CoyoteShaman
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Well, all but one. My death was due to me accidentally pulling agro before the team was ready. An entire squad of lost pulling alpha on my poe widdle hed... At least I was the only person to die from it...Originally Posted by Postagulous
Well, we chewed up Midnighters. We only had three deaths all attributed to separation from the group. Mine was because I went afk and an ambush spawned on the other side of my safe location.
Lady Jane didn't die, though it made no difference. And now we can all get into the Midnighters club, woot.
No screenshot, I wasn't thinking about it.
Scarlet Fever Amy -
Quote:From 12 to 16 in the what, 3 hours we teamed? Very fun.Originally Posted by Postagulous
Nah, 8 is great. Twelve is better, but no biggie. And if you level, or did level as we ran last night, running to the trainer at 12 is totally acceptable.
I was Kaylee Foxtrot btw.
I'm leaving my toon for just this team. She'll not be played anywhere else. It'd feel... anti-climatic, I think.
Oh, I was playing Scarlet Fever Amy. Yeah, the one that died. I'm so glad my mistakes never got anyone else killed.
See you all next Monday. -
Seriously looking forward to my first FRAD Monday! My brand-spankin'-new Frad (no spanking necessary) is only level 12, though. Is that high enough or should I try to pump her up a bit before 8?
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Quote:I think you're confusing "simple" with "easy".Originally Posted by Diggis
This is a game... none of it's important. Make it too simple... no incentive to play.
For new players, especially players that are new to MMOs or worse computer games in general, some things we longer-term players take for granted.
CoH was my first MMO. The only other RP computer game I'd ever played was NeverWinter Nights. The learning curve of how to actually play the game was pretty simple, but the details of some things were rather daunting. I'm sure the same is very true of many people who come into this game with no experience at all.
I agree that simplication of the details, as opposed to making the game easier, is a very good idea. The market is one of those things people with no experience in MMOs, RPGs or computer games in general shouldn't be expected to explore until after they get more comfortable with the gestaldt.
That being said, I can't say removing levels from enhancements is the way to go. I don't think it would remotely affect the inf sink at the higher levels and would decrease it at the lower levels, therefore making a slight increase in inflation. Instead, I think we should consider how to make a significant impact on the higher level inf amounts and then look at simplification for newer players. Alternatively, and more likely, we should look at non-influence-affecting ways to simplify the transition between noob and vet.
I have no answers for how to do that. -
Looks like I have my next alt idea. I hope to see you guys on Monday.
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Having to agree with the idea that this would help my buffers, especially my reactive buffers like those with Clear Mind style powers. I see no bad here.
/signed -
Quote:Before I started playing this game I was buying new DVDs, paying for cable TV, and going to movies and bars. At the end of my free trial I did the math you're talking about. This game winds up saving me about $200/mo, even though I pay every month instead of doing the longer-term subscriptions which would save me even more money (personal reasons). This is one of the best entertainment decisions I've ever made.Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
Running through the math, this game is the cheapest form of entertainment out there. It's cheaper by far than a 2-hour movie, and you can play for more than two hours.
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Quote:No offense meant, but that's because you haven't been swarmed by spammers trying to sell you worthless crap, especially RMTers. I'm damn glad free acounts can't send tells or broadcast.Originally Posted by The Lone Hero
Personally, I believe the whole no-broadcast and no-tell thing makes it hard to fully experience the game and I believe it should be removed all together.
If there was a way to tell the difference between free accounts held by people who just want to try out the game and free accounts held by people who want to spam their wares, I'd be all for this. There is no way to do so, however, so I can't see how it would be benficial to allow fools to annoy long-term customers. One has to keep in mind that it's the long-term customers from whom any subscription service makes its real money. New people are great, but only because there's the potential that they might become a long-term customer. This is true in any business. Annoying your loyal customers, or allowing others to annoy them, is only going to make you lose them. Never a good business model. -
Quote:And when you're backing up you are doing so at a greatly reduced speed. In this case I'm refering to you, not your characters. This is because humans have knees that bend in one certain direction and it makes running at any speed backwards very dangerous and next to impossible. If you don't believe that, please give it a try and video tape it. Then post the vid to YouTube. I wanna watch. It'll be funny.Originally Posted by Decorum
When I'm backing up, I'm backing up on purpose, eyes front for a reason.. Turning around in those situations is contraindicated. If I want to turn around, I'm fully capable of doing so on my own.
The same goes for characters in the game. It looks like crap. Now if they slowed way down to a more reasonable speed it would make much more sense. I would go for that, but I know most people would then complain about it as well.
Then again, I really don't care much either way. I just wanted to try to taunt you into making a video of you trying to run at a sprint backwards. The mental image I get of cracks me up.
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As Aerofiel so precisely stated, for many it's got nothing to do with performance. I notice no lag except in the most extreme situations because I've spent way more money than I ever should have on this blasted game to which I'm so very addicted.
Instead, for many of us, it has to do with immersion or some other idiosyncracy of our personal preference that means we would like to be able to turn off effect X. My personal pet peeve is the floaty numbers. I don't mind the insp indicators at all. They do nothing to my immersion. Having a bunch of numbers and words float around the damn screen, on the other hand, draws my eyes and my attention to those things. I'm very language oriented and can't tune words and numbers out as well as perhaps some other people can. I know I'm not the only person with this issue. I can already turn off the word bubbles if I want. I would like to be able to turn off the (what I consider to be ridiculous) floating numbers and words.
Just sayin'. More options = good. -
Quote:Did I misspeak and say I was noticing a slowdown? I don't recall that but I might have. I said it's a lot of crap going on (mostly in data transfer but additionally in presentation, the latter of which you may or may not have debunked; I wouldn't know because my area of expertise is data transfer and not graphics and I don't know what your area of expertise is) and that it interferes with my immersion. It's the latter which makes me call for it to be able to be toggled off.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
(Preface: In this post, I am not referring to particle effects. While some things I will say can relate to particle effects, the sheer mass quantities of the particles puts them in another category of speed analysis.)
There's really two kinds of 2D elements: user interface, and billboarded textured quads. (Or in some cases, textured quads without billboarding.)
UI is (generally) rendered on top of the 3D scene, and requires a change in several parameters on your graphics card. In computing terms, this is a slow operation, but a human still wouldn't be able to notice it unless it's happening a hundred time a second or more, or if your graphics card really sucks.
Textured quads are simple quadrilaterals with an image on them; they're generally billboarded as well, which means that the quad is always facing your screen. Unlike UI, this doesn't require changing the graphics card's presentation parameters. In fact, it's just like drawing a 3D model which only has 4 vertices/2 polygons. Generally, that's exactly what it is.
Neither UI nor textured quads add enough to your computer's workload to make any difference. The ONLY way you'd notice the removal of the 2D elements would be if you were running a debug version of the program and measuring the CPU timing with and without the 2D rendering. -- And this is speaking from experience.
Your slowdown is not being caused by the existence of the 2D elements in the game, unless:- The 2D elements are causing a memory leak, in which case everyone else would have noticed such a glaring problem, and removing them from rendering wouldn't help anyway.
- Your graphics card's pixel shader is broken*, in which case it's a problem with your computer.
- The dev team switches between rendering modes repeatedly during a single frame, in which case everyone else would have noticed such a glaring problem.
- Your graphics card sucks.
* It is possible to write pixel shader code which slows things down substantially on a perfectly fine GPU, but I can't think of any effects in the game which would require a pixel shader that complex.
Now, #1 and #3 are unlikely, or else everyone in the game would be experiencing severe problems. I know you don't want #2 or #4 to be true, and for all I know, they aren't. It is safe to assume that any speed problems you have are not related to any 2D elements in the game. That leaves 3D elements and networking, both of which are very good at slowing things down. If you want to make suggestions to help seed up your computer without upgrading it, I suggest you concentrate there.
tl,dr: Even removing every single 2D element in the entire game won't speed up your game enough for you to notice the difference. -
Quote:I obviously don't know how you mean this but I certainly feel the same way on a letter-of-the-law level. The Arachnos Overlord You Suck You Little Wimp Go Off And Die Or Beg For Your Life attitude is why I play more in the marginally better blue-side.Originally Posted by Decorum
I'd have to vote "no", but then, I consider how the Patron Pools are set up (and almost all of CoV, really) as a mistake in the first place, so I have a little bias.
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Quote:You've just contradicted yourself, or you don't understand what I said. That information is being sent and doesn't need to be. Unless you think the client is handling the subtraction of enemy hit points based on damage sent from the server, which it isn't, the numbers are being sent distinctly. That's why if you select an enemy and hover over their health bar in the target window you'll see a current health number rounded to the nearest 5 even though actual damage is done in .01 increments. The only thing that needs to be sent from the server is current health status which is sent completely separate from those detailed numbers which wind up being added to the display.Originally Posted by Neo Shadowdream
Actually no, it requires nothing extra from the server. Your client displays those numbers based on what the server is already sending it for Hits/Misses/Heals.... Look at your combat tab, Everything you do is sent there, the client then rounds that up/down, and floats it over your, and others heads.
That said, I'm all for more options.
Further, incorporating 2d displays in a 3d rendered image does require additional resources. That's slight but the resources needed to make them all float and scale appropriately and decide which numbers should be shown and which shouldn't based on which numbers are already floating there (ever notice how sometimes you'll see "DEFLECTED!" and sometimes you won't, even when it's happening? or how sometimes you'll see one set of floating numbers from one set of attacks but a different set that should be there aren't?) do have an impact that could be reduced by just giving us the option of saying we don't want/need them. (hurray for run-on sentences!!!)
That said, I acknowledge and appreciate that you're agreeing with us that more options are a good thing. -
/signed
The one in particular I've asked for is actually one I think I recall being available back in I3 when I started, before the options menu went to a windowed version. Unless I'm horribly misremembering, we used to be able to turn off the floating numbers such as damage/healing/etc. done and all those other things that come up over a toon's head during activities. Not only does that require a bit of incorporation into the visual display but it also involves quite a bit of data transfer from the servers and, for me, it is very disruptive to my immersion.
I would love to have a greater degree of control over what's being displayed and what's not. -
This is one of the best suggestions I've read. I like everything you said up there and specifically in the way you've described them. There's one thing I infered from your post (I'm not sure you implied it but I think you did) but that wasn't stated explicitly so I'm going to explain that here:
Just as chats can be saved to file, this SB could also be saved to a file. The file should be nearly human readable, maybe in XML format or some such, so that it can be looked at outside of game as well as in game.
This would make it very easy for people to go back and have actual mementos of excellent teams from long ago. For those of us with major cases of alt-aholism this would be a massive boon. It would allow us to remember which people we've teamed with and give us mnemonic queues to help our recal of which ones we liked and which ones we didn't. I have many a friend, especially global friends, that I haven't teamed with in ages and just can't remember why they're on my list. Making notes on players is fine as far as it goes but putting in enough detail to actually trigger memory can take quite a while such that it's not feasible when on an active team.
So very much super-/signed -
TLDR seriously doesn't apply... What's a good acronym for "Holy EyeLock, Batman, your icon-ani-gif is terrifying me!!!"
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Interesting. I can certainly see DM with the +End but wouldn't FM/SR be difficult to deal with for endurance reasons?
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I see no reason to not be bribing contacts on either side. They all seem to have hidden agendas and be a little fishy to me. It's not like any of them are begging for help from the awesome hero in their midst.
::sigh:: I'll shut up now. I'm a broken record on that. -
Is that too much to ask for? I imagine it is. In case it's not, what primary/secondary combo would you recommend? Any advice on build theory (as opposed to details)?
Also, what would you consider to be "fast leveling"? -
O dear lords of Kobol. Can they please do something to the forums to make it auto-check for this question and just make it impossible to post? Please? Or something?
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Multi-/signed.
I especially like the idea of being able to see market info and friends. -
Quote:That's an interesting thought. I think I like it.Originally Posted by Charcoal_EU
Another way to do it would be to make the cycle long, but also not a divider (?, not sure on what its called in English) of the standard 24 hour day. For example 7 hours. So if a person plays each day around 20:00 to 23:00 then on one day his session will be during nighttime on next day daytime and then perhaps the sun will rise (or set) during the play session and so on.
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Link! As in "The Legend of Zelda: Occarina of Time". Two hour days.
I agree whole-heartedly that the current 1/2 is way too short now that the shadows are so realistic, and I agree with the other posters that a full day would be out of the question.
I think two hours would give people plenty of time to do the night things they want to do while also making the shadows move at a nearly unnoticible rate. -
For the most part I do agree with the basic theme, but there's one thing I don't recall being considered in this thread...
How would one enter the instance? Train? Random door?
In any case, it seems like it would detract from the concept of the mission. Maybe it's just me. I hate the train part of train missions no matter how cool the mission is because it seems incredibly stupid to me. -
Unsurprisingly I find myself agreeing with Bill again.
In fact, I'd go further to say that "Origin" needs to be completely removed from the game. Villain side all it does is determine which origin power you start with and which of the BlackWand/Nemisis staff powers gives you a bonus. Hero side it determines your starting contact/arc. From there, it means essentially nothing. All of those things should be unrelated to some "Origin" you choose anyway. The "origin" power should be selected on character creation as should the starting contact blue-side, just as it is now red-side. The first of the vet reward powers you pick should give you the damange bonus regardless of which one it is.
"Origin" should be completely story-line. One should be able to explain their power-source anyway they want independent of starting contact or origin power. If I want a spell-slinging wizard (magic) who starts off with throwing knives (natural) fighting the council (tech), I should be able to do that. There's really no reason, given the current systems in place, why it shouldn't be possible. Note that I said "possible" and not "easy". I have no idea how intertwined the origin assignment is with how the game sets those things in code and I don't care. All the parts already exist.
Red-side toons already select their starting contact.
Vets rewards already allow the player to choose between dynamic lists of powers.
There is no reason for "Origin" to be something that is set in stone. It serves no purpose other than for the character's story line and that should be entirely up to the player.
I'll get down off my soapbox now. This is just a peeve of mine I've kept as a pet since before I even started playing the game. When the guy who first introduced me to it showed me the character creator (still my favorite part of the game) my first question was "what does origin do for you?" When I got my answer my response was "that's stupid."