Lucenter

Going back to the original post in this thread....


I have to agree. I've cancelled my account after seeing Issue 20, clearly seeing where the Devs were taking this game. I had my reservations after 19, but 20 sealed the deal that actually made my cancel my sub after 4+ years.

When I first joined CoH, it was my first MMO and I was recruited by two friends who also play casually. We eventually brought in another friend, who also plays casually. We have jobs and lives, so play time is limited. The two friends who recruited me barely play anymore (and do not participate in this incarnate stuff) and one plans to just keep on playing the lower characters and ignoring these incarnate systems.

What I enjoyed about CoH from the beginning was that the game itself was soloable. Sure you had difficult challenges at the end levels with the elite bosses but for the most part you could handle those dependent on your AT. You could actually reach level 50 on your own - a team was not absolutely needed to play the game.

Obviously teams had a benefit with leveling faster and interesting content (the task forces) but you were not forced to play them to advance and the the developers constantly added new content that could keep you interested in all of your characters at any level. And even where the content that teams were needed, they were fun and presented a challenge that made you think about the best strategy to complete the task. The task forces were interesting and the two end game raids were fun and anyone could participate.


With Issue 19 and 20 however, it's clear that the mindset has moved completely towards building these extremely frustrating and difficult incarnate missions and pretty much ignoring the rest of the game - sure two task forces were added but that is pretty much it in terms of content for this issue - and not everyone likes to team but the lack of solo content since issue 18 is for another thread.

With the incarnate trials, not only do you exclude people who haven't purchased GR, you exclude the people who haven't run the unlock yet. And even those who have must have it slotted, which excludes even more.

Then when you jump all those hurdles, you get into these trials and they aren't fun. They are just massive computer kills everything in site trials that require the right set up of a team - and that right there eliminates any casual player who has decided to even travel this far into this extremely complicated system as it is.

Then you get into the issues of how poorly these were thought out....when I ran the Lambada sector, the league decided to all attack the turrets up top. Which is great and all except for the fact that the developers had the brilliant idea to restrict temp. powers so my super-speeder basically had to twirl his thumbs and do nothing for that part of the strike. I won't even go into how frustrating the rest of the trial was with the constant death and face planting because of how this was set up - a lot of it had to do with the fact that it was new and no one knew what they were doing but even allowing for that type of massacre is part of the gaming style I don't enjoy.


I've enjoyed the game for its casual play and fun content (solo and team). These last two issues have moved from the casual and fun to the elite hardcore play tests that include grinding at ridiculous levlels to get your character up to par to even compete in these.

I had my reservations after seeing Issue 19 and seeing even worse of this type of content being added in 20 with absolutely nothing else made me see that this game is headed towards trying to retain the hardcore players rather than building the casual fan base.

So after a lengthy tl;dr, I've cancelled my sub after four years due to this new grind and elite play style they are pushing in favor of the casual player.

Not sure how well that will work out for them as this game is already on the older end, it seems like they want to keep the hardcore players interested at the expense of the casual player - but I'm not sure how many of those exist to cover the costs of the casual players leaving.

Well, not sure what did it, but I haven't had a crash in three days.

I went back and (attempted) to roll back my driver to the third on the list on the guide for solving this. It started giving me some weird error about using nvidia installer for a 32 bit system on a 64 bit system, and then it immediately gave another error about it not being a 64 bit system so it couldnt continue or something. It did this for two seperate drivers - even though the process worked fine the first two times I did it. It eventually let me install the second driver on the list again without any problems.

I installed the hotfix (again) and am doing the windowed-maximized mode thing. I also started running it in admin mode.

Something took affect.

Thanks for all the help everyone! It feels nice to be able to play again without crashing every 2 seconds.

(I just hope karma doesn't take effect and the problem starts again now that I've posted this).

Very New - was bought in early March (May have been late February).

I had thought of that being a possibility, but I have played through the entire Mass Effect game on high settings without so much as noticing a lag - much less a crash.

I'll try redoing the hotfix tonight and checking my resolutions.

The windowed-maximized mode worked for about an hour last night while idling around in the AE building but crashed on the second mission of an arc as soon as I started missions.

I installed Speedfan to see if overheating is happening, but it doesn't get too hot (around 50 C) so I don't think thats happening either.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.

Well I finally had time to go back and do the driver rollbacks, and nothing - problem still persists. The first driver offset my screen where I couldn't log in and the 2nd one listed still gave me a crash. I haven't had time to install the third yet but I don't have a good feeling about it - will do that tonight hopefully.

The game will randomly freeze/lock up and then immediately switch to a black screen. Eventually I get dumped back out onto my desktop (most of the time I just end the process) and I get the error message of "nvlddmkm has stopped responding and has recovered" etc.

I really don't know what else to do. I've googled the problem and after two years of this issue and no fixes I'm at a loss.

Any other ideas to help get this stopped/working correctly?

My account is up in 2 weeks and I don't see any point in paying for another year if I can't play for more than 5 minutes at a time (sometimes I get lucky and get it to stay for longer) - even though I really don't want to cancel.

I've read by googling about issues relating to heat/overclocking but that's beyond my realm of technological experience and wouldn't have the first clue in trying to understand any of the stuff they are posting relating to that.

*ANY* other ideas or attempts to fix this?

(I'd edit the title based on the reply's but it's too late).

I downloaded the hotfix (twice in an attempt to see if I did something wrong the first time). It downloaded and unzipped fine but the game still randomly locks up on me with "Not Responding".

The game worked fine on my old computer so I can only assume it's related to this vista issue since the symptoms match up. Any help?

Sorry if I wasn't supposed to create a new thread, but I've seen other people told to create a separate thread when they were still having problems in the vista issue thread.

COH Helper

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.7---

DxDiag gathered at March 29, 2009 12:19 (-04:00)
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080425-1930)
System Manufacturer: Gateway
System Model: DX4200-09
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Central Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9150e Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~1.8GHz
Memory: 4094MB
.Net Memory Report: 2947MB out of 4094MB available
Page File: 7001MB (1423MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST3640623AS ATA Device) 511300MB out of 600476MB (85%) free
D Drive: (ATAPI DVD A DH16A6S ATA Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 10
DirectX Diag version: 6.00.6001.18000 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce 9600 GT
Video Memory: 2289 MB
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.8208
Driver Date: 2/18/2009 2:44:00 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Driver File: RTKVHD64.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5704
Driver Date: 9/18/2008 6:50:30 AM

Sound Device Description: Realtek Digital Output (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Driver File: RTKVHD64.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.5704
Driver Date: 9/18/2008 6:50:30 AM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: Gateway
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: RS780
Motherboard Version: Rev 1.0
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: Default System BIOS
BIOS Version: GATEWA - 20080806
BIOS Release: 20080806000000.000000+000

Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1440x900
3D Resolution: 1440x900 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 75Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes

Physics Quality: Very High
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No

Anti-aliasing: 4x
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High Quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned off)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High

World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.600
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 841916 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 18.20081210.10T4
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found

HiJack This:

Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.2
Scan saved at 12:39:20 PM, on 3/29/2009
Platform: Windows Vista SP1 (WinNT 6.00.1905)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v7.00 (7.00.6001.18000)
Boot mode: Normal

Running processes:
C:\Windows\MHotKey.exe
C:\Windows\ChiFuncExt.exe
C:\Windows\CNYHKey.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\IOI\Smart Copy\ButtonMonitor.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Webroot\WebrootSecurity\SpySweeperUI.exe
C:\Windows\ModLedKey.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\mIRC\mirc.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Mail\WinMail.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Trend Micro\HijackThis\HijackThis.exe

R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://homepage.gateway.com/rdr.aspx...mp;m=dx4200-09
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://homepage.gateway.com/rdr.aspx...mp;m=dx4200-09
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant =
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,CustomizeSearch =
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName =
F2 - REG:system.ini: UserInit=userinit.exe
O1 - Hosts: ::1 localhost
O2 - BHO: Adobe PDF Reader Link Helper - {06849E9F-C8D7-4D59-B87D-784B7D6BE0B3} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEHelper.dll
O2 - BHO: SSVHelper Class - {761497BB-D6F0-462C-B6EB-D4DAF1D92D43} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.6.0_05\bin\ssv.dll
O2 - BHO: Partner BHO Class - {83FF80F4-8C74-4b80-B5BA-C8DDD434E5C4} - C:\ProgramData\Partner\partner.dll
O2 - BHO: Google Toolbar Helper - {AA58ED58-01DD-4d91-8333-CF10577473F7} - c:\program files (x86)\google\googletoolbar1.dll
O2 - BHO: Google Toolbar Notifier BHO - {AF69DE43-7D58-4638-B6FA-CE66B5AD205D} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\GoogleToolbarNotifier\3.1.415.1646\sw g.dll
O3 - Toolbar: &Google - {2318C2B1-4965-11d4-9B18-009027A5CD4F} - c:\program files (x86)\google\googletoolbar1.dll
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [LchDrvKey] "LchDrvKey.exe"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [LedKey] "CNYHKey.exe"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Smart Copy] "C:\Program Files (x86)\IOI\Smart Copy\ButtonMonitor.exe" -A
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [P2Go_Menu] "C:\Program Files (x86)\CyberLink\Power2Go\MUITransfer\MUIStartMenu. exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\CyberLink\Power2Go" UpdateWithCreateOnce "SOFTWARE\CyberLink\Power2Go\6.0"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SpySweeper] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Webroot\WebrootSecurity\SpySweeperUI.exe" /startintray
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /detectMem (User 'LOCAL SERVICE')
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [WindowsWelcomeCenter] rundll32.exe oobefldr.dll,ShowWelcomeCenter (User 'LOCAL SERVICE')
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /detectMem (User 'NETWORK SERVICE')
O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\Office12\EXCEL.EXE/3000
O9 - Extra button: Send to OneNote - {2670000A-7350-4f3c-8081-5663EE0C6C49} - C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\Office12\ONBttnIE.dll
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: S&end to OneNote - {2670000A-7350-4f3c-8081-5663EE0C6C49} - C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\Office12\ONBttnIE.dll
O9 - Extra button: Research - {92780B25-18CC-41C8-B9BE-3C9C571A8263} - C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\Office12\REFIEBAR.DLL
O13 - Gopher Prefix:
O23 - Service: Agere Modem Call Progress Audio (AgereModemAudio) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\agr64svc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\Alg.exe,-112 (ALG) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\alg.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @dfsrres.dll,-101 (DFSR) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\DFSR.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @keyiso.dll,-100 (KeyIso) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @comres.dll,-2797 (MSDTC) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\msdtc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\System32\netlogon.dll,-102 (Netlogon) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: NVIDIA Display Driver Service (nvsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\nvvsvc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\psbase.dll,-300 (ProtectedStorage) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: Cyberlink RichVideo Service(CRVS) (RichVideo) - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files (x86)\CyberLink\Shared files\RichVideo.exe
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\Locator.exe,-2 (RpcLocator) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\locator.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\samsrv.dll,-1 (SamSs) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\SLsvc.exe,-101 (slsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\SLsvc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\snmptrap.exe,-3 (SNMPTRAP) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\snmptrap.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\spoolsv.exe,-1 (Spooler) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\ui0detect.exe,-101 (UI0Detect) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\UI0Detect.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vds.exe,-100 (vds) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\vds.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\vssvc.exe,-102 (VSS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\vssvc.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: Webroot Spy Sweeper Engine (WebrootSpySweeperService) - Webroot Software, Inc. (www.webroot.com) - C:\Program Files (x86)\Webroot\WebrootSecurity\SpySweeper.exe
O23 - Service: @%Systemroot%\system32\wbem\wmiapsrv.exe,-110 (wmiApSrv) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbem\WmiApSrv.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: @%ProgramFiles%\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe,-101 (WMPNetworkSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe (file missing)
O23 - Service: Webroot Client Service (WRConsumerService) - Webroot Software, Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Webroot\WebrootSecurity\WRConsumerService.ex e
O23 - Service: Marvell Yukon Service (yksvc) - Unknown owner - RUNDLL32.EXE (file missing)

--
End of file - 6776 bytes


Any help would be appreciated - these lockups are quite frustrating especially when the fix doesn't work for you.