Hyperstrike

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Global Name: @Hyperstrike1
Email: charlesborner@gmail.com
IM's: Lots, e-mail me and I'll send them to you. Getting lots of spurious traffic there right now.
Games you plan to move to: CO (Free Lifetime account. Can't argue too hard with "free")
Steam ID: hyperstrike_coh
Favorite Powerset/AT in CoH: I don't care what City Info Terminal says, Inv/SS TANK
Red/blue?: Blue
More stuph: Was mainly on Protector. Ran a fire/rads group on Freedom and was a participant in Tanker Tuesdays. Will be helping bring TT to CO next week.
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*Puts on woad* They make take our capes! But they'll never take...wait...they got that server too. DAMMIT!

Okay then. I thank all of you for the friendship and fellowship you've shown me and each other during our collective time in the Paragon Universe. We shall all live on, in that place where dreams come from...

Okay. Having to write a "goodbye" sucks. Like an oil tanker full of overclocked Hoovers.

So I'm gonna do this with the snark that's served me so well, and ticked off no few people, over the years.

You don't want to see me blubbering right? I'm ugly enough to stop a clock on GOOD days!

Anyhoo, here I go *Pops Rage and dives into the scrum.*

I've been using and building computers since before I started Kindergarten. I'm 39 now. Yeah. Do the math. Depressing huh?

Anyhoo, I've been gaming almost nearly as long.

Was big into the FPS scene for more than a few years, even helped run one of the largest, most frequent LAN parties in the Chicagoland area for a couple years.

During that time I really REALLY stayed away from MMOs. I was fairly rabid about bringing up the "Rent to Pwn" argument.

I'd also been a comics fan for 20-ish years at that point.

I'd seen CoH when it was first announced. Thought "Ooh! Interesting. But an MMO. NAH!"

Saw it again at various cons I'd worked. And noticed it when the advertising stuff went into the game *cue nerdsnob disgust*.

Anyhoo, for multiple reasons, including having completely changed careers and having gone back to school, I stayed away from the game for a good long while.

But, back in 2008, I was feeling fairly financially secure, I'd just built a new box, and was looking for something to play.

Walking through Fry's the one day and come across the Good vs Evil Edition. I figured "What the hell. Free month! Not like I'm going to sub or anything..."

Yeah... I know. Open mouth. Insert foot. Insert other foot. Push till you taste buttock...

I've spent a hell of a lot of money on this game. But, considering all the money I was spending on self-diversion PRIOR to that, it's a drop in the bucket and has actually contributed to my personal savings over the last 4.5 years. And that's even factoring in the stupid amount of Paragon points AND the trip out to California this year for the last Player Summit!

And, strangely enough, I met a lot of GREAT people in this game over the last few years. Strangely, mostly because I'm somewhat antisocial. I can kinda fake the whole "sociable" thing when I have to (from years of working at cons and having to deal with various unbearable people without offending them). But I genuinely liked a lot of these people and went out of my way to socialize. Dare I call them "friends"?

Some of these people were on other servers. But the main body of friends were here, on Protector. It just happened to be the first server in the list when I fired up the game. But it's become home in the last four years.

I could probably eat up my entire word count in this post just thanking people (and still miss a bunch of people just as deserving). So I'm just going to offer a blanket "thank you SO much" to every Protectorite here.

And I've done just about everything you can do in this game. And I've enjoying pretty much all of it. Yeah, some of the things were fairly terrible (taking 90 minutes to sand down Reichsman's HP in a Khan, PVP, and the occasional raid or TF or trial gone sideways). But, instead of simply putting my fist into the monitor (not that I didn't come close a couple times), I was able to stay positive and soldier on. Mostly due to the humor and help of you guys. My fellow heroes.

Even if the continuing plans to rescue this game from oblivion all come to naught, nothing (short of MASSIVE head trauma...) will make me forget my time as a hero here. The game, and the shared ethos of the people playing it have made me a better person. Not necessarily a "good" person (I STILL get barely controllable urges to nuke parking meters, newspaper dispensers and mailboxes when I go downtown), but far better than I was when I came to the game.

Again, a thanks to all the players and staff at Paragon for giving me the chance to experience Paragon City for myself.

Skype: charlesborner
Twitter: @charlesborner
Facebook: Charles Borner (@Hyperstrike.CoH)
G+: Charles Borner (https://plus.google.com/u/0/112017892896632073379)
G+ Tanker Tuesday: https://plus.google.com/u/0/102796495703839216745/posts
Steam: hyperstrike_coh
Steam Tanker Tuesday Group: TankerTues
DeviantArt: Hyperstrike-CoH
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/PhotonHerald
ADDENDUM:
And @Hyperstrike over in CO


Crap. For a militantly antisocial person, I've suddenly become quite social haven't I?

I BLAME YOU GUYS!



Also. Can someone get me an invite to the Nemesis Plot group on Steam?

There's also the possibility that the game files are heavily fragmented as well. Leading to excessive amounts of drive thrashing as pieces of files are looked for.
Defragging the game files (if your defrag solution allows it) might help reduce the amount of drive seeking.
(Note: If you're running on an SSD, ignore this suggestion.)

Also, how "full" is the drive?

On an NTFS volume, you start seeing filesystem performance falloff at about 20% free space. You start seeing drastic falloff at 15% and at 10% you may as well just shut everything down and start deleting stuff.

I wish I could say it's been an honor sharing the aggro with you.

But it's mine! MINEMINEMINE!



In all seriousness though guys, it's been a privilege.

I know, people way WAY overuse "an honor and a privilege", but I genuinely feel this way.

It's been great getting to know all of you. Whether it was the people I only saw once or twice at random events. Or the regulars. Or the leadership brigade. Or even the radio guys off "striking a pose". Not gonna name any names. I'd wind up leaving someone out who really deserves mention (technically ALL of you).

I learned quite a bit about tanking at these events and hope that I was able to pay back on that somewhat for others.

Not to mention the OBSCENE amount of butt-kickery that happened over the entire time. Extreme levels of mega-violence can sometimes be its own attraction.

Hell ANYONE who puts up with my blathering throughout an event is up for sainthood!



This unexpectedly sociable antisocial person thanks you all profusely.

There's also another option.

The Titan site hosts most of the files in .OGG format.
If you're editing the vids and not doing raw dumps of video, you can create audio tracks and sub in the sound files. Granted, doing anything beyond neighborhood music would get unwieldy but...

All right! We had an excellent run last night!

First, after I got over a minor case of the brain farts, we got an MoITF run in. In 1:05 and change. I've never seen a console go down so smoothly and without incident. Unspeeded and steamrolled. Last mission we marched through and killed everything in our path. Then wound up burning Romulus down in only two resurrections because we also fried two of the Nictus too.



Afterwards, we made a stab at an MoSTF after picking up a few people as others left. That didn't quite happen, unfortunately. It was STILL a fairly easy TF. And, while we had a few deaths, we still ripped up everything in sight.




I'd like, on behalf of my co-conspirators, Greased Wheels and Radical Burner, to thank everyone who's ever come to a FF/R event. We've been going roughly 3-1/2 years here which is pretty impressive.

It's been an honor guys.

Here's my rebuttal, as I'm not signing up for yet another website.

DON’T have only one quest line and one tutorial.

CoH has pretty much always let you skip the tutorial.

For the longest time, it had not one, but THREE tutorials.

Hero
Villain
Praetorian

After F2P, it was condensed into:

Hero/Villain (Choose your alignment)
Praetorian

Again, all entirely skippable.



Originally there were multiple origin-based quest lines. But they were all, nominally, identical and just not done very well.

Now there's a singular set quest path that can take you up into your teens (level-wise) that's quite well done.
Or you can play around in the Mission Architect.
Or you can simply hop onto a team and complete some of the low level raids that'll take you into your teens-to-20's in short order.

Lots and lots of options.




DON’T wait too long to go free-to-play.

Back when the game started, there was no way for them to F2P.
Later, they simply didn't have the staff to do an F2P conversion.
Finally they were able to convince NCSoft to allow them to do the conversion.

The real issue was this. Not so much F2P. But a method of monetizing content (a cash shop).
For pretty much the entire 4-1/2 years I played, players were basically screaming for ways to buy MORE stuff and give City of Heroes MORE money (see "Shut up and take my money!").
If they could have done something similar with actual meat-space merchandise that would have helped too.
Look at all the various charities and projects that CoH players have contributed money to over the years. Lots and LOTS of disposable cash.

The REAL lesson is "Allow your players to give you their money".


DON’T screw over former paid members when you do go free-to-play.

Lines have to be drawn somewhere. Especially when talking about Free players.

Masterminds and classes sporting pets are actually fairly resource-intensive. As such, it was one of the classes tapped for "paid for".
So you could pay to unlock the class. Or play one of your other toons.
As opposed to the sub model where you lost access to EVERYTHING when you stopped paying your sub.




DON’T slip a giant ***** cannon into a level and think we won’t notice.

Really? No. REALLY? They couldn't come up with a real objection? So you had to take "Well when you look at it from this angle, it looks like a wang!" and complain about it?




DON’T give up on the superhero genre.

Trust me. The CoH community hasn't.

There's a diaspora going on now (of course).

However, work has NOT ceased on trying to rescue the property from oblivion. So keep your eyes peeled.

Hey guys. The final Freedom Fire/Rad event is this evening.

As always, we're open to any and everyone who wants to show.

Server: Freedom
Location: Talos Island, The Hill
Time:
* 9PM Eastern
* 8PM Central
* 7PM Mountain
* 6PM Pacific

Aye. Wasn't sure if Zoetrooper wanted me reposting it or not.
It's still a work in progress, my my fire/rad/stone is looking good.

Excuse you? When did you become Arbiter of Acceptable in the forum?

I broke up his original post into paragraph format for readability, leaving a separate post so that any further people reading and wishing to rebut the article can simply copy-paste my quoted reformatting and made a note of why I did so.

Then proceeded to respond on a point by point basis so someone can follow the original argument and my rebuttal, increasing clarity and reducing confusion.

You've been here a few years. If you don't know that I respond to ALL lengthy, multi-point posts in similar fashion, you haven't been paying attention. If that's still a problem, feel free to put me on ignore for the next 6 days.

Wall of text is...wallish.

Glad to help!

Next up! Warboss and Rangle! STAGEDIVING!

*Wait for it!*
*Wait for it!*
*Now...MOVE OUTTA THE WAY!*

Next up! Warboss and Rangle! STAGEDIVING!

Well, if you had server controls, you could probably start team content.

Additionally, there's nothing to stop you from multiboxing to start things.

And I'm sure our various videographers would go WMD for access to film.