Creole Ned

That I can agree with. A lot of the UI in that game is...suspect. But that's a topic for another thread (and subforum)!

Then let me counter you by saying I didn't mind it at all. They're just names in a video game. Doesn't bother me one way or the other that someone else in the game might have chosen the same name for a character as me (unlikely to happen, anyway, since I favor oddball names to begin with).

Different strokes and all that. I'd say changing the way names works isn't in the cards for CoH, anyway, but the devs have shown they're not afraid to make pretty sweeping changes to the game more than five years out, so who knows?

There are already a lot of fallback options in the game to reduce the load from visual effects. I'm pretty sure any graphics update would allow you to use those to strike a balance between good framerate and decent visuals.

I'm very much in favor of a visual update. The game is looking a bit dated at this point and I think the designers could actually get a lot of bang for the buck without exacting a huge reduction in performance if they approach a visual refresh with equal regard for optimization and aesthetics.

In other words, have faith! (and hope they learned a thing or two from the Grandville experiment)

The design if the Praetorian Clockwork is pretty nice but not very Clockworky. Then again, it is Praetoria...

Even if someone did, I appreciate SlickRiptide linking the Twitter stuff here directly in the forum.

You could try PMing a community rep to see if they'd add it back. vBulletin supports custom titles, they just got stripped in the process of moving over from UBB (like the avatars).

I miss my The List Guy title, too. :sadface:

All graphics upgrades are purely visual.

Really, none of them are "needed" but I want the game to look better. It's almost always possible to offer lower settings for people who have machines that can't quite keep up.

Speaking of which, another update I just remembered -- an optimization pass in zones/areas where there are LOD issues and the game starts to chug, even on decent machines. That really shouldn't be happening (Grandville is a good example of this).

Any video card that can run CoH now with all of the visual effects enabled could handle whatever improvements they are likely to make to the game's graphics and fallback modes would probably be in place for those with lesser cards. I'd imagine the game would auto-detect your card and adjust the settings the first time you ran the spiffed-up version of the game. From that point, some options might be disabled or restricted depending on the memory or throughput on your video card but I doubt they'd add stuff that would require, for example, a Shader 3.0-enabled card. None of this would require a new game engine, though systems might have to be written or rewritten, which could amount to a similar level of work, depending on the goals.

My own wish list for Going Rogue in terms of graphics would be a thorough pass on all of the legacy costume textures, as some are pretty low-res by today's standards, and a similar pass for world and NPC textures. Basically, get rid of all the old fuzzy textures and replace them with crisp, sharp ones. I'd also like to see improved geometry for hands and feet. Add that "back" category, too, so we can wear jetpacks and such as regular costume pieces.

I'd also like to see some zone revamps where a lot of the generic buildings are replaced with a more varied set of "handcrafted" structures. Basically, make the zones look more like a living city instead of a fairly bland sea of building prefabs stamped all over the place.

Weather effects would be nice and despite what the Chicken Littles would tell you, they can be added without killing (or even affecting) framerate if done properly. They'd be cosmetic only and you'd have an option to turn them off, if desired.

My final big request for graphics (barring things I'm forgetting) would be an improved lighting model. The lighting in the game is very flat and door missions with special lighting tend to end up with things looking too bright or too dark. I'd like to see dynamic lighting added. If you throw a fireball down a darkened hallway, I want to see the walls reflecting the glow as it flies past. And, of course, an option to revert to the flat lighting model for people who couldn't run with the new lighting at what they felt would be an acceptable level of performance.

Yes, this is something that can be adjusted in the admin settings. Specifically under vBulletin Options/General Settings there is a section called Thread/Forum Read Marking Type. The pop-up help for the options detail them thusly:

This board is very likely (unless something is not working right) using option #1 and with a short timer. I visit vBulletin boards that use option #3 (where stuff remains marked as unread until you actually read it) and despite the warning of it being the most processor-intensive has never caused any slowdowns or other issues in my experience. It's the way I have the vBulletin forum I admin set-up.