Bill Z Bubba

<-------- Lives in Austin
<-------- Is still looking for a new job
<-------- Plans to take a copy of his resume.

That said, will there not be beer? As a duly recognized Dark Lord of Pinnacle by the Mayor, I don't see how I can properly represent Pinnacle's community if there isn't going to be beer.

Installing video card drivers:
From Add/Remove Programs, uninstall current video driver software. All of it.

Reboot, and cancel XP's auto-install of your display adapter.

Run Driver Cleaner from http://www.drivercleaner.net/dc.htm to remove leftover files.

Before continuing, DISABLE all antivirus and internet security packages as they can interfere with a proper driver installation.

Install latest Manufacturer driver or Omegas from www.omegadrivers.net

For ATI, go to www.ati.com and choose Drivers and Software, pick your Operating System, then which type of card you have. If you have a laptop with an integrated card, choose Notebooks with ATI Graphics.

For Nvidia, go to www.nvidia.com and choose Download Drivers and pick which selctions fit your card/system.

For Intel cards/chipsets go to www.intel.com and choose Support and Downloads, Browse by Product, Graphics and find your video chipset.

In game, disable bloom, depth of field, water fx. (For ATI and Intel specifically, but will boost performance for Nvidia as well.) This is not a necessary step, but will increase your overall performance greatly.

In game disable Full Scene Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering.

Exit game and bring up driver advanced settings.

Find 3D.
Set your driver to manage FSAA and AF.
Set to your liking. 4X/4X works well for me, although I'm currently on 6X/8X.

Enjoy.


For general system cleanup, read through this.

Hope all this helps someone.

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Gilgamesh went on to another game

Sometime I wonder if he still reads these forums, stalking us like we stalked him.

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Nope.

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I'm confused. If you're gone, why have you redname posting rights still?

Or are you simply gone, like our reporter friend? Waiting patiently to return with news from the Rogue Isles?

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I miss playing D&D and Champions.

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So do I. Was even invited to join a group while I was at a party on New Year's Eve.

Said thanks for the invite, but knew I'd never make the time.

That's the beauty of CoH/V for me. I get to play Champions (kind of) whenever I want, for as long as I want, and really ahve no reliance on anyone else.

D&D and Champions never allowed that.

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Oh, and BillZ, what's the specs on a system that can handle those levels of detail at 30 fps?

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P-4 HT 3.0 OCed to 3.2GHz
2GB DDR400/ PC3200 4X512
X800XT Pro AGP
80GB Sata drive (Virtual Memory Disabled)
SB Audigy2 LS
WinXP-SP2 (Completely stripped down for gaming only.)

That's it.


ATI X1*** and above SM3.0=yes
ATI X850 and below SM3.0=no
And due to this:

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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.)

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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.)

She's purty. But how can you live without FSAA?

And if you work at it, you can get gameplay that looks like this at 1920X1200 res and 30 FPS in zones.

Like this

And this

And this

Edit: Be sure to stop IE from shrinking the image. Get the full size for actual image.

Thanks for the info, Castle.

That's... this is.... by my complete lack of a god or gods, that's the silliest, frelling thing I've ever seen.

Not that you've figured all this out... that's absolutely amazing... but it is farking insane that they would do it this way.

And you still have to layer the purple patch on that? And does it continue to work that way beyond +5s, or does something else occur against +6s and higher?

EDIT: On the flip side, maybe this explains the lag.

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And in fact, I now have strong evidence we're *both* wrong.
Stay tuned.

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I'm on this bat channel. Gimme a bat time.

1: Aenema - Tool
2: Sweetness - Toadies
3: Things for Granted - Toad the Wet Sprocket
4: Beg for You - Korn
5: On the Outside - Sheryl Crow (Songs in the Key of X)
6: Rock & Roll - Led Zeppelin
7: She's my baby - Mazzy Star
8: Digging in the Dirt - Peter Gabriel
9: Mother Nature's Son - The Beatles
10: The Wedding Song - David Bowie

15GBs total mp3s to run through

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...however, they get -50 points for making yet *another* fundamental alternation to their game engine without warning.

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ummmmm...the change isn't even on test yet. It's coming in with I-7. Two months warning isn't enough for you?

Technically, Pilcrow, although my greed is as great as yours concerning SR:

We have:
3Def (With Def Debuff Res, Heightened Perception and other goodies)

3Def + Scaling Dam-Res

1 Mez Res

1 Utility (With several buffs rolled into it)

And the Monster that is Elude

Even as greedy as I am.... oh heck with it.. here's my greed:

Base values for passives/toggles should be 7.5%/15%

New power availability order should be:
FF/FS/Dodge/PB/Agile/Quickness/Evasion/Lucky/Elude

When Elude is active, all damage done has the words Dead Sexy flying up with the damage numbers like Scourge does.

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I think 12.5% base buff for Aim and FA, and a 5% buff from Buildup sounds fair. Or even double those values for the non-constant buffs since their durations are so short.

(I know, I'm slightly exagerating how bad they need to be nerfed. Slightly.)

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Those values are ludicrously low.

5% for Build Up?

Do you know what Tactics is on a non-Controller, non-Defender (CoH ATs only)? It's around 7%. And, unenhanced, I can tell you, it's barely noticeable in today's world, fighting mobs with no +DEF powers. And that's mixing it with one SO accuracy. You do start to notice it with 2-3 SO toHitBuffs in it, but it's still not incredible.

If you want those values slashed in PvP only, I have zero problem with that. But I would have heavy disgust for a change like that in PvE. I don't want to have to slot my damn Aim for toHit just to get a useful buff out of it in PvE.

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I agree with you, but only to a point. If the ToHit buffing powers are reduced, something else will need to make up foir the reduction. Lowered end cost on FA and Tactics, as an example.

I also wish to see Lucks reduced to be "equal" to Sturdies. At their current values, with this change coming down the pipeline, they are grossly overpowered. UNLESS they are only compared to the grossly overpowered ToHit Buff base values of FA, Aim and Buildup.

Bring 'em all down, is my wish.

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Unless they also heavily reduced the base values of the actual tohit buffs in PvP, and didn't say so, switching tohit buffs from A to B balances then against defense enhancements, which they technically should be, but doesn't really do much to powers like Aim or Build Up, which each possess (as far as I know) higher base tohit buffage than SR possesses total defense. Most people I know don't even *slot* Aim with tohit buff enhancements, making a reduction in them ineffective on its own in taming that power.

But its really focused accuracy that is the real killer, since its tohit buff is lower, but continuous, and its base is also high enough that a reduction in slotting power to "just as strong as defense" still makes it pretty darned good against defense sets.

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Agreed. So now to put the issue completely to rest, all of the accuracy buffing powers (aim, buildup, focused accuracy,etc) all need to have their base values brought into line with what the average defense power can push out.

I think 12.5% base buff for Aim and FA, and a 5% buff from Buildup sounds fair. Or even double those values for the non-constant buffs since their durations are so short.

(I know, I'm slightly exagerating how bad they need to be nerfed. Slightly.)

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It also sounds, upon careful read of this, that tohit buffs themselves, separate from level and rank adjustments, are unaffected by this change, which is consistent with Statesman's original wording of the change.

Is there a different change to adjust the effect of high tohit buffs, especially (but not exclusively) in PvP? High tohit buffs were one of the things Statesman mentioned many months ago as being "looked at."

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Didn't they already look at them and make a change accordingly by making ToHit Buff enhancements Schedule B rather than A?

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For non-followers of SR, that power is (almost certainly has to be) evasion.

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Lucky currently gives 7.5% right? I reckon that'll be dropped down to 5% as well.

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All the passives as far as I know were a base 5%.

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When the bump to evasion occurred, there were several tests run that apparently showed lucky to have also been raised. Thus the 5/5/7.5 and 12.5/12.5/22.5 stats that were bantered around.

Now, I'm NOT going to state that I am happy with what will be our values of 5 and 12.5, but with this change in place, I have the distinct feeling that I WILL be.

I will throw out one bit of negativity to put my overall happiness in check:

It's about damn time this was fixed.

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We've only reduced one power, since it was a kluge fix to the problem that is no longer necessary. Essentially, Super Reflexes power sets Defense will be the same in effectiveness at Melee, Ranged and AoE ranges. Currently, SR has a bonus vs AoE attacks that was added to help them against tougher opponents with higher Base To Hit values.

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As a long time SR user... I am actually happy to hear this.

1: It makes more sense from an RP standpoint.
2: It makes the choice to dump evasion that much easier
3: With these changes in place come I-7, we wil now get a free respec as this will probably be considered a major change.

I'm giddy.

To Arcanaville, thank you very much for your diligence in getting help for we defense based folks. If this change isn't proof that a player can put forth an idea that is actually implemented in game, I don't know what is.

I bow to your beautiful math and testing.

Wait a min.... could they simply be adjusting the purple patch so that there is no adjustment to accuracy/tohit for higher/lower level enemies until after +5 or lower than -5?

I can't wrap my brain around this at all.

Knowing all things must come with a price, does this mean that defense inspirations will be reduced to an equitable level with their damage resistance brothers?

Namely, reduced to 10/20/30? Please?

Farking Glorious. Thanks for this.

FEAR rocked. First game I've played in a while that actually illicited an emotional response from me. There were moments I literally had to hit ESC and walk away from my desk all giddy and goosebumpy.

Last game that illicited a response like that was Manhunt. That game actually made me depressed. I'd never cut it as a serial killer.

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My main is a Fire/Fire/Energy Tank She was going to be F/F/F but I didn't like the Fire ancillary pool as much as I had hoped I would.

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This isn't at all surprising, to me.

I always knew Cuppa had max resists to Flames.

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<golf clap> well played.

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Something I didn't know/realize/see in the manual possibly at first but is VERY useful especially for when you're changing your enhancement type (TO to DO, for example) - enhancements can not just be combined with extra enhancements in a tray, slotted enhancements can be combined with OTHER slotted enhancements of the same type within the same power. (Say you have two end reduction TOs in a power. If you have only enough inf for one endred DO, then, rather than overwriting one of the TOs, you can combine them and keep the TO effective a little longer, while opening up an enhancement slot)

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I played for almost a year before someone keyed me into this fact. Good addition.

Replying to last in thread, not to anyone in particular.

I have noticed the endurance reduction.
Unfortunately, it was offset by the loss of three slots in stamina.
Fortunately, none of my attacks are slotted 1acc/5dam anymore, thanks to ED. Now the common slotting of 1acc/3dam/1rec-rec/1end-red is in place, so the end reduction on top of the global end reduction is overcoming the loss of 3 slots in stamina.
Tack on the radical reduction in the recharge time of rest, and I really don't run into end problems.

Some of my characters MUST still have stamina. My ene/fir brute, my cla/sr scrapper, both my Khels, (although with Stygian Circle 6 slotted for recharge and recovery my WS could live without it) my corrupters....

Some are skipping the whole fitness pool like my dar/ea brute. He's got 3 powers that enhance end recovery. I doubt my MM will need fitness. Dark/EA brute, on the flipside, may be the 1st character I've ever had that will add slots to sprint. Since I won't have swift to speed me up, I'm going to have to leave sprint on all the time, which means 3end-reds right there.

All in all, endurance issues aren't that bad for any of my 12 characters at this point in time.