DragonAlpha

Wait! So you can convert shards to threads and then to iXP? And then convert bosons into quarks to make components that make powers that are slotted into ...er slots that are unlocked by iXP that you get from...er...converting threads, or shards, or gluons into a Bose Einstein condensate?

Good job I've been playing this game for five years or this would be hopelessly confusing.

(rolls a new alt and hopes it will go away)

Paragon wiki is your friend:

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Unlockable_Costume_Parts

Nice discussion.

And I have a new fave poster to look out for now (*waves at Arcanaville*)!

Just a slightly different viewpoint from someone who's worked in a number of different subscriber-driven industries in his (way too long) career.

Do those numbers show a healthy or unhealthy business? Not sure. They only really show what has already happened and the last few quarters have been pretty pants for most businesess. One of the key indicators of the future health of a business is what they're doing TODAY that will make the future better than the past. It's one of the things that the clever investors look at when making their investment decisions.

So what can you do to ensure the long term viability of a subscription-led business? Stepping away from the costs side of the business which others have already commented on, what about the revenue side? There's broadly 3 things to try:
1. Keep your current subscribers as long as possible
2. Get your current subscribers to pay you more money
3. Get new subscribers.

Unsurprisingly these become steadily harder and more expensive to achieve from the first idea to the last.

From where I sit number 1 is addressed by the regular pulse of new issues and a bit by things like community initiatives and in-game events.

Number 2 is Super-Boosters and possibly even part of the rataionale behind CoV and GR. CoV was a while ago but Super Boosters are a relatively recent addition to the game. This looks like an increase in "Good Marketing" to me. Whether you like the term or not, "Good Marketing" = "Healthy Business".

Number 3 is often, in some businesses, too expensive to do through deliberate marketing. If it costs $300 to acquire a new customer and they usually only spend $200 before leaving you then that wasn't a great investment of $300. If, however, 1 & 2 together are driving up the average value of a subscriber beyond that $300 mark then all of a sudden advertising starts to become worth it.

It's obviously just my opinion but the marketing of this game looks like to me like it's grown up a lot in the last couple of years. If they can reach that tipping point where they can afford to go into the market and buy those new subscribers then the last few quarters' numbers will become irrelevant.

Holds don't seem to play the hold animation any more (and for a little while now). When my toons hold mobs now the mobs just "play" the "stunned" animation. Surprised this doesn't feature as a known issue as it used to work fine?

The Good vs Evil edition of the game came with the Pocket D VIP pass. More details at ParagonWiki: Clickypoodle

I just dc'ed from Union and can't get back in either

Oh thank the Lord, FFM's turned up!

Now I can stop pretending I know what I'm talking about here!

Well, glad to hear you've narrowed the problem down even if it's not completely certain yet. Is it too late to return the gfx card as faulty?

the easiest way is if it's written on the PSU - just open the case and take a look. Alternatively if it's a pre-built PC from a mainstream manufacturer then their web-site should be able to tell you what all the installed components are, including the PSU.

I'm afraid I'm kinda out of ideas here guys. A system which freezes up when you place a high graphical load on it but works the rest of the time is often a symptom of:

- insufficient power getting to the gfx card

- overheating as the gfx card puts our more heat under heavy load

- a faulty gfx card

I can't really go much futher. Maybe a trip to your local geek-shop might help?

Drag

To be honest that still sounds like a really low framerate for a card like that. Online benchmarks reckon that you can get something like 60fps from Far Cry on Max details for that card which means that CoH should run at max framerate on max details.

If you're absolutely sure that the card is installed correctly then in order I'd check the following:

Power supply rating: You may well be over-taxing the power supply (this happened to me on a PC when I upgraded the gfx card. As soon as it started to draw serious power the system became unstable. I upgraded the power supply and all problems went away).

Background processes: Have you got something that is chewing up CPU cycles? Again,this happened to me. One of the utilities that came with the motherboard would periodically start running and hog the CPU.

Overheating: If the system's been upgraded then you may be generating more heat than the case can handle.

Sorry I can't be more definitive. All I can say is that a spec like that should be performing much better than 20fps on a game like CoH.

That's terrible performance overall. Are you sure your gfx card has all the power leads attached that it should? Most of the modern ones require additional power leads over and above what the PCI slot can provide.

have you changed anything on the PC recently? The symptoms you describe could be insufficient power getting to the graphics card.

Thanks Slaz

always wary of updating Nvidia drivers as a lot of the newer ones have caused the framerate in CoH to drop for some reason. Glad to hear these are OK.

This is kinda the point where I tend to get a little bit nervous about advising people to continue to DIY.

You've got three main choices here:

1: Continue down the cautious DIY route. This will almost inevitably involve researching stuff on da interwebz about power connection pins, power supply capacities, PCI/PCI Express slot shapes, disabling on-board gfx processing etc. This will then allow you to buy a card in reasonable confidence that you can slot it into your PC, download the latest drivers and then play. (After downloading about four other versions of drivers and testing them just to see if they work better )

2: Take the plunge and buy a reasonably cheap PCI Express gfx card, plug it in and see what happens. Chances are it won't do any damage to your PC (unless you use chainmail gauntlets to install it while sitting in a bath of salt water in a lightning storm) but it might turn out that you don't have the correct power connectors on your power supply, or it's not powerful enough...

3. Find your local geek shop, take your PC to them and ask them to recommend and install a cheap graphics card upgrade.

Option 1's the cheapest in terms of cash but may take more time than you care to invest. Option 3's probably the most expensive but most guaranteed to succeed. Option 2 could turn out to be cheapest in terms of time and money...or a total waste of both if it doesn't work.

The choice (as they used to say on a popular Saturday night TV prog) is yours!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Without knowing what graphics card you're using it's hard to be completely definitive

[/ QUOTE ]

It's a nVidia GeForce 6100, apparently...

[/ QUOTE ]

A quick google tells me that this is actually on-board graphics processing rather than a separate graphics card. If your PC has the capability to take a graphics card then that's going to give you an immediate noticeable increase in quality. On-board graphics capabilities aren't really up to most gaming demands now I'm afraid.

If you can't run the game on max settings that the moment then increasing the amount of memory is unlikely to make any difference to that. Without knowing what graphics card you're using it's hard to be completely definitive but the two things that will have greatest impact on game performance are graphics card and processor speed. Also, unless you're using a 64bit operating system (like one of the Vista 64 bit variants) then you're highly unlikely to see any benefit at all from installing extra memory.

[ QUOTE ]
What's wrong with CoX? I like it and it rolls quite easily off the tongue. Better that than some other tasteless mouthful which makes you gag.

It's short, it's to the point and it penetrates fully into the meaning of the game world. Besides, it goes both ways.

[/ QUOTE ]

We know Khorak made you say that.

I can highly recommend Plasma's guides in Standoff's link. I managed to roll several totally borked Peacebringers and Warshades before reading them. Now I've got several variations that all play beautifully.

*Raises hand*

Hi, I'm Dom Diamond, Sulphide, Fire-Brand, Transparent Girl, Dolly Macabre...and a bunch of new toons I haven't met yet.

I'm not going anywhere yet. There's nowhere else I want to go!

[ QUOTE ]


You see, after this Summer 'Soon™' stops working.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.

If CO doesn't do that-indefinable-thing-that-keeps-me-playing-CoH™ at least as well as CoH does then it'll just be another Mass Effect for me. I'll play it, for a bit, and then come back.

If, however, it does do that-indefinable-thing-that-keeps-me-playing-CoH™ as well as CoH then we're into the war of escalation between the two games that some posters are predicting.

And referring back to the previous posts I'm becoming more and more convinced that that-indefinable-thing-that-keeps-me-playing-CoH™ is a combination of:

- rational things like the costume creator, combat pace, powerset variation

- irrational things like the way playing the game makes me feel and how attached I am to some of my toons. (Your "wuv" thingy Mumsie).

It's going to be very very interesting to see if CO can deliver on the irrational elements...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And if anyone could enlighten me what that core reason actually is I'd be very grateful!

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the three very brilliant parts of CoH that keeps people's attention are the costume generator, the huge amount of ATs and powersets to play around with and, finally, the pacing of the fights which is fast and action-filled without being uncontrollable.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think there is a lot of truth to this.

I went and played Lord of the Rings Online and, as much as I enjoyed it (and it beats CoH in so many ways), the combat seemed dull and boring compared the sparkly, spectacular slugfests City of Heroes offers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thirded!

If I'm honest, I've probably had more "extrafun" from things like the new costumes, powerset proliferation and costume change emotes than the MA.

(This may be a bit disheartening to the devs who slogged their bits off getting it to work! Sorry guys).

And, of-course:

[ QUOTE ]
I'll throw in a suggestion; Its a remote possibility I know... but it could be possible that after being together for the best part of five years that we errr...... 'wuv each other to bits'?


[/ QUOTE ]

Mumsie is wise!

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think I'm alone in this (but it's my opinion, so feel free to correct me) but I can't help feeling that the MA has left a lot of people feeling a bit "meh" about the game.



[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
I could be jaded. I probably am a little - hell I've played this game almost daily for three years and maybe the magic's beginning to fade just a little. But that doesn't mean that I hate it - not by a long shot. In fact the reverse is true - but I am concerned.



[/ QUOTE ]

I'm in a similar position but drawing slightly different conclusions.

I've been playing the game for nearly 3 and a half years and since I started playing I haven't played anything else except Mass Effect and Dead Space once each. No really, nothing else.

Oh I've tried to play other games (both PC and Wii) but they hold my attention for about 20 minutes then get switched off and I go back to CoH.

This leaves me in a slightly conflicted position:

Even today, no other game holds my interest like CoH

But that means I'm looking to CoH to satisfy all my gaming needs. (I realise that "needs" might be a bit strong when talking about a computer game but bare with me )

So, while I'm currently a bit "meh" about the MA (for all the reasons that Judgement Dave has so eloquently put forward in another thread) I'm still exclusively playing CoH .

What I guess I'm saying here is that like everyone I have high expectation of new shiny things (I have an ADD to feed like lots of other people you know!). The higher the expectations, the less chance the new shinies have of satisfying them. But having said all that they're really not the core reason that this game continues to be my gaming habit of choice.

And if anyone could enlighten me what that core reason actually is I'd be very grateful!

And hopefully to put your mind at rest a bit I've been running a Vista 64bit/Nvidia 9800 GTX+ combo for a while now and it works perfectly (even in SLi mode, which it's not supposed to do apparently!).

If you get any probs that the Microsoft Hotfix doesn't...err...Hotfix then feel free to PM me and I'll try and help.