Mister Rik

After my last post I logged in my level 28 fire/fire scrapper, and paid close attention to Scorch. All of her other powers were hitting consistently; Scorch missed far more often than it hit. I made sure to open with that power as often as possible, and it was just amazing how often it missed. Seriously, it was missing 4 out of 5 times.

Out of curiosity, how do I go about logging this stuff? Because when I'm playing my scrappers, brutes, and blasters, regardless of what power set each has, that first power just seems to miss at a ridiculous rate. It's especially aggravating when it's a character with Dual Blades, who depends on that first power to start combos. +ACC is the first thing I slot into every offensive power on every character, and lately I've started adding a second +ACC at the earliest opportunity.

As far as level 35 +ACC IOs, I only have a handful of characters high-level enough to use those (87 characters, only four or five over level 30 - yeah, hopeless altoholic). I agree, though, that this becomes less of a problem past level 30. I have so many sub-30 characters, and they all seem to suffer the same problem with that first power.

Of course, it doesn't help that the lower-level game seems overloaded with enemies that stack ToHit Debuffs (those CoT demons) or have forcefields (Sky Raiders). Stuff that conveniently stops showing up as soon as my character is high-level enough to be able to counter it. Kind of like the way my scrappers and brutes seem to get their "Resist Toxic" defensive powers right after they outlevel the Vahzilok...

(puts on tinfoil hat)

I believe the "Character Detail" setting means your character, i.e. how detailed you want your own character to appear. NPCs appearance/detail is handled by the other, general settings. I've noticed the same thing you're talking about, though. I keep my "Character Detail" setting high, so my own character looks good, but low setting elsewhere makes NPCs look like your screenshots. I think it's some of the texture settings, or World Detail, or something. It goes away when I boost those settings.

Thanks for the answers everybody! Very helpful, and indeed they were the answers I was hoping for

Now I can respec my level 50 main to get rid of Air Superiority and some other powers I've ended up just never using.

If I decide to respec a character, what happens to her slotted enhancements? I recently "respecced" my DM/DA brute by creating a secondary build, rather than wiping out her original build, purely because I wasn't sure what was going to happen to her existing enhancements.

Do they get destroyed? Shuffled off into a special "holding area" to be reslotted once the new spec is complete? Or what?

Logout Location: Anywhere in Terra Volta (for heroes; not sure where the Rogue Isles power plants are), or in any of the various power substations scattered around the city.


Text/Reward: "Your time spent working with the power company, keeping the electricity flowing to the city, has earned you the Utility Worker Day Job. Logging out in Terra Volta or in an electrical substation will grant you the ability to actually hit things with your Tier 1 offensive power for a short time after you log back in."




Yes, I'm being facetious. I came up with this Day Job idea after yet another play session on yet another level 20+ character with 2 +ACC enhancements in that first attack power, and watching in frustration as that same power missed over and over and over and over.

I'm fine with the costume - it's her in-game face that I don't like. It looks ... "mannish", for lack of a better descriptor.

I'd like to see them take some inspiration from Korean group 2NE1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lSP8Vc3o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49AfuuRbgGo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ekB4l-6wg

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give them a try as soon as I get back to working on this arc (been busy with work )

So while she was still level 48 my main character, Flaminatrix, decided to collect all the exploration badges in The Hive. Alone. With predictable results.

I'm sure glad I had 10.7.4 (Lion) installed on an external hard drive.

I love it when I can hit the screenshot key at just the right moment:



It's odd - this isn't even my main character, but she's somehow the most "photogenic". I always seem to get awesome screenshots of her.

I can think of one non-obvious reason why I wouldn't want to see a CoH2, knowing that CoH2 would likely mean the end of CoH1: I play on a Mac.

Odds are that any new game is going to be DirectX-based, not OpenGL-based, and judging by NCSoft's other offerings, that would leave out the possibility of a Mac version. The Mac version of the current game client is basically just the Windows version in a Cider emulation wrapper, which only works as well as it does because the original game used OpenGL, which is still the Mac standard.

The only way I see it happening is for the devs to actually write a native Mac client, like Blizzard does for WoW, allowing the Windows client to use its native DirectX and the Mac client to use its native OpenGL. But given the current size of the CoH playerbase, and guessing at what percentage of that playerbase is playing on Macs, I don't see NCSoft being able to justify expending the resources to build a native Mac client.

And, well, I'm basically a one-game-at-a-time guy. I don't divide my attention between multiple games, particularly when they're as time-intensive as MMOs. I'll play one game until I get tired of it, which can take years (I got 5+ years out of Diablo 2, 3+ out of WoW). So, given my own resources, and the fact that for non-gaming tasks I hugely prefer the Mac, I can't justify buying a Windows gaming computer just to play one game. I do have a cheap Windows laptop that I use mainly to allow me to log in a second account so that I can invite my own characters into my SGs without involving another player. But it's not nearly robust enough to actually play most modern games (oddly, while its specs are not all that different from my Mac, certain GFX settings in CoH, like FSAA, just turn the laptop's screen black).

... or if there's already a way to do this, tell me how

Basically, the problem is this: Without a newer or higher-end computer (I play on a 2008 iMac), Atlas Park is a lag monster, especially when there is a costume contest happening under the Atlas statue, or when there is the usual crowd of characters around Ms. Liberty spamming DFB announcements. Other zones? They're just fine. The result is that I see my framerate just plummet any time I need to do stuff in AP when I'm using the GFX settings that work well for me in every other zone. Sometimes it's even hard to move.

So it would be awesome if I could save separate, named GFX settings files - one for my "normal" settings, and one "low GFX" settings file. Then I could make a couple macros to switch between them with one click - any time I need to be in AP, I could just click my "AP" button to instantly switch to minimum GFX settings, and when I leave the zone click the other button to go back to my normal settings.

Switching to "minimum" settings is a piece of cake - it's basically 2-3 mouse clicks: Disable "ultra" options, move the slider to "minimum", and click "Apply". It's switching back to my normal settings that's the pain, since I have to move the slider back over to "Performance" or "Recommended", re-enable ultra settings, and then individually reset several of the options. It would be nice if I could save those settings.