Captain Fabulous

I believe if you set the shortcut to the updater to run as administrator you won't get the prompt. But don't hold me too it, one of the first things I did in Vista was turn off UAC.

The crashing could be driver related, it also could be cause you're running 64-bit Vista. And cause I'm feeling pretty laid back today I'm not going to ask why; just nod, look at you quizzically, and go "uh-huh..."

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thanks... any explination why its that one?

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First process of elimination.

<ul type="square">[*]You say you have a 7800GT so clearly the GeForce 8800 series can't be it. [*]The GeForce Go 7 series is for laptops, only the ones that nVidia has agreed to support directly. [*]Quadro is nVidia's line of professional CAD workstation graphic cards. [*]RIVA 128 / 128ZX was nVidia's chipset that came before the first TNT card nearly 10 years ago.[/list]That and nVidia subscribes to the "unified driver" concept of one driver per OS that covers all their desktop video cards. Usually. They have sunset support for some of their older video cards like the GeForce and GeForce 2 (but strangely not the inferior GeForce 2MX) in XP. The Vista drivers only support series 6, 7 and 8 cards and their Quadro equivalent cards.

Also it's not unusual for them to have "special" drivers for brand new models when they first come out, currently the 8 series falls into that category for XP support.

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Yup, they're just breaking it down a little on the selection menu cause the driver versions the website serves up are different depending upon your choices (97.92 for 8800, 84.63 for Go 78/7900, and 93.71 for all the other GeForce models.)

Beta drivers for Vista are available here too, just click the "BETA Drivers" link above the "Start Here" box on the website. Currently they're offering 101.41.

And just in case anyone actually reads this post, there is a general point y'all need to understand about these Vista issues:

99.9% of them are driver-related, and won't get fixed until the respective companies (ATI, nVidia) hammer out the particular bugs. Without having a batphone to each of them it's impossible to say when this is going to happen; it could be tomorrow, next week, next month, or next quarter -- we just have no clue.

For some problems there are workarounds (like the cursor issue), but for most there aren't -- it's simply a matter of immature drivers. I don't like it any more than you do, and personally I don't really understand why we still have lousy drivers more than 7 months into Vista, but the only ones to blame are Microsoft, ATI and nVidia. Alas, they are also the only ones that can fix this mess.

So my only suggestion is this: if you find an issue feel free to report it both here and to either ATI and/or nVidia. If someone knows of or develops a workaround for that issue it'll show up here. If not, it basically means there isn't one, and you're gonna have to suck it up till there is.

To the adventurous types, one way to solve this problem altogether is to dual boot Vista with XP. Fairly easy to do, but of course you need an XP disc (preferably legal), and some kind of non-destructive partitioning software like Partition Magic (never install 2 OSs to the same partition!!) This way you can easily switch between OSs depending upon what you need to do.

The only reason I suggest this is cause it could very well be a LONG time before all the driver problems get hammered out, and it's unlikely that any of the bigwigs involved are going to care that you just spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new machine that can't adequately play your games.

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I'm having the same invisible cursor issue. I've tried the target change and it works, however it doesn't look like it should. Is there another change to driver or other so that it will look like it should.

My os is vista 32-bit with a Nvidia Geforce 7900 gs any fixes that would help i would be extremely greatful, i've been trying to get this fixed for the past two weeks, for just about as long as i've had the computer

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Nope, that's the way it looks. The only way this is gonna get fixed is when nVidia decides to release a decent set of Vista drivers.

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Everytime Nvidia sells a 6150 LE... another second ticks by on the World Doom Clock.

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And boy is that clock speeding along...

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I installed City of Villains and can't see my mouse cursor. I've tried the solutions here, but none of them work... I tried them several times.

I have INVIDIA Geforce 6150 LE running.

I'm not sure if this will help, but I'm also running AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+ CPU.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

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Not to be rude, but you're probably doing something wrong.

Right click the shortcut for CoV and select Properties. Now copy and paste the contents of the Target box into a post so I can see what it says, just to make sure you got it right.

Oh, and what version video driver are you using?

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I'm having a problem that does not appear to be shown in the little guide. The game runs just fine, however the graphics are very strange in that light sources are blinding bright. Its so bad it gives me a headache after a while and I have to turn it off. I have a X800 Pro ATI video card with the most recent drivers for the 64 bit version of vista I have. Anyone come across this problem yet?

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If I'm not mistaken this is a known issue with the ATI drivers.

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IR is not a travel power. It's a movement buff, and it's an AoE buff, in the same category as AM, RA, and other such buffs. If they root you, there's a pretty good chance IR will, too.

If not, then hey, it's one of those aforementioned exceptions! Awesome.

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Y'know that's utterly ridiculous. So what is the distinction between a "movement buff" and a travel power? What is Super Jump [hint: a +jump movement buff]? What is Super Speed [hint: a +run movement buff]? How bout flight [hint: a +fly movement buff]?

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One's a click, the other is a toggle. One affects allies, the other affects yourself only.

Those are pretty substantial differences.

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So what about Group Fly then? Is it a "travel" power or merely a "movement buff"? And is your answer by virtue of it being a toggle, or being a self+ally buff?

I'm just trying to pin down exactly what your criteria is here. What constitutes in your mind a "travel" power vs. a "movement buff"?

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IR is not a travel power. It's a movement buff, and it's an AoE buff, in the same category as AM, RA, and other such buffs. If they root you, there's a pretty good chance IR will, too.

If not, then hey, it's one of those aforementioned exceptions! Awesome.

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Y'know that's utterly ridiculous. So what is the distinction between a "movement buff" and a travel power? What is Super Jump [hint: a +jump movement buff]? What is Super Speed [hint: a +run movement buff]? How bout flight [hint: a +fly movement buff]?

I just find it odd that Inertial Reduction has the same base +jump as Super Jump, yet some people insist it's not a travel power. If it were meant for combat situations, then why would the buff be so large? Wouldn't a buff akin to Combat Jumping or Hurdle be more appropriate?

And have you ever tried to manuever around a battle after someone used IR? It's almost impossible cause the slightest little hop sends you flying across the room. If anything it's a detriment to battle, not a help. There are very very few situations that IR becomes useful during missions, and it's usually because one or more people need to have some kind of vertical movement (like when baddies hide up in the rafters), but don't (for example, if they have Super Speed).

Unless of course it got an exception based upon the fact that it's not a combat power but a travel power, and therefore should be unrooted, much the same way the self+ally heals got an exception.

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Simplest way of thinking of it is "Any power which effects someone other than the caster in any negative way should root the caster during the cast animation."

Of course, that's a rule of thumb -- exceptions can exist.

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So.. Inertial Reduction... uh.. makes other people without Superjump feel inadequate?
Or is it some exception?
Or can we expect it to get some lovin'?


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Well, that's not what _Castle_ was referring to. He was speaking of powers that have a negative effect on others. IR doesn't fall into that category, but Twilight Grasp and Transfusion do.

Nonetheless, I'm with you on this one. IR should definitely and unquestionably be unrooted; included with the PbAoE self+ally+non-debuffing+non-foe-targeted heals as exceptions to the rule.

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Simplest way of thinking of it is "Any power which effects someone other than the caster in any negative way should root the caster during the cast animation."

Of course, that's a rule of thumb -- exceptions can exist.

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Well alrighty, thanks for the clarification

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Another post from the Animation Dept.
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Hey everyone. The changes to toggle power animations and the standardization of what does and doesn’t root you should now be up on live. I just wanted to clear up any confusion about some other changes to click powers that also happened at this time. The only intended changes to rooting were supposed to be for toggle powers at this time. We’re in the process of standardizing click powers to follow their own set of rules, but they’re not going to be slightly different than the rules for toggles.

Right now, our intent is to use these rules for click powers:
1. PBAOE Heals will not root
2. Self Buffs will not root
3. Self Heals will not root
4. Everything else will.

You may have noticed some click powers that used to root you and now don’t. These powers snuck their way into the wrong build (see what happens when we don’t root them), and most of these will change back in the next build that makes it to live. Consider this an official head’s up.

Again, sorry for the confusion this has caused. We’ll get it all sorted out shortly and we thank you for your patience and understanding.

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Minor comment from a bot/dark Mastermind. The AOE heal on the dark set still roots.

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I fixed the error that the animators made.

As the poster above me said and as I also did a few posts up, the debuff is the first effect, then the heal. It is an attack and should thus root you.

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Yes, but Twilight Grasp *IS* a PbAoE heal...

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You're too focused on "PBAoE heal", and missing the main point.

TG is an *attack*. It debuffs the enemy. Therefore, it roots - no matter that its secondary effect is a PBAoE heal.

Kam

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I'm not focused on anything. The previous poster said they "updated" the animator's post, adding PbAoE. I'm only pointing out that Twilight Grasp is a PbAoE heal, which doesn't solve the discrepancy.

And although it's highly likely that heals such as Transfusion and Twilight Grasp will indeed root you as they are foe-targeted, this has NOT been explicitly stated, and should not be assumed. Since other healing powers have been made exempt from the rule, you cannot say with 100% certainty that Transfusion and/or Twilight Grasp won't also be made exempt. That is all I've been trying to say.

If you take the animator's post as-is, Transfusion and TG would be exempt from rooting. We assume this is an oversight as we also assume that because they are foe-targeted this would take precedent over it being a heal, and would therefore root.

But this is purely an assumption. Past history and previous comments would lend a high level of credibility to it, but it is still nonetheless an unproven assumption.

All I have asked for is a clarification one way or another as I'd rather not assume anything.

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Another post from the Animation Dept.
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Hey everyone. The changes to toggle power animations and the standardization of what does and doesn’t root you should now be up on live. I just wanted to clear up any confusion about some other changes to click powers that also happened at this time. The only intended changes to rooting were supposed to be for toggle powers at this time. We’re in the process of standardizing click powers to follow their own set of rules, but they’re not going to be slightly different than the rules for toggles.

Right now, our intent is to use these rules for click powers:
1. PBAOE Heals will not root
2. Self Buffs will not root
3. Self Heals will not root
4. Everything else will.

You may have noticed some click powers that used to root you and now don’t. These powers snuck their way into the wrong build (see what happens when we don’t root them), and most of these will change back in the next build that makes it to live. Consider this an official head’s up.

Again, sorry for the confusion this has caused. We’ll get it all sorted out shortly and we thank you for your patience and understanding.

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Minor comment from a bot/dark Mastermind. The AOE heal on the dark set still roots.

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I fixed the error that the animators made.

As the poster above me said and as I also did a few posts up, the debuff is the first effect, then the heal. It is an attack and should thus root you.

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Yes, but Twilight Grasp *IS* a PbAoE heal...

Been playing quite a bit this weekend and I found something off with Practiced Brawler (click self buff). If you're in motion when the power goes off you don't get an animation, no problem.

But if you're standing still, such as in combat, with Practiced Brawler on auto (as most people I would think have it set) and the animation starts (cause you're not in motion at the time) you can't get another power to activate until the animation is done. Clicking on any other power will just queue it till PB's animation is over.

Anyone finding any other click self buffs doing this? I gotta think this is some kind of bug.

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I will give you five cookies if IR is unrooted

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and I shall match that offer. Anyone else want to add to Lighthouse's cookie bribe?


All rules aside, when you have a travel-related power like IR, it needs to not stop your movement for 2 seconds. It's counter-productive.
If that can't be done, then perhaps IR itself needs an overhaul. Maybe a slightly longer duration, or faster casting time (.3 seconds of rooting would maybe not get noticed), or something.

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Is IR a toggle or a click power?

Group Fly (a toggle) used to root, but it doesn't anymore (under the new toggle rules). If IR is a toggle, it shouldn't be rooted. If it is a click, then it should root.

If it is a click and you don't want it to root, then you're asking for another exception to the rule. Comparing it to Group Fly probably isn't going to help make the case since Group Fly is from a power pool which specializes in travel powers. Travel powers found in AT powersets, on the other hand, (like Siphon Speed or Speed Boost) certainly do root. If IR becomes unrooted, then so should they... which is unlikely to happen.

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IR is a click PbAoE self+ally super jump power. It is not foe targeted.

And yes, I'm asking for another exception to the rule, the same exception that applies to Healing/Radiant Aura and Warmth.

IR is a travel power. It grants nothing but +jump. Tho I have seen kins use it in battle, such use is dubious at best.

Honesly, I would rather see it changed to a self-only buff and made unrooted instead of a PbAoE buff that roots. I am sick and tired of falling out of the sky everytime it needs to be recast mid-leap.

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1. AOE Heals will not root


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Healing/Radiant Aura and Warmth are AoE heals, but so is Twilight Grasp and Transfusion. Will they be unrooted as well?


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I would have to assume since they are also enemy debuffs that they will still root.

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3. Self Heals will not root

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Dark Regeneration, Siphon Life, and Life Drain are all self heals. Will they be included for unrooting?


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All three of those powers deal damage to enemies so should still root you.

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Yes, but like I said, I'd rather not assume.

Oy... again, we get a statement of intent that's not entirely clear. Can we please get a little more clarification on this??

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1. AOE Heals will not root


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Healing/Radiant Aura and Warmth are AoE heals, but so is Twilight Grasp and Transfusion. Will they be unrooted as well?

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2. Self Buffs will not root

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Does this mean self-only (like Build Up, Aim, Rage, etc.) or will it include self+ally buffs (Recovery/Regen Aura, Inertial Reduction, Accelerate Metabolism, etc.)

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3. Self Heals will not root

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Dark Regeneration, Siphon Life, and Life Drain are all self heals. Will they be included for unrooting?

Sorry to be a PITA, but how can we know if something is working correctly if we don't know the exact clear and concise parameters. Yes, we can assume powers that affect enemies won't be unrooted, but I'd rather not assume anything at this point.

And can I put my 2 cents into having Inertial Reduction unrooted regardless? There is no good reason to have it root (especially considering it's not a combat power), and it only takes one time of falling out of the sky like a stone to know this.

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6) That there were sometimes up to 12 Winter Lords spawning at one time in King's Row, thus making it the most popular zone in winter 04-05.

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A bit incorrect. The KR Zone had that many separate Zone Map *locations* in which Winter Lords would spawn, but at no time during the famed Event did the KR Zone have anywhere near a dozen active WL spawns all occurring at the same time...on any CoH Live Server.

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And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this was before levels were removed from GMs, which made KR even more attractive for fighting Winter Lords as high level toons could easily solo them (since -- again, correct me if I'm wrong -- WLs wouldn't spawn in Atlas or Galaxy).

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I suppose I should have posted this here, but me and many people i play with have been haveing some major FPS drops in CoV while zoneing or leaveing missions while on teams of 4 or more people. I have a rather state of the Art PC. screen shots of task manager, dx logs and all that other stuff can be found here

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Happens in CoH too, and I posted about this in the beginning of this thread. Everything will be going fine, great FPS in mish, then when you leave the mish FPS gets cut in half for no reason whatsoever. The only way to restore it is to quit the game and restart.

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I assume it is a bug. Would be one hell of a nerf.

I have 3 taunts slotted and can stand in a group of grey mobs without them caring a whit.

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Yeah, I've tracked down the source of this bug and am working on a fix. It's fairly insidious, though, and is going to take a couple days of work to get it straightened out.

EDIT: FYI, it affects all auto-taunt effects from Tankers and Brutes with only one or two exceptions.

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Cool, thanks for getting and staying on top of this Castle! It's very much appreciated!

But I'm curious, what powers are the exception(s)? It would be good to know as it will have a definite impact on strategy, knowing whether the tank or brute is going to be able to hold aggro or not.

Thanks again!

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AI critters have always 'cut and run' if they consider themselves unable to win an encounter. The behavior you describe is consistent with that condition.

It is not impossible that the AI is flipping to 'run away' mode too easily for some reason. Reading Aett_Thorns post, it does not sound like this is the case, but if you can get some solid data to back it up it'd definitely be worth looking into.

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How about ya just do away with the whole "Cut and Run" thing period? Broken or not, it's annoying as hell. No one likes chasing them down.

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"Cut and run" has been around for awhile, but previously I've only seen this happen in the situations Castle indicated -- when "smarter" foes like LTs, bosses, AVs, etc. get to a low level of health (usually around 25%), or when foes realize their attempts to fight you are futile, either because you're a significantly higher level than they are (take a lvl 50 into a lowbie mish, hit one guy with brawl, and everyone runs for hills) or after repeated attempts at attacking you they don't connect (which can happen if you have high defense or very good debuffs).

Now I'm not entirely sure this exact behavior has been happening more since the patch, I honestly haven't noticed one way or the other.

But what I and others are speaking about is completely different, and seems to be related to taunt auras and/or gauntlet, where mobs that previously would have stuck to the tank like glue aren't anymore, and instead are running around all willy-nilly attacking anything and anyone they can find. It has nothing to due with their health, ability to hit us, or extreme level differences.

It's important to note that we're talking about 2 very different things in this thread, one of which has been around for awhile, and the other which has been only since the last patch (tho I can understand how one can easily been interpreted as the other).

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AI critters have always 'cut and run' if they consider themselves unable to win an encounter. The behavior you describe is consistent with that condition.

It is not impossible that the AI is flipping to 'run away' mode too easily for some reason. Reading Aett_Thorns post, it does not sound like this is the case, but if you can get some solid data to back it up it'd definitely be worth looking into.

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I know the behavior you're referring to, and this is not what's happening. And it's only started since the very last patch.

Tanks are having a much harder time holding aggro, as if their taunt auras aren't working correctly.

Here is a typical example: previous to the last patch an ice tank running chilling embrace can enter a room, make a quick pass past all the mobs so they're hit with CE, and the mobs will then all converge on the tank, despite taking damage from other members of the team.

But this is not happening now. Using the exact same technique results in many of the mobs not being drawn to the tank, even tho you can clearly see them affected by CE (you can see the cold/slow f/x). It's as if either the taunt effect in CE is gone or greatly reduced.

Before, the tank could hold aggro of the entire mob, but now only seems to keep 4 or 5 around him while the rest swarm all over the place attacking whomever they see. Something definitely has changed, and since it's easy to reproduce, you shouldn't have any trouble seeing what we're talking about -- just try tanking for a team for yourself and see how much more difficult it is to keep things under control.

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I didn't read the whole thread to this point and I'm sure these problems are being repeated. But I'll post anyway to give my specs:

Athlon 64 4000+, 1gig, ATI X1900XTX (catalyst 6.11)
low water, no bloom, no distance effects.
4xFSAA, 4xAF, forced in the driver control panel.

1. CoV Office mission, 30-40fps with no action, which I'd say is the usual performance I'd been seeing since before I8. On an 8-man team, the fps would drop into the single digits (as far down as 4.8 or so) intermittently during combat then return to the 30-40 range afterwards. That's new. Performance always dropped in big battles, but now it doesn't take much and the effect is even worse.

2. Leaving a door mission once last night in GV my fps was suddenly 15ish instead of the usual 25ish around GV. It stayed that way into the next door mission (another office map). With no activity it was sitting at 10-15fps. After logging out, restarting the client, and rejoining the team, it was back up to 30-40 range indoors.

3. Had one crash to desktop shortly after leaving a sewer door mission in GV. I was just standing there motionless typing a few things in team chat and it crashed. Prior to I8 the only crashes I would experience were when fighting the self-rezzing Awakened enemies.

I have been unable to affect the slowdown problem much by fiddling with settings. A few fps here or there, yes, but the drastic slowdown in combat still happens even if I turn particle physics off and particles down to 100. Also doesn't show much improvement turning the sound sliders all the way down.

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This mimics exactly what I saw last night. Leave a mission, FPS drops to 1/2 or 1/3 of what it should be and never comes back up till you quit the game compltely and reload. No amount of fiddling with settings makes any appreciable difference.

This is a completely new phenomenon, something I've never seen nor heard of prior to I8. Wonderful

Wow, I gotta admit that was pretty interesting indeed. Great job! Though it would have been much more informative had you done this prior to I8 being released. Without that data there's no way to make an accurate comparison.

I do wonder if you would get different results if you ran the game in fullscreen rather than windowed mode.

I also took great interest in seeing how much things changed depending upon the time of day. I think it exemplifies how much server load can affect the game's performance above and beyond our rigs and/or graphics settings.

Since the UI overlays are all 2D I wonder how much is gained or lost by enabling the optimization settings in the nVidia control panel. Odd as it may sound, I actually found I got faster performance and loading if I set my graphics on quality with all the optimizations off than I did on high performance and optimizations on. You might also want to set force mipmaps to none.

Well I certainly had an interesting experience tonight.

I was playing in faultline, on a team of varying size. My FPS was pretty much normal, ~60. I did maybe 2 missions, and when I came out of the second mission back into faultline my FPS was suddenly in the 20s. I asked around and everyone else on the team was experiencing the same problems.

And my FPS pretty much stayed this way for the rest of the night -- outdoors, indoors, it didn't matter. We wound up getting a TA troller and man oh man did his arrows put a serious hurt on framerates. We were getting all sorts of lag and had numerous deaths due to not being able to act while the baddies kept attacking us. So not cool.

After I had enough I left Faultline and headed to Talos to sell/buy/train. Even after I left Faultline my FPS didn't return to normal (it jumped up to about 25). I even logged off that toon and logged in another, and my FPS still stayed at 25.

At this point I completely quit the game and restarted, logging in my toon in Talos. Finally everything was back to normal.

Now what the hell could be going on in Faultline that would crap out my FPS so badly that nothing short of a restart would fix it?? This is just unacceptable. I can deal with a lot of lag/rubberbanding/performance issues and let it slide, but this was utterly unacceptable. Has to be, without a doubt, the worst experience I've had in CoX since I started playing.

I don't know what has to happen to get this straightened out, but it needs to be fast. Real fast.