FracturedOrb

Started getting this problem earlier but I was able to skip around it. Now with the new patch I'm having problems getting into the game.

When I launch the game the NCsoft patcher fails to find the patch site several times then quits. Eventually I can get it to get to the patch server (after several fails) and it's downloading the patch extremely slow. Not sure exactly what the problem is, but this is new to me.

any suggestions?

Not sure if t his has been mentioned but how about some "windows?" The idea being that there woudl be a see through wall that could have several decorative paramaters to make it either a building window, house window, space station window, etc... Then outside the window could be a wall several feet away that simulates the outdoors? Or maby some kind of standard outdoor panoramas that look like an outdoor view of COH/COV.

For example, if your base is a space station, then the outside could be a giant starfield. If it's suposed to be in Steel canyon then the outside would look like a panoramic view of SC wrapped around your base. If it's an apartment building or house then the appropriate outdoor environment could be used.

Right now the bases feel clausterphobic and isolated. something like this could make them feel more in a world, instead of 3,000 feet underground.

I'm runnign an ATI 9600 with 256 megs of ram (not sure of anything on the hardware outside of that).

PC has 1 gig of ram, Windows 2000 and an ATI 1500+ processor. ASUS motherboard, but I'm nto sure which one.

Now I know I'm not running the best rig but this was the system I started playing the game on and it seems like every few months the game tends to run worse and worse, starting witht he big graphics upgrade they did a long time ago.

I've recently went as far as turning the advance direct3d and opengl settigns in my display adaprter advanced tab to high performance (meaning the game looks like utter crap now) and the game still doesn't run what I woudl call, good. It's decent but I'd really like to get back to teh game looking good and runnign good.

Now outside of upgrading my PC (which I'm trying to avoid as I have other RL expenses that are more important) are there any other thigns I can do to make the game look/run better?

I followed Bills guide and I have everything in the opeions meny cranked all teh way down (except for player textures as I have that on high because I like peopel to look good at the very least).

Are there some slash commands that help? Or is there any kind of settings I can change in my device driver setup?

The ability to create a "super suit" that peopel could acces as a 5th option for costumes that woudl be uniform across the SG.

EVE Online had this feature that let peopel create web sites in a specific format and you coudl view them in game. Something like this but using a system of BBS software could be nice as it woudl allow the game to have it's own in game message system but wouldn't put the strain on the servers to do so. Plus it woudl be optional.

MEETING PLACES! The "club" is a nice start but it woudl be better if there were more, a LOT more meeting palces in teh game. These coudl be used by SG's as a hang out or jsut as a meeting place. Kind of annoying to have to hold SG meetings out in the street. Overall the game could use some more common non instanced indoor zones.

How about setting up PVP so that it's not a straight numbers game wher ehigher level characters do more damage to lower level players, but instead all PVP powers are percentage based.

So that someone thta is L20 with his main punch 6 slotted with DO's would do the same damage as a L50 character who had the same puch 6 slotted with DO's (granted a higher level player would have SO's and therefore do more damage but the lowbie could at least compete).

Actually I have noticed on teh TV trial the problem is that your not getting 1 pull worth of villans, your getting about 3. They seem to come on a timered basis and the timer is still using the old timer wher eit wasn't too bad to destroy a pull befor ehte next one jumped down on you. However now you get one pull and while your still fighting it the next comes before your done and then by the time the 3rd shows up your overwhelmed. However if each of those "pulls" only had 1 boss in them they woudl be more manageable. It's that each one has like 3+ and by the end of that set of 3 you've killed 2-3 bosses but have like 6-10 left to go.

Or at least that has been my experience and observation of it.

[ QUOTE ]
Because of your feedback, I'll have someone on our team look at the number of bosses in missions from levels 1 to 50. I don't mind later missions perhaps including a greater % than earlier missions (if only because players are more powerful and have made friends with others), but your posts want me to doublecheck the exact numbers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you... Specifically look at things like room size as relates to number of villans and bosses. Small offices it's easy to contain villans that run, move, or blasters that have a tendancy to knock foes around. However in places like Trials or some of the larger open tech maps it's easy to have 3 spawns of villans be 1 pull.

Sticking bosses in missions to encourage teaming is one thign. Steping into the reactors control room for the TV trial and seeing (and I do not kid) 15+ bosses is a complete waste of time. more so all adding multiple bosses that are very difficult is really going to do is start focing people to stealth past the bosses that aren't necessary to the goal becasue they are a total waste of time.

Solo bosses aren't a problem, even if there are multiples in the mission. It's when they are clustered up or you are getting a boss every pull that things start to really stink.

We understand you want bosses to stick around more, this means you want them to be special or at least be feared. How then are they special when you have 15 of them in a room? Or even 10 of them in the same indoor mission? or 11 waves of them 5 deep? They stop being special and stop being something that people even like for the XP and start becoming a roadblock.

I used to liek bosses because it was wher eyou really got a white knuckeles fight with some AT's. Now instead of that feeling you have bosses that outright kill the softer AT's and waste a tanks time taking 5 minutes to kill one.

Another game a while back had problems with peopel reaching the end game too quickly, that was Dark Age of Camelot. However at the end of the road to L50 there you would go out and do massive player vs player wars so there was a reason to get to 50 and then a reason to stay once you were at 50. Slowing down progression to get to 50 is very EQ like and no one likes it and it's why EQ has such a bad name amoung a lot of players that left it.

As I have said in many other threads, this game is not everquest, it's not DAoC it's a super hero game. Super heros shouldn't be brought down by tommy the noob thug with a knife, or hsi brother or his dad. Your hero shoudl be brought down by teh equivalent of the green goblin. Villans weren't always Magneto but that's what I3 turned them into

So if bosses are supposed to be magneto and lut's are supposed to be electro than what are AV's? Thanos? More importantly how the heck does this "game world" function when there are like 12x's more magnetos than there are cyclopses or wolverenes?

The numbers in this game do not and honestly never have matched up. If you want the game to slow you down a bit then jsut amke all the individual fights take longer or make the XP youg et from them small but don't make them harder to force people to group. All that does is seriously limit the peopel that have (and will continue) to leave games that overly stress group play.

Why do peopel liek to solo as opposed to group? It takes a long time to get a group togeather and get them all on the same page. we're looking at like 30 min on a good day and like an hour and a half on a bad day. Who the heck wants to spend half of your gaming time doing nothing but social management?

Get a SG you say? Get a solid group of friends who play you say? Well a lot of people had that but a lot of people lost those people to other games or because of issues within this game. making this game somehow try to force the rest of us to band togeather when there are other games out there that might give you other options is a bit risky.

Thankfully my tank can still solo, however the rest of my characters are a different story.

Well actually no you could have played for the extra week because yoru character would not have these newer versions of the pwoers which may or may not be good for you.

Anyhow on teh top of your moneys worth. CoH has an excellt combat system, or at least I think so. It has an excellent system of getting you in and out of action very quickly. However when you start to compare it to other games in terms of content your not quite getting the same. Other games have other systems in them besides the combat grind that players can do to take their mind off the grind for a while and curently CoH does not.

The super secret out of combat concept will hopefully fix that but it's not here yet so you really can't include that in an equation setup to see if your getting the most for your money.

Overall the only real major complaint I have ever had about this game and still have is that it's absolutly nothing like a super hero comic book or even a super hero cartoon. The crime rate in teh city is absurd (you can't walk 10 feet without hitting some kind of crime), the poliece are no better than the citizens as far as stopping anything or even trying, there are no arch villans that really do anything, and I can't recall a single issue of spiderman wher ehe fought the same nameless thugs for 4 hours straight.

Anyhow that's likely never gonna change only because it woudl require a very large concept chenge int he game for it to happen and I don't see that as something the designers really want to try.

Well last night I logged on and called one of my contacts. He had 2-3 sentences to describe the mission and all he told me was get over to so and so and save those crey scientists from the new 5ht column villans (sorry I forgot their name as I just got back to the game). So I get into the mission and the heading as I enter the building says find 4 hostages find the data, stop the leader and his men.

Ok the description I was given from the contact said nothing about retreving data (finding glowies) or a boss.

I have noticed that the descriptions you have while in a mission instance usually tell you exactly what needs to be done.

Free hostages - Defeat the villans that are threatening each hostage.
Find X - Locate a glowie
Defeat Boss - Defeate a boss
Defeat the boss and his men - Defeat the boss and every villan in his indoor piece on the map
Defeat all villans (yes this includes invisible ones and ones outside the walls you can't actually reach)

Anyhow this is USUALLY how these read. Sometimes you get a few that are obscure that will say stop a raid and I still have yet to know what that means as sometimes I get it after clearing a mission jugsaw pice and other times I don't get it till I clear the whole map.

Either way the statement that was given saying that the mission text given to you by your contact tells you everything about the mission is completely false. Outside of impotant missions most others what the contact says can be completely invalidated by the actual mission goals.

I actually don't really mind this, only time I get frustrated was during all my L28-30 Devoured Earth missions wher ethe contact would say one thing, the mission goals said something else but in reality every mission was a defeat all villans mission.

However I do like that it seems my ability to solo has not changed much and that the feared inv changes really just made tanking more involved than: turn on powers aquire target hit autopunch watch tv and jsut change targets as needed. I actually have to pace myself and be sure to take out the range attackers 1st. Now weither or not the new fear of all villans have range attacks post 40 will affect me, I have no idea.

I jsut came back so I will have to see if they have updated any missions but a LOT of missions that I remember doing woudl tell you to stop a raid or disarm the bombs or something like that and woudl always end up with boss on Devoured earth missions.