Necrotron

Let me put it this way for you. If you want to give NC your money, they will go to great lengths to let you do so. Any limitations in payment options is squarely down to the banks. Remember, NC WANT your money.

Glad to see you got it all sorted.

For future reference, Intel graphics cards don't deserve the name. I can fully accept that you don't want or need a beefy graphics card, that's fine. Just remember that Intel graphics chips don't have a lot of hardware which other GPUs do. The 945G is a particularly bad offender, performing almost no work, telling the CPU to do most things. CoH isn't the only game to fail on this, and I'm quite surprised you ain't come across this before now. As an example, it won't draw Sim City 4 right at all, with trees and water not showing up, while all land is covered in grass (even beaches).

You picked up some cheap nVidia card though, which is good. Anything ATi or nVidia in stores these days will draw the game as it's meant to be. It ain't shiny, but it's there.

Archery may seem plain, and you might feel inadequate next to a posh Fire blaster, but it's a very reliable set. Rely on your speed above all else, as your attacks are cheap to use and fast to recharge.

I got my mastermind to 50. I started it almost exactly two years ago. Hell of a run, that.

Now let me make that crab spider I've wanted for six months.

I'd want in on this TF, as a reserve (you have 8 people now). Rickar, 49 Bots/FF mastermind. I've run the ITF before, I'll do all I can to help out. Hope that's alright.

I know the issue you're talking about. Vista will assume that something has crashed if the driver hangs for more than 2 seconds, and restart it. It's a good approach, but a lot of games will happily hang for 2 seconds at a time. This is sloppy programming on the game devs' part.

You can read more about it and learn how to disable or tweak it here.

Well for a start, I'd install these.

If your PC hangs during CoH, you may have a stability problem. Install these new drivers then come back to us with an update.

Just beware that CoH isn't fond of ATi. It's a fact of life. If you go that route, expect some games getting the right driver.

6.x.5822 version of WindowsBinds? Uninstall it. That infernal program is to blame. It is not officially or unofficially supported by NCSoft, nor any other game developer. It will routinely break a large number of games and other programs. It is a system hog, and will slow your PC down more than the GPU acceleration speeds it up. Believe me when I tell you, you do not want this program on your PC.

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Anyone who's claiming (complaining almost?) that they've done all the missions ought to show some optimistic happiness at the potential the architect will bring... we just have to hope that at least some of the potential is realised and that the players aren't all relying on my riting skilz.

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I might be wrong here but were the bulk of player created missions gonna be light on xp etc?

And i dont care how creative people are a caves a cave and a freaks a freak.

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If XP is all you're concerned about, Devs Choice will have a healthy amount of arcs in it. If you think story arcs can't be creative, make a villain and do the Seer Marino arc, range 15 to 20 iirc.

Here's a thought. Why choose between Crab and Bane spider when I can have both!

I read the information just fine, it was just going contrary to what they had always said: that they wouldn't make powers function differently in PvE and PvP. But look here, and you see that's exactly what they're doing. They're tweaking the over-powered powers so that they're nerfed in PvP, but unchanged in PvE. This takes care of my worries. The trouble is, this by itself doesn't make PvP appealing to me, nor the masses I'd bet.

It gives me some comfort that they're going to release this new I13 very soon, but it's still a long wait since I12 for such a small issue. If they get it on the test server within a week or two, I'll be happy.

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Of the new things that have been announced most people in these threads seem to be very interested in the Levelling Pact and the Multiple Builds, and there were a lot of people getting bouncy about the Day Jobs when they were originally announced.

That’s what led me to think they were the most popular things. I haven’t seen that many comments about the PvP stuff, nor about the SG Base stuff.

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Really, making PvP and SG bases popular might just be their intention.


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The only thing that is going to make the SG Bases half good, and therefore grab the interest of the masses, is to make the editor easy to use and actually able to accomplish something. IMO that will (hopefully ) come with the Architect issue.

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The Levelling Pact is very swish, but as a feature it isn't very big. Nor are day jobs, even though I quite like the idea.

And you're right about SG bases, the problem is we don't know what we're getting.

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What the devs have done is disappoint everyone who wanted the architect, and not give enough information about what we're getting instead. C'mon, fellas. Take a long, hard look at what's in I13, without speculating as to what might be, or could be in there. New arcs, a new set, day jobs, PvP and SG base tweaks, Levelling Pact, and other things which fall into the realm of QoL stuff. An awful lot is riding on the PvP and SG side of things, and we know next to nothing about that.


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(my emphasis)

Judging by the general comments on the two threads (and I’ve not looked at the US boards yet) I’d say that very few people are interested in these two things and everything is riding on the other stuff in the issue.

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What else is left, if not these tweaks? If the PvP and SG base side of things is as small as you assume, this is a damn slim issue. And I'm not just saying that because it doesn't have the architect.

Really, making PvP and SG bases popular might just be their intention.

All that excitement and the architect gets pushed back? Forgive me, but I'm calling you out on this. Your priorities are a little out of whack.

No, I do not need people defending Positrons' decision. NCNC can defend themselves very well. But am I the only one to point out that PvP simply isn't a meaningful reason why people play CoH?

Multiple builds may sound like a good idea, but this means buying up a whole new set of Enhancements. If you're allowed to share enhancements between them, fine, but IOs are very much speciality items. You'll have a lot of IOs which are useless in a second build. This means buying up a lot of IOs to properly manage two builds, driving this feature home as something to appeal only to the hardcore PvPer, who is already specced up for PvP.

The other features, I'm wary about, but only out of caution. This business about PvP rebalancing scares the bejesus out of me. They say they're going to re-do powers for the benefit of PvP, yet they have also said for years they don't want powers to function differently in PvE and PvP. You can't have it both ways, guys... you just put the fear of God into everyone (read: me) about what will happen to their powers. The last time we had a global rebalance for any reason was the Great Nerfs of I5, which demanded not just a respec, but a rethink on how people make their characters. Now you tell us changes are on the way just for PvP, then act all coy and hold back information? What changes?! This had better be good, guys.

The supergroup base changes are very welcome. The entry barrier to making a good base needs to be lowered so that everyone can use them.

It seems that they're more interested in making the most of features that they already have, making PvP and SG bases available to the masses. If this is their intention, I welcome it. But these changes are going to have to REALLY rock the boat to make this new Issue 13 anything less than a pale shadow of what it was. I mean, a set of story arcs for a zone that already exists, one new powerset (Pain Dom is empathy at its core, hardly new), more proliferation of existing sets, and a bunch of other small things is... well, it's small. There. I said it. I13 looks small.

If the changes to PvP and SG bases are SO large that they truly open them up to everyone and anyone, that will be well worth a single issue. But that's a very lofty goal. I need more details.

What the devs have done is disappoint everyone who wanted the architect, and not give enough information about what we're getting instead. C'mon, fellas. Take a long, hard look at what's in I13, without speculating as to what might be, or could be in there. New arcs, a new set, day jobs, PvP and SG base tweaks, Levelling Pact, and other things which fall into the realm of QoL stuff. An awful lot is riding on the PvP and SG side of things, and we know next to nothing about that.

We'll get more info 'in the coming weeks'. They said that a couple of weeks ago about the old I13, and after PAX there was a blackout. Forgive me if I'm a little bitter.

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Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

---Need I say more Necrotron?

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lol have fun fitting that to your mobo, the stock heat sink and fans are hard enough to connect to your mobo without snapping it as it is (stupid push down and twist clips)

Those front 2 look awfully close to the fan :P

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It fits. I've specced that very combination to someone else, the P5Q heatsinks don't get in the way.

Ah, DDR3. That's something I hadn't considered.

Right now you can either get 4GB of DDR2-800 for £60, or 4GB of DDR3-1333 for £100. The performance difference between the two will be negligible. What you're really paying for is future-proofing, as the next line of Intel processors will only support DDR3. At that point, the extra bandwidth will make enough of a difference to make sense, and Intel will want their chips looking their best.

Which puts us in a bind, really. If you go through with SLI, you'll need an SLI motherboard, and I can only recommend the 790i for that. It's expensive, but you have the dosh. At the same time, the 790i will only work with DDR3. It's all feeling very forced, isn't it? You can save money by getting a P45 motherboard and DDR2, but you'll lose out on SLI and have to re-buy RAM when you upgrade. It's one or the other, I'm afraid.

With a choice between saving money now, or investing in the future, I'd invest. I chose the save-money option on my GPU, an 8800GTS 320MB, and the thing hasn't held its value, nor its speed. The limited RAM means it's three times slower than a GTX or a GT in many cases these days.

That GTX 260 is over twice as big as my graphics card is in every way, actually. 192SPs versus 96SPs, 896MB versus 320MB, 111MB/s versus 64MB/s... Kinda depressing, really.

I'd seriously reconsider that 790i motherboard, unless you are absolutely going to get a second 260. Take a look at a good P45 motherboard, like the ASUS P5Q Deluxe. I'd also get a slightly beefier PSU, if only for peace of mind.

A big CPU cooler is only necessary if you overclock heavily. If you do, you're better off with a 45nm chip anyway. But there are much better things out there than the Intel stock; get the old favourite, the Arctic cooling Freezer 7 pro. At £15 you can't not get one. It's the law, or something.

Aside from that, you've put together an extremely beefy rig. Good choice on the place to buy it from too. My only concern is that quad-core; it may not be necessary. Look into a 3GHz Wolfdale dual-core.

As PRAF68 said, Oil Slick was their attempt at exactly what you're suggesting. And... well, Castle now refers to it as "that power" after twitching nervously. I wouldn't count on more of the same. Unless one of the new guys at NCNC volunteer for THAT suicide mission, that is.

It's worse than you think. The blue soldier's mask, that's Statesman's. No way THAT'S unlockable.

Nod32 has been on a false detection rampage this week. It thinks that Cityofheroes.exe has a virus within it. This is very rare, but inevitable for any heuristic antivirus. Avast! insisted that Quake 3 was a deadly trojan last year. I've had Nod32 for going on 6 months now, and this is the first time it's bitten me.

You need to enable advanced settings, get into the setup tree, find the exceptions list, and add your City of Heroes directory to it. That will ensure that Nod32 doesn't interfere with CoH.

It's well worth sticking with Nod32, because it's still the best AV out there in my opinion.

Doesn't 8.7 work? I'm digging in the spore config files, and it considers the oldest acceptable driver to be the one released on the 28th March, or 8.3 thereabouts.

Those Cat 8.8s are unleashing unholy fury on everyone. City of Heroes is one of the worst affected games, but lots of others are buggy at best. Roll back to a stable driver, it's your only option; use Driver Sweeper for best results.

Yep. The hit sound effects are now randomised as far as I know. That isn't all they changed with I12; Broadsword has been re-done in the same way Katana has, so that activation and animation times are the same. This means you can attack as soon as the animation is over, and it's faster to attack if you have your sword out already (it never mattered before).

I know you won't have it yet, but Disembowel is also much faster, for a silly reason. Before I6, all knockup animations were canned, without any ragdolling; they'd raise up, then fall down again, always in the same way. A delay was inserted after the attack, so that you would only strike again once the enemy had landed. With I6, it's all done with those pretty ragdolls, and the pause just became annoying.

I remember when they first announced the server transfer option, they had a warning stating that in the far future, a serverless system may be implemented with everyone in the same instance. This was just to cover themselves should people complain about wasted money on transfers.

So there are no announced plans, and quite probably no unannounced plans, but they have reserved the right to do so later on.

More Jay madness.

"Rather problematic" is what a politician would say, no offence. I'd put it rather differently; Intel graphics cards do very little graphics carding, and indeed don't actually have hardware to do anything useful without asking the CPU for help. Although at least you haven't tried to play unreal tournament 3 on it.