IronYeti

I don't know, but people in Australia seem to manage it just fine.

Yeah, I'm aware of the heat issues. Both my machines have similar issues, though; my desktop is a Mac Mini, and also crams all its hardware into a small area. More importantly, because my house's wireless access point is in the basement, I get best reception by leaving my Mac Mini upside down. I'm certain its fans and air vents were not designed to work best this way, so I suspect it's having more heat problems than usual. My hope is that using my laptop in non-upside-down fashion (boy, wouldn't that look odd) will have fewer problems over all.

Of course, if my laptop does fail, I'll just recoup the losses by suing you all for providing faulty technical expertise.

I've uploaded a version with the i22 update (click here).

Thanks for all the responses, everyone. It looks like it was an issue with my computer (or possibly network card?) overheating, after all. I tried switching to my laptop when my desktop could no longer connect, and the laptop worked fine on the same network. Once I get my laptop properly set up for play, I'll see if this solution lasts.

This is a good move anyway, my laptop is newer and better in pretty much every respect.

It seems odd that it would crop up so suddenly, though -- I've been at this house and on this ISP for a couple of years now, and only for the last three nights have I had problems staying connected to CoH. I doubt there was an instant flood of bandwidth hogs to the area. (Actually I'm pretty sure the area has always been flooded with bandwidth hogs.) It's possible they updated something at the ISP recently, though, that makes the network less robust in the face of high traffic. I guess it may be worth calling and complaining, though presumably they monitor for this kind of thing.

Again, thanks for the reply. I don't think it's an overheating issue. Last night, I had taken a break from my computer for a few hours between CoH running fine and CoH failing to log in. So my computer should not have been running hot. And we've had problems with our network hardware running hot before, but that just cuts off the connection entirely. It's possible it's turned into a different failure mode, but seems unlikely. Still, I can't be sure, so next time this comes up I'll definitely try giving the various hardware a chance to cool down.

Thanks for the info. This only started happening recently, but maybe my ISP only recently adopted such a policy? I dunno.

Given that I can connect to all kinds of other websites, and play CoH just fine once I get into a zone, it does seem unfortunate that zoning and logging in are so fragile.

I doubt this is a problem with City of Heroes per se, but it's the only program majorly affected by it. By day, I have a mild-mannered network that works just fine. By night, it must be off fighting crime or something, because it's certainly not around to let me connect to CoH servers. After about 11-12 at night, I have about a 70% chance to crash and fail at logging in or changing zones. This is on a Mac Mini running OS X 10.6.8.

I'm not sure how to go about debugging this kind of issue, since it probably lies somewhere between me and CoH, and not under either my control or NCSoft's. Anyone know what I should try next?

There's no such thing as a bad Storm combo, in my opinion. Storm is a difficult set. Learning when not to use certain Storm powers is as important as learning when to use them. A good Stormie can wind up improving the grouping of enemies rather than ruining it. What powerset to pair Storm with depends on a lot of things, one of which is how confident you are with Storm's tricky powers: Gale, Hurricane, and Tornado.

Gravity Control works well if you know how to use these three, and intend to use them frequently. Its immobilization powers leave you free to use knockdown and knockback, and Wormhole gives you yet another positioning power. Plus, the stuns of Wormhole and Thunder Clap stack.

Electric Control works well if you want to play a more traditional controlling style with Storm. Its immobilization negates KB/KD, making Tornado and Hurricane less chaotic. In theory the end drain of Lightning Storm stacks with Electric Control, but in practice the damage of LS still probably outstrips its end drain.

The slows of Snow Storm, heal of O2 Boost, defense and resistance debuffs of Freezing Rain, and damage of Lightning Storm are all quite useful for any primary, without causing significant scatter. Storm Summoning complements pretty much any primary. Personally, I'd recommend making both Grav/Storm and Elec/Storm. If you're new to Storm Summoning, start with Elec, and go light on Gale, Hurricane, and Tornado until you learn how to use them precisely. The other, easier-to-use powers will get you far in the meantime.

Why would Archery, AR, and DP increase any more than the others with slotting? Everything should increase equally with slotting. If you slot for, for instance, 50% recharge and 50% damage, everything will do 50% more recharge 50% more often.

After reinstalling the driver for my Logitech mouse, everything works fine. Move along, nothing to see here!

At tech support's prompting, I reinstalled my Logitech driver. Now everything works great. Guess I should have trusted you initially, despite the trackpad being screwy too! Thanks for your help, CuppaManga.

My thread on the Mac Users forum did not come up with a solution, nor did the first few exchanges with tech support, so I'm going to ask here. (Nevertheless, many thanks to CuppaManga and the tech support folks.) I'm still hopeful for tech support, but we'll see who comes up with an answer first.

I hadn't played for a few weeks; when I logged back on and applied the March 2 patch (which may or may not be relevant) my mouse started acting strange. A single click (press and release) registers as a press but not a release. I have to double-click for the game to register both; otherwise it thinks I am clicking and dragging. Furthermore, moving the camera ("mouselook"), which I have tied to the right mouse button, usually only registers for half a second, after which it stays in that mode with the cursor invisible but no longer moves the camera. Sometimes it never moves at all, and more rarely it works fine until I turn it off, but never twice in a row.

These results are on my MacBook; they apply the same on the built-in trackpad and on my USB Logitech TrackMan Wheel, and in both full-screen and windowed mode.

Has anyone seen something like this before? Does anyone have any suggestions that might fix or diagnose it? Thanks much.

The trackpad behaves the same.

In testing it out, I was able to clarify a bit of the behavior. It seems that it requires a double-click to act like a single click; with only a single click, it thinks I am holding down the mouse. Hence if I click one power and then another, it thinks I clicked, dragged over, and unclicked, so it swaps the two power icons.

I did try resetting my keybindings; I have a bind for that for just such occasions. This Mac has the NVIDIA 9400M.

Hmm. I suppose I could try that, but I've had this setup for quite some time now and it hasn't caused problems before. The only thing that has changed is the new set of CoH patches I downloaded (after not playing for a few weeks). Looks like that would be the March 2 patch, no idea if it had anything mouse-specific in it.

For some reason, CoH is no longer recognizing about half my mouse actions, and when it does it often responds wrong. Specifically, I have to click a power 2-3 times to get it to register; usually when it does, it activates the power, but sometimes it instead decides to drag a power to another tray position. Usually that is the power I've been clicking, but sometimes it is an adjacent one.

When I right-click, which I have bound to moving the camera, it usually does nothing, but every once in a while it just briefly allows me to move the camera -- then stops, sticking me in some position where I'm staring at the floor or ceiling and unable to stop.

I know the issue is CoH and not the mouse, because when I right click the mouse icon invariable vanishes and if I drag it down far enough it triggers the dock (I'm running in windowed mode). My computer registers the mouse click, and at some level apparently CoH does too, but the actions don't resolve properly.

Has anyone seen anything like this on the Mac? I thought I'd ask here before the general bugs forum in case it's Mac specific. I'm running Mac OS X version 10.5.7 on a MacBook, and using a USB Logitech TrackMan Wheel as my mouse.

I'd like to see animation choices for the elemental melee sets (fire, ice, earth). I'd like to be able to make characters that used only the fists animation, or only the sword/mallet animation, as appropriate. Having weird mishmashes leads to concepts like "Indecisive Flamy SwordFist", which just doesn't do it for me. All-Fire-Swords, please!

I have a feeling you were simply running into someone who didn't know the difference between Knockdown and Knockback, and assumed that any time enemies were flopping onto their back they were in danger of being scattered.

It just blows my mind that OSA would ignite differently in "zones" from missions. What in the world did they put in the code that would tie igniting to where you are?

They considered it and thought it was a bad idea. I do not recall that they clarified further.

First of all, YAY new online planner!

Second -- some things in the planner are not terribly easy to undo. For instance, is there a way to remove or overwrite a "build" for a character? So far it looks like once I've saved a build, I can't save anything new without eternally lengthening the list of builds. Nothing will remove or replace a build. Even making a new build of the same name seems to create a second copy.

Also, I have to reload a build if I want to replace a powerset or pool set. Once I select a secondary powerset, the first power is automatically chosen. If I misclicked, I can't unselect the power to change it; I have to start the build from scratch and select the AT, primary, and secondary again. If I select a power pool or ancillary/patron power set, I can change it, but once I click a power I can't, even if I unselect all the powers.

Thanks, SuckerPunch!