Great_Scott

Thanks for the help! That multiple drive thing was the problem - Windows 7 installed itself to completely the wrong drive (D: in this case).

Redswitchblade, that was the issue, and explains a lot of other strange things I was running into.

I'm going to re-install Windows now (disconnecting the non-system drives this time). Now that I know what to look for I shouldn't be getting that problem again.

Hello all, hopefully someone has run into this before.

I've installed a new copy of Windows on my PC, resulting in all my settings being wiped.

So, as usual, I started the cohupdater.exe file as if I was reinstalling, pointed it to a just-created folder (in this case, C:\Games\City of Heroes) and then closed the program (as normal).

I then copied the entire game to this folder, and restarted Cohupdater.exe

Ordinarily, it would hiccup and then find that all the game files were in their proper places and patch as normal.

Today, it simply keeps loading the game, all 3GB of it, completely ignoring that the folder is already populated.

Why did this change, and how do I fix it? I'd really prefer to not spend the next 12 hours re-downloading the Piggs I already have...

Thanks!

EDIT: I've checked for the old "folder rename" error in the user registry, and it's properly pointed at C:\Games\City of Heroes. I thought that possibly it wasn't finding the files because it was looking in the wrong place - no such luck.

I'm sorry to say that the discussion went that way for you, _Castle_.

Ultimately, though, I don't agree with you on that one.

I think that set-exclusivity is a great idea if it's adhered to... but right out of the gate so many sets were shared (Controller Secondaries come to mind) that CoX was never that game.

Maybe in COH2 there will be enough time/resources to make every power-set available to every "class" unique?

At this late point, trying to preserve was is left of set-uniqueness only serves to reduce Character options.

Hmmm... you should try the Ice and Elec secondaries. They are quite nice!

I hope this helps,
-> Scott.

I understand concerns about AT-homogenization, but I don't agree.

All of the other content in CoV (missions, story, contacts, zones, task forces) is distinct from CoH - having different classes as differentiation is redundant.

Even if AT-homogenization is too much for some, both games could use some of each other's power-sets.

For one example among many, Cold Domination and Thermal would be perfect for Controllers that don't feel that they have unique Secondary sets.

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In my opinion (for as little as it's worth)...
The only TRUE way to 'balance' PvP is to open BOTH SETS OF Archetypes to each side and open up power sets to both sides.

That way,
* A Blaster Hero Side can duke it out with a Destroyer Villain Side.
* A Defender Hero Side can duke it out with a Defiler Villain Side.
* A Corrupter Villain Side can duke it out with a Guardian Hero Side.
* A Brute Villain Side can duke it out with a Crusader Hero Side.
* A Tanker Hero Side can duke it out with a Monolith Villain Side.
* A Dominator Villain Side can duke it out with an Overlord Hero Side.
* A Scrapper Hero Side can duke it out with a Marauder Villain Side.
* A Stalker Villain Side can duke it out with a Vigilante Hero Side.
* A Controller Hero Side can duke it out with a Minister Villain Side.
* A Mastermind Villain Side can duke it out with a Commander Hero Side.

Open Peacebringers & Warshades to Villain side.

Keep things 'even.' Keep things 'balanced.' And far less complicated than how things are balanced---or attempted to be balanced---currently.

In addition, you gain greater variability across all character types. Certainly, there will have to be changes, alterations, corrections and tweaks to specific powersets per character type. But...if I want to take a blaster or destroyer into a PvP setting to square off against its opposite, I know at the very least that those two character types are mirror-image based off one another. The difference comes into play only with (A) the powers I choose for my character; (B) how I slot my character; and (C) the tricks and skills I play with---(and the esoteric stuff of connectivity, computer processing, binds, etc).

Just my thoughts.
~ Jonathan

PS---the varying and broadening content this alone would bring to the game would be worth it.

PPS---and an additional server needs to be added---a live server that allows you to upload any character that you have on any server to this "PvP Server" (and back again as easily as you zone into the game) so that the small pvp participants on this game have a place they can all gather to finally get to do all-out PvP.

PPPS---OH!...And Epics would HAVE to be opened to Villain side and Patrons would HAVE to be opened to Hero side. He11, that's the way it should be now regardless of this PvP question.

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That's the best idea I've seen in a while.

Hopefully, your great post will get more attention than my mediocre one back in Issue 6.

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I am curious to see how the Valentine event plays out, especially after Venture's dose of borderline contempt.

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He's probably still upset that ED didn't hit hard enough.

Of course, I'm still upset that I need to spend roughly 100 million per "concept" Character to play comfortably above Rugged, so it all works out about even in the end.

It probably is $2-$4 too high.

That's not terribly relevant to me because I'm not getting the pack for the items... I'm getting the pack to support the game.

The costume parts are very nice, though, and a cut above other items we've seen so far (check out the chest-level flowing of the jacket).

BTW, It's good to see that you're posting again, Venture! Hopefully we'll have a chance to argue about balance soon - you're in fine form, from what I can tell

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I'm not sure you can fix some of those things without radically altering the PvE game that the devs feel is their bread and butter. I don't think the devs want to implement an "Enhancement Diversification 2.0" style change just to make this game more PvP friendly.

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It would actually be nice if they did. The player-base is fairly complacent now because most things work most of the time in PvE, so things are getting left un-fixed.

A good nice nerfing would really light a fire under the developers to make some positive changes, and PvP play, athough I am utterly uninterested in it, would benefit.

Then again, the IO system does pretty much restore Issue 4 play if you are rich enough... fortunately I *was* rich enough and only one of my "concept" toons still exists anyway.

For those people who don't have 4+ 50's (on the correct server!) to bankroll their concept toons are basically screwed though.

I must say, though - turning an Energy/Energy Blaster into a Energy Melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper is a bargain at 75 million influence. It's very fun.

Of course, that doesn't help other people. Adding elemental damage to Scrapper primaries is a dramatically more effective solution for everyone. But that won't happen for reasons that aren't clear to me.

Maybe it's intended that Spines be the most-used PvP Scrapper set? Or that Blasters make better melee combatants in PvP then most Scrapper builds?

I don't have the answers, but the questions, at least, are out there...

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PToDs and PvP suck though. The new dom changes won't change much about that alas...

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Garden-variety game-design flaw. While there is a lot of diagreement about synergy of Damage+Control (some feel there is none, some disagree), the facts of the matter is this:

1. Dominators are a hydrid damage/control AT.
2. Most Dominator builds do the most damage in melee.
3. Dominators have no melee defenses (other than Control).
4. AVs are explicitly designed to deny the value of Control.
5. A Dom's main fallback ability when Control fails is melee damage:
- which is dangerous due to AV AOE attacks.
- damage is something that every other AT can do as well or better.

Dominators have little value against AVs because Control has little value against AVs. How was this missed in Beta?

I blame myself as well - it should have been obvious with a little bit of forethought into common playstyles, but I missed it too - until the complaints about the LSRF started to come in.

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It's the only solution I see that makes dom's reliable and doesn't require a damage buff. Without making dom's reliable, it will continue to be 1/5th of the game play in COV that is not being played.

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Toastyr, the history of changes in COH is the lowering of reliability. While a lot of players focus on the fact that Character power continually decreases as Issues come out, the fact of the matter is that balance changes, in and of themselves, aren't bad. In fact in most cases they have been helpful.

But... there is a catch. "Reliability" is verboten. In no case are powers allowed to have a consistant effect on gameplay.

The Developers will allow almost any buff or boost, as long as it is temporary.

Of course, many players feel that, due to the nature of gameplay in COH (fight one spawn at a time, continue), "Big Boom" powers just aren't useful unless they can be up every battle.

And battles last about 45 seconds, on average. Exactly non-concurrant with all those slow-recharge 2-minute-duration self-buff powers.

There is a reason that none of my Regen characters have Instant Healing, and none of my Invuln characters have Unstoppable.

If I find myself needing long-timer self buffs, then either my difficulty is too high or I have lots of downtime waiting for them to recharge.

Since waiting for powers to recharge is un-fun, I just do everyone a favor and skip the powers completely.

Sure, Ambushes and aggro management mistakes happen - but that's what Inspirations are for.

So, to sum up, yes, Dominators need "reliability" for many players to enjoy the AT, and that's precisely what the AT will never get.

Here's a Developer-safe idea so that Dominators can be of some use on the LRSF - Domination quintiples Magnitude and Damage for 30 seconds out of every 7 minutes.

I'd say a minute out of fifteen, but that might provide too much usability. Might be doable, though - we'll see, I imagine.

I know how you feel - range isn't really thematic in Claws, IMO, but people are used to it now and the set isn't going to (and shouldn't) change.

No reason to tick other players off when I can just skip a few powers.

My /Regen Scrapper skipped Recon/IH/MOG for concept reasons. Is /Regen pretty gimp without them? Sure.

But I don't campaign for changes to Regen because it doesn't work the way I think it should - I just deal with it as it is.

Self-Empathy is a cool set, maybe someday I'll come up with a concept that fits it...

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Sir, put your hands up and slowly step away from the Nerf bat.

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C'mon, Verdeman - sometimes a good, old-fashioned nerfing is needed to remind the player-base who is in control... namely, the players.

Myself, I'm praying for "ED, part the second". If anything can restore Issue 4 gameplay, that would do it.

All signs so far are that the wily Dev team is aware of all of the above, though, so we'll likely see a bunch of ninja-nerfs instead - one per issue, 3 weeks after its release is my guess.

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But I've noticed that 99% of the time after exiting an outdoor map is when I notice a significant drop in framerate. Going to the login screen doesn't fix it, you have to completely exit the game to correct the problem.

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I couldn't figure out what was going on, but after days of testing, this seems to be the issue.

After zoning to a city zone from a outdoor instanced mission, my framerate drops from 50-60 to 8-16.

This is on a Core2Duo at 3Ghz, ATI X1900XT (512MB version), 4GB of RAM system. I can only imagine that the game becomes a slideshow for lower end systems...

Interestingly, I have another PC with a Athlon X2 3800+ and a nVidia 7600GS - and while the performance is much lower, the "problem" affects both PCs equally - it drops to the same 8-16FPS range.

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It is ok to be incorrect. PVP is fun. It is just not fair. I just want people to know that in order to have fun at PVP, you need to know that there will always be times it is not fair. If you don't grasp that concept, well, you want like PVP and won't have fun

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This is an excellent point. Actually, it's critically important that PvP isn't "fair".

Consider: in order for PvP to be compeltely fair and balanced, preparation needs to provide no advantage. Fairness in PvP (defined as no player having an advantage over any other) requires that Character design, play-style, and experience all confer no advantage.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'd prefer for experience to count for something. That's totally unfair for new players, of course... but that's a good thing, IMHO.

This guide is truly awesome, as it the writing style. 5 Stars!

Now I'm going to make yet-another-Storm-Defender-this-Issue; as I am now utterly sure that my previous debt-infested mitigation-lacking /Storm alts were due to a PEBKAC problem.

Thanks for writing this!

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This is a bit off topic of the Defense changes, but what I'm hearing is:

1. MoG is broken because it has no +regen. Its Integration that should have no +regen.

2. The set would be more balanced if some of the powers were renamed.

3. Regen should have the full the benefits of Instant Healing all the time, and maybe twice that when MoG is running, and that would be the correct level of power for the set with and without MoG.


I suppose it wouldn't mean much if I were to say that, taken on average, this beats perma-elude stacked on top of the SR passive resistances by a wide margin. Nah, didn't think so.

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I'm sorry to see that you disapprove of the points brought up, Arcanaville.

Your previous posts have been so fair and focussed on rules changes that I've kind of forgotten that you have an opinon!

Thank goodness for the "preview" function, or I'd have actually posted what I really thought! But on to the post...my point numbering corresponds to yours.

1. MoG is broken, as it has few uses currently. If it was given a +Regen component, reductions in other +Regen components of the set would compensate for this.

2. As you pointed out, the name changes have no effect on balance. I'm still trying to figure out why you even mention this... let's both agree that this point is "filler" and drop it.

3. Regen should indeed have the benefits of IH "all the time". You seem to disagree with the previous poster based on numbers that only exist in your head: we should elaborate.

Right now, Fast Healing provides 150% +Regen, Integration provides 250% +Regen, and Instant Healing provides 1200% +Regen once in a blue moon.

So currently, a /Regen toon gets an average +Regen amount of 100% (base) +150% (FH) + 250% (Integ) + (1200% * 0.28 [IH is "up" 28% of the time] = 336%) for a grand (average) total of 836% +Regen.

Note that IH's cooldown and 90-second-duration nature reduces its utility below what the numbers suggest, but this gives us something to work with.

Zeophex does not mention numbers, making your comments irrelevant for the most part. I will, for the sake of argument, make up some now.

My /Regen change suggestions:

- Integration has the +Regen effect removed.

- IH a toggle, costing 1.0 END/sec (keeping the benefit of Quick Recovery negated, which I can only assume was the point of the original power costs in /Regen), providing a 200% +Regen buff, fully enhanceable.

- MoG providing 90 seconds of 1000% +Regen with a cooldown of 720 seconds.

This means that the maximum ordinary +Regen attainable is 650%, which is well below the "averaged" currently attainable 836% (150% above the currently attainable value).

In addition, 650+1000 = 1650%, below the 1700% currently experienced under IH's duration.

Yes, I'm advocating that MoG be weaker than (current) IH alone.

This should allow a more toggle-based set and also allow MoG to be thematic while not substantially improving the set.

Of course, I could be simply missing something important. Thoughts?

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Trying not to sound patronizing, but this is the first by Statesman that really confirms in my mind that he gets what an MMOG is supposed to revolve around.


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I disagree, sadly, he does not get it. I'll miss "set your own difficulty".

Not because it was overpowered, but because I now have a severly restricted playable-character choices.

The true value of an MMO is longevity, and longevity is equal to available variety.

This "balance" or "difficulty" fix that States is on is a red herring... either the game is playable or it's not. "Challenge" is very vague, and everyone has their own idea of it.

Meanwhile, while the rants back and forth about "balance" go on, I can't play my Fire/Fire Blaster (Scrapper) with any degree of success.

States can ignore the real reason that we are all still playing ( We were all very surprised to see how many characters players had ) at the game's peril.

Meanwhile, options keep getting removed...

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Love the new 'deflected' instead of 'miss'.
Actual onscreen evidence of FF buffs etc having an effect.

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Maybe now other methods of damage mitigation than TEH HEALZ will be recognised, eh?

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Yes, probably the biggest QoL upgrade for non-healers. Forcefield, Radiation and Dark will all be "appreciated" for what they do.

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Oddly, this buff will result in me not playing my FF Defenders. More than one is now overkill, after all.

In other news, I've failed to notice the whole "Empath Bias". Maybe playing in solely pickup groups caused me to miss it?

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This may be asking a bit much, but can a dev post here explaining why they planned the set out this way? I'm still having trouble understanding why /elec is the only +res set in the game without a self heal.

A simple post weighing the pluses against the minuses from a dev viewpoint might put an end to the knockback debate at the very least.

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I'm not quite understandig why this isn't obvious.

The Devs (for whatever reason) place an extreme premium on Psionic damage protection. There is a lesser, but still notable, premium on -Recharge and Endurance recovery powers.

Elec, in its current form, has all three. So it needs to be missing something to make up for this.

Step back and look at the overall set balance: If I was an /Invuln Tank, and I could get 40% PSI +Resist, at the cost of taking either the Flight or Jumping pool, would I do so?

Oh, and you people arguing about Grounded, you do realize that -Jump and -Fly make no thematic sense, right? "I do not think that word means, what you think it means."

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Grounded is the auto Energy/Negative Energy resist power. Lightning reflexes is the quickness clone.

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Thanks, Speqter. I can't believe I didn't realize that I got those powers transposed, but being stuck @ work for 20+ hours can do that.

Ergh... I'm getting some sleep under my cube... now.

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i really wish grounded was what someone suggested, a toggle with medium end cost that did -fly, -jump, and +regen and knockback protection

i'd play the set if it had this, otherwise i'll roll a elec/stone or /EA or something (would've picked /inv but its ugly black now)

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I don't get it. I honestly don't.

There's a Brute set with a Quickness clone power, and people want to change it to Fast Healing? Cause Brutes never need +recharge and +runspeed for Fury. Naah...

/e boggles. Am I missing something? No, that's not a rhetorical question.

Thanks,
-> Scott.