently after I posted the above I installed a 9800 GTX 512 NVidia card.

And while toying with settings to increase some eye candy since the new card is more powerful than the one I had, I noticed two things.

1) I still have the above problem happen, and only in Imperial city (checked pretty much every zone in the entire game just to make sure) and the park area seems to cause this to happen the most.

2) When I dinkied around with the nicer shadow settings, I noticed I could cause the above bug by increasing the shadow "Size" slider, then lowering it back to zero.
What would happen is, at zero I start out with an average of say 30 fps, then as I increase the shadow size slider my FPS drops, by the time I get the slider all the way to the right, my FPS is sitting at like 3.

I then drag the slider back to the left all the way, expecting to see my FPS increase, but it does not, it *STAYS* at 3, and nothing I do in game will fix that. Even tried reloadgfx and unloadgfx commands. Nothing works except to completely restart the game client.

These two FPS lowering issues might be related, I don't know anything about programming to even make a stupid guess, but I figured the behavior is so similar that I should add this info to this thread in hopes it gets fixed soon.

This seems to only happen to me in Imperial City, and specifically when entering the park area or even turning my facing towards the park if I am near enough to see the park.

I get an average of 25 FPS in imperial city, and around 35-40 fps inside mission instances.

When entering the park my FPS drops to around 5-8 fps, and STAYS THERE.

Once hit by the odd FPS lowering bug it doesn't matter if I go back to places that I KNOW I get 30 fps on average, the new lowered 5 fps will stay with me and nothing seems to fix it except for restarting the game client.

I run windows XP SP3, the latest NVidia Drivers and have a GeForce 9600 GT 512

This is the part where I pop in and toss a loos screw into the jumble of gears to say that when I use my Nova nuke and hit nothing, it expends no endurance.

Sarcasm guide.

I had to do a double take after reading several posts in this thread all either claiming or implying that combining smaller tier inspirations can create larger tier inspirations and I had to chime in with a resounding "Nuh uh".

Unless something has changed very recently, one was never able to create a medium anything from 3 small anythings, nor a large anything from 3 medium anythings.

When you combine 3 of a kind, you create another inspiration that is of the exact same tier.
I.E. 3 smalls = 1 small, 3 mediums = 1 medium, and 3 large = 1 large.

Please do correct me if this is wrong, so I can headdesk myself for not knowing about this since inspiration combining went live.

War Walls = I dislike. Makes the game world feel incredibly small, like I'm playing in a shoe box.

My favorite ambiance for places like Steel Canyon is during Rikti invasions, with the war walls down it makes the city feel huge, like a real city should feel.

Perhaps there is a solution that pleases both continuity and players.
Can we say that the war wall tech has been updated and have war walls similar to how the rogue isles have?

I.E. the walls become visible only when you get really close to them, that way while you are heroing about the city can feel bigger. Also you can reduce the concrete part of the wall as leaving that how it is defeats the purpose of removing the "playing in a shoe box" feel that the game has in many zones.

EDIT:
Oh and how about maybe not have all of the trams look identical. Give each tram some flavor from the zone they are in.

Sadly this is the single reason my Crab/Bane character is stalled out at 24 and I no longer play him. It completely breaks his concept of being a master of disguise.

I mean yeah... I'm a master of disguise, just, um, ignore these honkin huge robotic arms sticking out of my Arachnos Soldier/Council/Malta/Longbow outfits...

As I was reading over the wiki description about this power it kept gnawing at me just how useless it appears to be. Of course there might be new game mechanics that we don't yet know about that makes my statement moot, but as I understand things currently, I just can't see this being useful even in extremely rare situations.

Reading over it's description:

When I go to the supermarket and I have a list of 10 items, I don't want to make 10 trips, I buy all of what's on my list while I'm there.

Can we please get something like this as a purchase option?

I would simply like to go to the NC store, pre-order/purchase (whatever it's called) the complete collectors edition that gets me the same content and features as if I had pre-purchased the regular version and then went back to the store to purchase the upgrade.

Notice, AGAIN, I am not saying I want 30 free days time or any other variation of something for nothing, in fact, all I want is to give NC the same exact amount of money it was going to cost having to do all of this peacemeal, I just want a one click, one buy option.

Please Devs, simplify this for folks who don't want or have the time to ping pong in and out of the NC store.

I honestly don't think this is too much to ask for.

Survivor, Season 93: THE HOOD

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

My two cents:

I honestly have little problem with NC making money, they are a business after all.

Having said that, my two nits to pick are:

1) Making this convoluted and not as simple as possible does not help you as a business make that extra buck from us the customers.

2) One option that should have been included in order to make things simpler for a large majority of us (those who are purchasing the CE edition as well as those going to upgrade with the CE pack) was to just have the option to pre-order/purchase the CE edition for the exact price it would cost to get the regular edition and then upgrade that to the CE edition.

This nonsense of having to bother going online to buy something, then going there again to upgrade it seems like so much extra work *for us* when it can just be a one step purchase for the same total amount!

YOU (meaning NCSoft) would lose nothing by doing this, WE (meaning us customers not quite happy with how things currently are set up) would likely be more satisfied and it would just make more darn sense.

Notice, I'm not even mentioning anything about including 30 days free. *ALL* I am saying is, I want the option to avoid the *micro* aspect of all these shenanigans. I just want to go to the NCSoft store, click, and buy the pre-order goodies, the complete content stuff, all in one click, and for the same total price that it would have cost me having to do it piecemeal.

I want to be able to create a character, then type in his name, then hit enter.... AND PLAY.
If something happens in between "enter" and "play" then me and most of my concept driven friends will boycott that crap out of it.

I only read the first post, but will just use my powers of deductive reasoning to guess at all the rest.

With that said:

I find it odd that folks will blame marketers for essentially making a choice to place an item up for a large sum of money.

and

I find it odd that marketers will blame folks for essentially making a choice to buy an item for a large sum of money.

That is all.

P.S.
Or you can do what I do and completely ignore that the market even exists because I loathe game markets with every fiber of my being. You might be surprised just how much I've accumulated and slotted on my various alts simply by playing the game. And by that I mean, no farming, no marketing, not even trading among friends though I would not be opposed to that last one, it just has never come up.