Captain Fabulous

Do you have AA set to "use application settings" in the CCC? You could also try lowering water settings to either low or off and turning off bloom. Check shader settings too, no reason you should be on medium, go for high.

I'd be putting it on -1.

Nope.

One of the things you'll notice when you examine Primal Earth critters that exist over large level ranges, like Longbow, Arachnos, and CoT, is that the low-level versions are significantly easier to deal with than the higher ones. Longbow won't start tossing out -resistance grenades till the 40s. CoT Ruin Mages and Spectral Lord LTs don't show up till your 20s and Earth Thorn Casters your 30s. Most critters groups on Primal Earth are pretty tame in the 1-20 range (with a few notable exceptions like Wyvern and Vahziloks). The problem with the critters in Praetoria is they are built like they should be level 40+ by the nature of the extreme damage and multiple stacking buffs and debuffs.

I again had another few hours of play last night that was completely destroyed by repeated team wipes by Clockwork. To the point where people just kept quitting faster than I could invite them. There is no legitimate reason why it needs to be like this. It's not fun, it's not challenging, it's just frustrating. Cause you're pulling out every trick you know, using strategy, having a well-balanced team, and YOU'RE STILL GETTING WIPED. Sorry, but it's not my idea of fun. I'll repeat what I said before -- an average PUG should easily be able to run thru even-level content with a minimal amount of death. If they can't something is wrong.

I've played thru all 4 of the major arcs in Praetoria and I'm done. Sub expires soon and that'll be the end of it. Maybe if things get toned down in the future I'll come back, but I'm not gonna pay for something I don't enjoy playing, and honestly it's too little, too late, as the damage has already been done (first impressions and all that junk). And I certainly can't recommend the expansion to anyone I know. There was so much potential here that's completely marred by poor design choices that just don't make any sense. It also doesn't help that the devs have been completely silent on the issue (and pretty much every other issue that's come up). Not a great way to foster good relations with your playerbase. Meh, whatever, I'm done. I've expended way too much negative energy on this already. I and others have said what we needed to say, take it or leave it. After 3 months in beta with dozens of posts repeatedly saying the same things it's clear no one is listening (or caring, or bothering to explain why things are the way they are), so there's no point in beating the dead horse any longer.

I had the same Geforce card you did before my 4770 and never had any problems with high water. And I missed all the upside down and wacky reflection stuff on Radeons. It had been fixed by the time I switched.

Water effects have always been wonky with Radeons. For the longest time anything higher than low would break FSAA. That changed with Ultra Mode, but the performance hit was massive for me, so I'm still stuck on low.

Fair enough. But how do you think new players might feel, not having the knowledge we do, with Praetoria being their first exposure to the CoH universe?

Even though they don't feel overpowered to you, can you at least acknowledge that the current level of difficultly and subsequent frustration might be too much for new players and the less experienced who are likely to quit long before they've learned said tactics?

And most people would agree Demos suck and avoid them whenever possible. Considering there are double the number of BMs in any given spawn I'd say that's considerably more difficult. So the BMs are worse than their CoV counterparts, Praetoria is harder than CoV (which many feel is already harder than CoH), and the ambushes are too much, but nah, nothing wrong here.

Is this now the default response whenever someone claims that critters are overpowered? "Use tactics and pull", or "learn to play better"? Sorry, your attempt to belittle and diminish is an epic fail. We all know how to use tactics and pull, and are all vets with plenty of experience. And we still think they are overpowered. Imagine that.

I know for the trial you have to complete at least the tutorial in Praetoria before you're allowed to create a hero or villain.

I can kinda see the point here, as the new tutorial is much more comprehensive than the old ones. But how many new players are going to finish the tutorial, log off, and then make the character they really want to play on Primal Earth? I'm thinking not many.

I didn't mean to imply that I was an "expert" in this game. I'm not. I'm a casual player. But one with 6 years of experience. I don't farm. I don't have ub3rl33t purple toons. I don't solo +5 AVs. At this point I really don't want to feel like every mission is a high-end TF. And that's how it feels. I can't just throw together a PUG and go. I have to very carefully build a balanced team (which isn't too difficult now because there are so many people playing, but what happens when things settle down?), and even then there's no guarantee of success. I'm sorry, but this isn't fun for me. It's work. And I don't play games to work, I play to have fun.

So if one likes the challenge of high end TFs and that mentality of playing, then sure, they're not going to see any problems with Praetoria. But they must realize they are in the minority. Some of us (dare I say most of us) just like being able to run into a room, aggro everything up, and rickroll them. Cause y'know, that's all superheroey and FUN. Sitting at the door while someone plinks away at critters cause we're afraid to run in isn't fun. It's boring. Sitting at the door while someone plinks away at critters and 15 of them bumrush us while another 15 spawn behind us isn't fun either. It's aggravating. If you think that kind of thing is fun, then we're not even in the same book, let alone on the same page.

But there are different ways to die. Dying because you've done something stupid is a "learning experience". Cause now you know not to do it again, e.g. aggroing multiple mobs at once, staying out of melee range of bosses, or not taking on red-conned critters. But dying because the game is completely overpowering you is not a learning experience. It's an exercise in futility as 99% of the time there is nothing the player can do to avoid it or prevent it, e.g., spawning multiple ambushes at once, placing spawns so that they are spread out and overlapping, increasing critter aggro range, and giving them +def when I'm cruising with TOs.

Again, you're not dealing with n00bs in this thread. We all know how to pull, use geometry, rely on inspirations, take out the problem critters first, etc. And when we're dying over and over again because we're getting our ***** kicked DESPITE knowing all the tricks, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG.

After 6 years here I don't need to "learn how to play better". I play just fine, thanks. I think I (and other vets) have a pretty good handle on what's a genuine challenge versus poor/lazy design.

The problem with repeatedly dying thru no fault of your own is that it's not possible for new players to "learn how to play better". Because there is no way to do that. What they'll "learn" is that the game is retardedly difficult, frustrating, and by no means makes you feel like a superhero, and they'll just leave and be done with it.

Both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering have "use application settings" checked. Catalyst AI is standard, mipmaps are high quality, vsync is on, adaptive AA is unchecked, and triple buffering is checked.

It's not clear from the image but the ground is "wet" (the water on the ground is much more visible when you turn up the water quality). The distorted image is only when the character has a water effect in front of it.

The frequency in which the streakbreaker kicks in depends upon what your net chance to hit is. For example, if you have a 95% chance to hit the streakbreaker will only let you miss once, with the next hit being automatic. If your chance to hit is less than 95% then it won't kick in nearly as often.

Off the top of my head I don't remember if Resistance have +defense or not, but that would explain why you missed so many times in a row. Of course it doesn't help that there seems to be a much greater percentage of spawns at +1 than before, which doesn't help. Honestly it's an old archaic mechanic that really needs to be removed once and for all. If my mission is set for 0 then all the spawns should be even-level, period. It only winds up creating problems especially now that we have auto sidekicking.

I keep coming back to this same point with the Blast Masters: is it absolutely necessary to have 4-5 of them in each spawn (full team)? What exactly does this serve other than to frustrate people? Wouldn't 1 or 2 be sufficient?

I go thru some of these missions and really have to scratch my head trying to figure out who thought this or that was a good idea. Like "hey, let's have an ambush spawn appear behind the team just as they start to attack the first spawn! Yeah! That's gonna be great fun!"

Or, "hey lets give the Clockwork +def, +resistance, +tohit, -regen, -def, AoE DoTs, and chaining energy bolts that will kill your teammates! It'll be a riot to play!"

I might expect these things in level 41+ critters, but not at levels 1-20. And I seriously have to question how this increased difficulty is supposed to bring in new players when experienced ones are telling you (and have been for many months) that these mobs are too difficult and it's very frustrating. As an interesting aside, I was watching videos of the 2 new starting areas in the upcoming WoW expansion. And the commenter was saying how datamining showed that most people who quit WoW do so before they get to level 10. Because of this they've made the new starting areas CAKE -- like super high regeneration and energy recovery so it's absolutely impossible to die or run out of mana -- in order to make the lowbie experience as pleasant and non-frustrating as possible. Compare this to my experience yesterday of putting together a full team at level 2 and have 2 full team wipes ON THE VERY FIRST MISSION OUTSIDE THE TUTORIAL. I think that pretty much says it all.

And yes, Vahziloks suck. That's why no one does Vahzilok missions. At least on Primal Earth you have options and it's easy enough to avoid them and fight something else. In Praetoria you don't. You either do the mission given to you or you do nothing.

I've seen this twice. Once was the mission with Noble Savage as the other poster described, and the second time was a mission where you had to rescue Clockwork from cells.

Both times it was a nightmare cause the MM pets were attacking players instead of critters and the healer couldn't target us to heal.

Y'know what tho, I had an easier time soloing an Electric Controller than I did a KM Stalker. The troller took a lot longer to kill things, but was never in any danger of dying, even from ambushes. The stalker on the other hand was toast every time.

The other part about soloing is that you won't run into any of the bosses, which are nearly all horribly overpowered and will easily take you out in 2 hits (about 3 seconds). Join a duo or trio where bosses show up and then see how well your troller fares.

This. I couldn't have said it better myself. When teammates are dying in nearly every spawn, on a full well-rounded team of 8, something is wrong. Sure, we can pull, and we can use corners, we can keep running back from the hospital with a tray full of lucks, but after awhile it's just not fun. Especially when an ambush shows up behind us and we team wipe. Or a single pull aggros 3 groups that are right next to each other. There is no amount of strategy that will prevent this. It's programmed death each and every time. I've seen a single boss take out all 4 of my demons in less than 10 seconds. Really??? I'm sorry, that's retarded. I'd like to at least have a fighting chance to take out a boss. I mean seriously, are we now supposed to be weaker than common generic bosses? That makes NO sense.

Praetorian critters have abilities equivalent to level 41-50 critters in Primal Earth. For levels 1-20. This just isn't right. And let's not forget this game is supposed to be all about casual play. Log in, join a PUG, and have a good time. If the average, not particularly well-balanced PUG is getting slaughtered over and over again on base difficulty something is wrong. It's as simple as that.

Occasional death is fine. Constant repeated death isn't.

Yeah, those Blast Masters suck, there are WAY too many of them in a spawn. Clockwork seem vastly overpowered as well. They chew thru full teams like mad.

And why do the devs have so much hate for Stalkers? Nearly all the Praetorian critters have AoE DoT attacks, which pretty much negates any chance of going into Hide.

I'm pretty sure most if not all the old faces are in there, just with a different number now.

That was the first thing I checked.

Funny, I checked test and it's not there. I then checked beta and it WAS there. So I dunno what's up with that.

I also noticed the problem is only on Scrappers. Saw a Stalker tonight and they had the VFX.

And what exactly should I have searched for? "Integration"? Tried that and got a ton of hits. Sometimes searching isn't all that useful. And honestly, I'm not going to spend 20 minutes wresting with the search function when I can just ask the question again.