Bad_Dog
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Posts
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Joined
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You know I'm gonna take a beating for this post, but oh well, it goes hand-in-hand with having an anti-fanboy opinion.
It's funny how I can play for a month and only run across a couple "Dev Fanboys" in the game but I come to the forums and it seems that whatever decision the devs make you all collectively shrug your shoulders, then all say "yeah that's a good idea, it makes sense to me".
Well, in my opinion, the current rate drop stinks and the rate should be increased. Please save all tomato throwing till the end of the debate.
If you don't want everyone to have it, don't put it into the game.
First this is a "game". We players are all equally paying the same sum we should all have access to the same content. Whether you play 80 hours a week or you can only scrape up 8. It's like buying a Monopoly game but I can't have hotels on my properties because I don't play the game often enough. Stupid isn't it?
If farming is a problem then address farming.
The argument that "because of the farmers we have to limit the drop rate" and that means "so sorry casual players you lose" is insane.
Enough with the gimmicks and time sinks
Using "chaser" items and "time sinks" as a lure to keep playing at 50 is a cheap gimmick to disguise the fact that the game screeches to a halt at level 50. It's like hiring a plate spinner to stand on stage while you break the bad news to employees that there are no more pay raises... ever. Many of you are applauding the plate spinner and marveling at the coolness of the act, while the rest of us are saying, "WTF?".
The devs are pretty clear they do not want to raise the upper level of the game, then so be it. But then you need to keep making new shineys and allow everyone to enjoy the game and its' content - it makes them happy. Happy players are loyal players and forgiving of faults. A game, an MMO in particular, needs to be inclusive not exclusive.
If it taking someone YEARS of task forces and regular gameplay to slot one purple IO set, then your ratio blows.
The purple IO drop rate of 1 vs 1500 kills apparently is not working, In the last year I have recieved one (1). And that was on a level one which joined some supergroup members in PI for about an hour. Over the course of the lifetime of purple IOs, I have had about 5, + or - one or two. If I hadn't already bought IOs for my main, I'd still have about a year to go to slot my first set.
PVP IO's does not do PVP any favors.
One of the reason PVP is a plague in this game is that there is a huge disparity between those that already do it and those that might want to try it. The way it works now, new players walk in to the arena and get beat down, period. Reality sets in when the player realizes why they are losing - they are losing to players that may be worse than they are but they somehow were able to afford 1.5 billion inf x 6 (IOs in the set) x number of pvp IO sets they have. There is no way that new pvp players are going to invest that much resources into something they aren't sure they will like. Make PVP IO's available to all or remove them from the game. That puts the focus on skill not how much you spent on the market.
And lower the cap at the market.
1.5 Billion is just plain obscene that this is being allowed by the system.
Don't we already have enough penalties to players?
Hero/Villian merits is another system to suck time and resources from players. The casual player gets the shaft on this deal too. A single PVP IO is 20-30 H/V merits that means its 40-60 days of 5 missions a day, not likely for a casual player and lets not even contemplate if he wants the whole set. And how long will it take to convert resources into H/V merits, assuming you have them? 20-30 days? Real casual players log in have some fun and log out, why is it they have to "give up" their desire to have IOs because they don't spend there few playing hours on a 30 day, laserbeam-like focus on running the same few tips missions repeatedly, farming, marketeering, etc, just to obtain a single IO?
If it is not fun for the people who pay for it, you are doing it wrong
I will contend that the end result of this path is that the game is becoming less and less "fun" to play and more and more "work". Since this is a game and games are meant to be fun then that would mean we are doing it wrong. It doesn't matter how cool the game looks or all the cool things in it. If people don't have fun playing it, they will move on.
Ok I will climb off the soap box, feel free to throw your tomatoes now. -
Quote:Funny! I hadn't read that. I never followed that lawsuit that closely att he time, it didn't effect me much. Last I heard about it was that Marvel dropped the lawsuit because of some agreement, (which I do not know what it was), was signed between CoH and themselves.Originally Posted by Local_Man
It has been a while since I read the court decision, but from what I recall, the case was settled because NC Soft won a preliminary Injunction hearing that made it very, very likely that NC Soft would win the case. In fact, the EULA worked and protected NC Soft because it prohibited copies of trademarked characters. Marvel was trying to shut down the game completely, and the Court said "No" at a preliminary hearing. In most cases, whoever wins the preliminary hearing will very likely win the case.
And I seem to recall (but I may be mistaken) that some of the Marvel people actually logged onto CoH and recreated some of the Marvel characters to prove that it could be done . . . and the judge cited this as a basis to say that the Marvel people were causing CoH to violate the trademarks by creating their own violations in the game. So Marvel DID resort to those tactics, kind of.
In effect, as long as NC Soft agreed to make "reasonable efforts" to get rid of trademark violations, CoH itself did not cause a trademark violation. It would be like Crayola being sued because you can draw Wolverine with Crayons. In the "settlement," CoH really didn't give up anything from what I recall.
Edit: Oh, I see others kind of addressed the same points.
Which illustrates the point I was making, any company could come to this game make their characters here and claim infringement. I bet if Marvel had to do it again, they would forget to mention that their own employees were some of the major violators.
I still believe, its better to just avoid the whole issue to begin with. Who wants to worry about logging in one day and finding GenericHero on your favorite character. Have fun with the game. -
DUAL PISTOLS !!!
I can't play the dual pistols set with the animations as they are. I lose all interest as soon as my alt starts doing 360s, thrusting his arms in all directions, firing rounds all over creation. I just can't get into it.
I'd like to see all the flashy animations for DP have non-flashy alternates. For example, the Malta Gunsliger uses animations that Dual Pistols does not, some of them are very good.
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Someone posted a while back that it would be fun if we could set a default death animation. That would be awesome. I have several "robot" alts that would so enjoy the old Rikti death animation (where they froze then fell over to one side like a log). I also love that Ghoul death animation.
I'd like to see that and the default flight pose added to the Options Menu.
Just my 2 inf worth. -
Quote:Here is why it is a bad idea and a no-win situation:Originally Posted by seebs
A friend of mine, who has written books, was thinking about playing a character from one of those books in CoH.
The ToS appear to prohibit the use of characters-which-are-owned. Does that apply even if you're the owner, or have the owner's written permission?
Your friend may own the copyright but I'm positive that NCSoft is sure to change its name to GenericHero----- as soon as someone reports it. Even if it is obscure, even if your friend claims to own the character. I'm sure they will attempt to verify if it is copywritten and if they can, regardless of ownership, will perform an exorcism on the offending account. Why? The same reason they have the ToS agreement. They are protecting themselves from lawsuits.
After the Marvel lawsuit, they are fairly quick to respond to any reports of copywritten characters. And anyone who has been the focus of a player report will tell you that they don't just rename the one character, they go through all your characters. When NCSoft saw that their ToS couldn't protect them from the Marvel lawsuit, I believe they saw how easy it would be for some organization to set NCSoft up FOR a lawsuit. Afterall, how do they know that a hundred Marvel employees didn't subscribe to CoH just to make Dr-Doom, Wolverine, Captain America, Black Panther, etc and then claim multi-million dollar copyright infringement when the characters weren't promptly removed when reported? I think we all know that Marvel is too big and profitable to resort to tactics like these, but what about a small time operation.... like your friends?
The only part that protects him is this:
That being said, I have not heard of anyone that was able to undo a copyright exorcism on their account. The GMs generic out the offending characters first, then you get the email informing you of what happened. There is no discussion.Quote:To the extent that NC Interactive cannot claim exclusive rights in Member Content by operation of law, you hereby grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Member Content has expressly granted) to NC Interactive... a non-exclusive, universal, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicenseable right to exercise all rights... associated with such Member Content.... You shall indemnify and hold NC Interactive and its affiliates harmless from and against any claims by third parties that your Member Content infringes upon, violates or misappropriates any of their intellectual property or other proprietary rights.
I'm just saying it's a bad idea. If your friend is creative enough to have written books, then he is creative enough to invent a character that doesn't exist and have fun with the game. Debating a character created inside CoH with NCSoft will no doubt lead to frustration and disappointment. -
Quote:I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet. You'll find the game much, much easier to understand if you start your career as a hero. The 5 archetypes are very easy to understand in relation to team makeup and playstyles. The villian side is just a bit more complex than hero side when it comes to the AT's. For instance, villian AT's have other types of ability that comes into play. Brutes have to keep attacking to maintain effectiveness, dominators have to keep attacking to be able to use their "domination" power, etc. Also, villians have their powersets mixed and matched in a way that makes no sense in the orderly 5 archetype hero fashion, but still works rather well on the villian side. All in all, these things are completely absent hero side, which makes the hero side easier to get your feet wet, IMO. Once you have the hero side making sense, try the dark side.Originally Posted by Imadinu
Hi! I'm playing the free trial because I want to know if my comp can play the game and so far I don't seem to have any problems with my system. I'm considering purchasing GR and subscribing. But before I do I want to get a better understanding of the game and see if I'll like the game after all.....
...And should I start as a hero or villain, and which has the best server population?
...My play style is more range-attack and team support so I think Blaster would be a good choice for me, Im not much of a tank type. Also I like to take my time and read the storyline and mission quests so I do a lot of solo playing so that I dont hold anyone back especially when Im still learning how to play. Yet I understand that to solo a tank is the best choice. Im open to suggestions.
As far as your playstyle, you may (or may not), find things a bit different here as the tank is not necessarily the best soloing AT. They may have the best defenses and the most hit points, but you'll find scrappers infinitely more soloable than tanks, being that they are the only hero class that is more of a hybrid. Tanks, Defenders, Blasters and Controllers are each have a defined role to play on a team, where scrappers are part tank and part blaster. Scrappers don't have the same defense as a tank nor do they do the damage like a blaster but they do what they do very well, destroy living things with little or no effort and can still take a punch. -
Quote:When you switch sides you never go to or thru Preatoria.Originally Posted by Darkfaith
The person I was quoting said you need access to Praetoria to change sides, which can be misleading, possibly indicating to people that you can't switch sides without your character actually going to Praetoria. I never said that you didn't need GR to switch sides, I was just trying to clarify that the two features are independent of one another.
Once you complete your first morality mission you can visit the other side and continue tip missions. Once you complete the second morality mission you have switched alignments. All without Preatoria.
Once you finish that second morality mission you see a string of badge rewards which is essntially your hero badges being converted to their villian counterparts or vice versa, and that happens at the mission door as you exit. -
Quote:I'm sure that would work... with one caveat: If you don't have a full team and/or need to repeat it at a later date, you'd have to recruit people and run the respec trial again, where the Tyrannt mission can just be reset.Originally Posted by Redlynne
You can do substantially the same thing using the 3rd Respec in Terra Volta in the Reactor Room. Just have to wade through all the waves of hostiles first, collect your Respec or Merits, and then stay in there without a Red Bubble spamming Healing Aura. Effectively the same result.
In our sg the healer had invis and tp, made it super easy. She ran to the end and tp'd the team. No fighting and it's quick to set up, providing one of the lava pools is free of mobs, otherwise you just have one mob to destroy. -
Here is the absolute fastest way to get AutoDoc:
- You want to find a lvl 50, preferably in your sg, with the Tyrannt mission to save Statesman.
- Preferably you want a full team of sg members with one empathy healer.
- In the last room, park the entire team, (except the healer) in one of the lava pools. The healer is standing on the ledge above them.
- Set the empathy healer to auto-spam their AoE heals and go to bed.
- Wake up in the morning and be impressed.
Note:
The lava in this mission will do alot of damage to each member, so you'll want to make sure that the AT's that show up can resist a certain amount of the damage. You want them to take damage but not more than can be reclaimed by healing. Otherwise you have a healer and 7 dead teammates in the morning. - You want to find a lvl 50, preferably in your sg, with the Tyrannt mission to save Statesman.
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Same here. I play on a 32" monitor and a high resolution. I occasionally have to do circles with the mouse to figure out where it is, a bit annoying in the middle of battle.
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Had you published the arc BEFORE you added the escorts or their dialoge?
If so....
* make sure you are on the tab that shows only your published stories
* edit your arc from there
* republish when done
* then try it again
Once you first published it, the version of your arc on your hardrive was no longer the same version that is on live. So, where you are editing the story makes a difference as to whether the changes will show up or not. You are only changing the version on live if you are editing from your "published stories" tab.
Once a story is published, you could go to the tab that lists all the stories you've started/created and edit all day long and the changes will not be reflected on the live servers. -
Quote:If you didn't want your words misinterpreted as boredom, you should make the case without all the complaining about how villian side sucks. There is a legitimate case to be made, as you point out, for having optional zones after leaving Mercy, but many of us do not share your feeling that the redside sucks. And the worse way to make a case for change is to make your point with a bunch of personal complaints about hating this and that about CoV like....Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
...By the way, I would kindly ask that if you want extrapolate what you think I meant from what I actually said, then do it more carefully. I never said I was bored of "the game." I said I'm bored with Sharkhed Island and Cap Au Diable. I singled those two zones out specifically and purposely, and I believe I did it at least five times. I'm bored with them because I HAVE to spend 5-level stretches at a time in them without the ability to go anywhere else to break the monotony. Even Galaxy City that I prefer to start in is not this constricting, because it keeps sending me out-of-zone. Neither Cap nor Sharkhead do.
To me, all I hear is that this is all about making you feel better about playing CoV, I don't read in there any objective reasoning that I can agree with. Whine-y complaints usually doesn't get people to agree with you.Quote:"Updating old zones doesn't solve the problem that I'm SICK TO DEATH of Cap Au Diable and Sharkhead Island."
My original post was agreeing with a previous poster over fixing what we already have. 1) It needs it and 2) adding new zones to CoH only spreads players out even further than they are now, making the game feel emptier and emptier each time new zones are added.
Make your case and seperate your facts from your opinion, then you and I have some ground we can agree on. -
Quote:So.... You detest my idea because you are bored with the game. Perhaps you should look into Champions Online. It will be all shiney and new to you.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Updating old zones doesn't solve the problem that I'm SICK TO DEATH of Cap Au Diable and Sharkhead Island. I don't want more things to do in them. I want another zone completely independent of those two. I don't care if you change buildings, I don't care if you move around contacts, I don't care if you add more stories. I do not want to see Cap Au Diable and Sharkhead Island EVER AGAIN.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bad_Dog
Updating the art/buildings and content/arcs in our existing zones is more bang for the buck in my opinion. Improve city layout or buildings - definately. Maybe remove some of the repition in these arcs by working in some newer maps or utilize any of the numerous enemy groups that have been brought into the game since launch. Missions from the original CoH contacts has never changed in over 6 years. In any case, it can take what we have done a thousand times and make it new, refeshing and look better.
There has been this inexplicable drive for "quality over quantity" in City of Heroes that's been around pretty much since CoV came out, where instead of adding new locations, old locations keep being reused and re-tweaked. Five years later, I know them by heart, and I'm sick to death of them. City of Villains has all of seven zones - Mercy Island, Port Oaks, Cap Au Diable, Sharkhead Island, Nerva Archipelago, St. Martial and Grandville. And I know ever square inch of those zones by heart. I do not want alternations to those zones. I want new zones that I've not seen before. I want more variety than just seeing the same five locations in the same two zones for 10 levels at a time.
For all the crap people give City of Heroes zones, at least there's so much sheer land area in there that I keep coming back to places and zones I haven't been to in ages. There is enough variety in City of Heroes that it's much harder to get burned out on the scenery. City of Villains has no variety at all. In the VERY RARE occasions that two zones overlap for content, the zone-locked stories nevertheless keep you locked in the same location, staring at the same God damn black sand and the same damnable brown brick buildings. If there's one point where I'm more likely to abandon a villain at than any other, it's 20-25. I HATE SHARKHEAD ISLAND!!!
I have a five level 50 villians (played - not farmed - from 1 to 50) and many others that just havent made it that far yet. I have no issues with sharkhead, cap, port oakes, mercy, any of them. I would agree a new zone would add a little something new to the redside. That being said, if they do add a zone it will be a zone with a range. It certainly will not be 1-50, it could be 25-30. If thats the case, you are still going to hate playing the redside.
You know this paragraph makes my head hurt. You claim to not want to redo the current zones because you've started in Galaxy for the last 6 years but you are saying you are so bored with running past the same building, the same enemies, etc. You are in effect, sir, making the case for redoing the starting zones instead of making new zones.Quote:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
No, thank you. I prefer to start in Galaxy City. It's where I started six years ago and it's where I prefer to start unless I have a particular conceptual reason to start elsewhere. I prefer to have enough variety to where I'm not looking at the same building with the same contacts and the same streets every single time I start a new character. I DO NOT WANT a redux of the CoV starting zone where irrespective of which contact you pick, you always come back to the same place, roam the same streets, fight the same enemies and generally go to the same locations. I want to have varied terrain that I don't instantly recognise from having run past that same damn building a hundred times in the past two weeks.Quote:This is just my own opinion, but I'd like to see Back Alley Brawler and the Galaxy starter contacts moved to Atlas Park and something new and more useful re-envisioned for Galaxy City, instead of it being a second starter zone. Maybe move the whole building somewhere in Atlas. By moving BABs to Atlas, all the low levels will be in the same zone and quite possibly all those Galaxy starter contacts that are not getting played may find a new audience. -
Quote:You don't necessarily need two trainers. I'm also fine with him staying in GC. But, if that building was moved to another part of Atlas, for an example, then a trainer by all those contacts inside the building would make sense.Originally Posted by Decorum
Why would you have two trainers in Atlas? For that matter, why is it necessary to move BAB in order to redo Galaxy? A lot of people like using Galaxy to avoid Atlas entirely.
Mercy Island has two trainers and thats most likely because low levels move to another part of the map to run missions around level 5. If there was no trainer by these new contacts, players would have to run to the northeast corner of the map everytime they leveled. If the Galaxy building and contacts were moved, then a trainer by the contacts makes sense... unless they are located near City Hall. -
Quote:I'll have to agree with this too.Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
I don't think there should be any all-new zones, blueside or redside, until the current zones fill up more.
I think the work and time should be put into revamps of the older existing zones (both art and content-wise). Make those 'new' again.
New zones attract people to the game, but they also split up the existing players so that the game feels 'empty', especially with all of the instancing.
I think we have hit a point of diminishing returns on this.
Updating the art/buildings and content/arcs in our existing zones is more bang for the buck in my opinion. Improve city layout or buildings - definately. Maybe remove some of the repition in these arcs by working in some newer maps or utilize any of the numerous enemy groups that have been brought into the game since launch. Missions from the original CoH contacts has never changed in over 6 years. In any case, it can take what we have done a thousand times and make it new, refeshing and look better.
This is just my own opinion, but I'd like to see Back Alley Brawler and the Galaxy starter contacts moved to Atlas Park and something new and more useful re-envisioned for Galaxy City, instead of it being a second starter zone. Maybe move the whole building somewhere in Atlas. By moving BABs to Atlas, all the low levels will be in the same zone and quite possibly all those Galaxy starter contacts that are not getting played may find a new audience. -
Not sure what server you are on, but Protector has at least 1 ship raid every Wednesaday, often 2. They begin recruiting about 7:45pm est with the raid beginning at 8. You can almost always find a spot on teams, we most often have 4 or more full teams for a raid. You can expect to get somewhere about 300-500 merits for a run.
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Since CoH Beta, street mobs have always had members that run as soon as the encounter initiates. In Atlas its very easy to spot with Hellions and it happens everytime.
- The hellion yanking on the purse of a victim will run
- The hellion with his arms crossed in a three person mob is going to run
That being said, Fear effects worked alot different back at CoH release, I remember getting lectured by an angry tank for dropping things like Spectral Terror and Tornado. Spectral Terror, for instance, would be cast and almost the entire mob would run for their lives. Very annoying to a tank who just had herded a room, and rightfully so.
So the devs changed it to the system we had recently where the mob would stop what they were doing and do the peeing-their-pants emote and things were a lot better, maybe not as realistic, but better.
Now it looks like maybe the devs forgot what it was like way back when. When a player with poor judgment would cast a Spectral Terror by the Reactor during a Respc Trial (ahem... me), and it would instantly send a good portion of the room running laps around the reactor room until they discovered the open door. Those that did would scatter throughout the entire building. Not fun to have to go back to the main rooms to look for stragglers when the trial won't complete.
In my opinion, I liked it the way it was before this latest "improvement" to the "run-away-for-no-apparent-reason" logic. On huge maps when you finally get to the bosses room only to find that your mission to "Defeat Boss whatever" is now "Defeat all untill you find whoever belonged in that room" sucks! This is multiplied by infinity when fighting Vahz because zombies will cease moving after a few seconds after any bosses or Lt's in their mob are defeated. If they were fleeing at the time I killed the last Lt in their mob they could be anywhere. Sure, they will be found later just standing somewhere. I have found them in the middle of another mob, on a ceiling beam in a tall room, and I even found one in the middle of one of those destroyable lab objects in the tech room with the 4 buff/debuff lab objects. How he got there I can't figure out, the point is, that this is rather silly to change the system that was working fine and now have to play hide and seek with enemies.
Yes, that feature that shows the final mission objective is helpful but 1) it does not work all the time and 2) it does no good if the mission has multiple objectives.
Outdoors, I don't really have any issues with it, it seems fine. Indoors? The occasional runner? Sure why not. Roll it back to what it was. It's just way too often now and very frustrating. -
Quote:This is your best bet, many of us vets are mentors and are willing to spend one on one time with you. I think if you find someone to buddy with you'll find you are in teams and enjoying the game on a whole new level before you know it.Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
We the players have just the thing for you. The Mentor Project we have a chat set up ingame. As a Freedom Redside mentor I would be more than happy to help you. Just ask in N P C chat or send a tell or Email to @Knight Of Bronze if you have any questions....
If for no other reason, join the N P C channel and you'll always have people available to answer questions, offer advice and/or lend a hand where needed.
In the chat box in the game type: /CHAN_JOIN "N P C"
CoH is pretty accommodating to players who enjoy soloing, but, if case you haven't already discovered, you find two things that will become very clear in your 20's:
1) Not every mission or story arc can be solo'd.
2) Some archetypes are better suited to soloing than others. -
I love seeing how people interpret the guidelines and seeing the different approaches people take. It's what I love about art. Great submissions, good job all!
Here's what I submitted.
My interpretation was propaganda to the max. Sublimal imagery that his power derives from a supreme being, that he has the power to lead, and that he himself is portrayed as bathed in divine light. Is he a god? Everything else seems pale compared to Tyrannt.
I left out the text when submitting as to allow it to be easily customizable to any number of messages. -
Quote:I was not replying to the question i had a response to the post above me. Which frequently happens in forums in case you hadn't noticed.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Again, not what was asked.
Of course, it's entirely possible you got 4,900 posts by needlessly correcting posters. In that case, you might want to read a post above the person you are meaning to correct before posting. -
I didn't say its an obligation, its just a good idea not to alienate a portion of the people paying the monthly fee.
Sure it makes them some extra cash if people end up buying more slots. When all is said and done they want a positive image, positive word-of-mouth about GR, and for us to enjoy the product we paid for.
A postive experience with it keeps us coming back. We'll continue to pay the monthly fee and will most likely purchase more expansions/boosters. Which wouldn't last long if they were to ever adopt a stance that appeared to be greed driven.
It would cost them next to nothing to gift everyone who buys GR 2-4 slots, it's gestures like that, that show they aren't trying to burden or alienate the long term, poorer players who scraped up just enough cash to buy the expansion. -
There will almost certainly be free character slots with GR.
Many people who have played this game for a while are either close to if not already filled their available character slots on their favorite server. While its true that everyone has had free server transfers for a couple months, with Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning coming BEFORE GR there will be many players with no free character slots again. The NCSofft execs are not dummies. They aren't stupid enough to have players spend $30 on the expansion and then demand they pay more to get character slots or transfer characters off the server once you see the goodies and want to make new toons.
It would be a bad business decision not to give out 2-4 character slots with GR. -
This is from Wikipedia:
"Latency is the time taken for a sent packet of data to be received at the other end. It includes the time to encode the packet for transmission and transmit it, the time for that data to traverse the network equipment between the nodes, and the time to receive and decode the data. This is also known as "one-way latency". A minimum bound on latency is determined by the distance between communicating devices and the speed at which the signal propagates in the circuits (typically 7095% of the speed of light in vacuum). Actual latency is often much higher, due to packet processing in networking equipment, and other traffic.
Now i'm pulling out a section for emphasis:
While strictly every packet experiences lag, the term lag is used to refer to delays noticeable to the user. There is often a correlation between latency and the physical distance that data must travel. Thus the time taken for a packet to travel from a computer server in Europe to a client in the same region is likely to be shorter than the time to travel from Europe to the America or Asia. But protocols and well written code that avoid unnecessary data transmissions are less affected by the latency inherent in a network. Modern corporate networks have devices to cache frequently requested data and accelerate protocols, thus reducing application response time, the cumulative effect of latency.
In many online video games such as World of Warcraft and Quake III Arena, the lag is caused by bad connection to the host. Internet lag is undesirable because it disrupts normal game-play. Due to this, many players that have a high latency internet connection are often not permitted, or discouraged from playing with other players or servers that have a distant server host or have high latency to one another. Very often it also causes the death of the player character when it engages in combat. Extreme cases of lag may result in extensive desynchronization of the game state. The game may attempt to correct this by pausing game-play and attempting to fully resynchronize all players. Games that do not or fail in the attempt may simply drop the offending players. A reverse is shown when the player is near to the server geographically, allowing for, in some cases, almost instant transfer of data, and therefore no lag."
"Extreme cases of lag may result in extensive desynchronization of the game state. The game may attempt to correct this by pausing game-play and attempting to fully resynchronize all players. Games that do not or fail in the attempt may simply drop the offending players."
To blame the servers as the only culprits is rather silly, as silly as saying its all client side. Or saying its the number of ITF's running on a server.
It follows that the likely CoH "lag" culprits would be:
1) your distance from the server,
2) latency of each person on your team,
3) the degree of de-synchronization that the server allows before taking action, and,
4) what the demands are from the server for rendering on the client and your machines ability to render it
It's not a black or white world. During ITF any or all of these could be affecting game play. On that ITF map, the servers are trying to maintain synchronization between 8 clients with varying connection speeds and latency, each attempting to render a map full of hundreds of minions with capes, emotes and powers. The servers are trying to sync this across the internet going 8 different directions across the country (or the world). Once the players start engaging the large mobs in the valley, I'd bet that the servers are sensing 8 clients out of sync with one another and begin pausing for brief periods continuously until each client catches up.
This explains why you can be on one end of Talos and not experience the crippling lag dozens of other players are seeing during a rikti invasion on the other side of the zone where the servers are trying to maintain synchronization among dozens of players, where dozens of enemies and players are all casting powers at the same time.
Anyone with a decent pc and who currently experiences lag on ITF who cares to test my theory should solo (have 1 person offline of course) or duo that third mission of ITF. It's my belief that you won't experience the infamous "lag" in the valley, regardless of how many instances of ITF is running on that server. -
I certainly hope this gets fixed, we do between 5-10 tf's a week and this can be rather annoying.
It's possible this is a variation on the glitch i've seen, But I've seen it dozens of times but only when someone "quits". Personally, I've never seen it on a disconnect/logoff.
To anyone who does not know the work around...
When you complete a mission and see the same mission at the same door come up, you'll know your tf has the glitch.
Assuming the original leader wasn't the person to quit, the person directly below him on the list can most often visit the contact and the tf will erase that duplicated mission, (assuming no one is inside the mission), and it will automatically change to the next mission in the tf. If that works that person will have to continue visiting the contact for the remainder of the tf but youll be fine.
If that does not work, you can try having the leader log off and when the star passes leadership, the new leader can try to talk to the contact again and see if that will get you through. I've only seen this work once.
If the above two options fail, your best bet is to send in a support request and wait it out until a GM is able to work their magic. -
Anyone else have questions after reading the Emperor Cole Bio?
A invuln/ss tanker solo'd Hamidon? Either its a pack of lies....
OR...... it happened before the ED nerfs. :P -
I like it, well done!
I couldn't help notice your "hanger" is similar to our "garage".
http://s232.photobucket.com/albums/e...1-02-18-04.jpg
If you want to see some different angles of the room for ideas or curiosity, let me know.