Sunstormer

How can RAM be the issue if I said a defrag sorted it...

Unpopular as it may make me I solely blame the lack of income on how the devs have handled farming, pvp changes and new issue releases.

Farming was an unclear issue for a long time, a lot of the players didnt approve of it back before MA came out as it was, the release of MA killed EU servers more or less, the population became overwhelmed with a lot of AE noobs and this drove the vets away, then a couple of months later the AE noobs went too because they had already farmed the highest level content and got bored. I cant say how it was in america at that point because I wasnt there but if it was anything like that then its a valid point. As well as this we had the stage where everything to devs were updating, was just another exploit fix for bugged AE missions, which also annoyed a lot of people since they werent doing much else except nerfing what they saw as good exp. It shouldnt have been that easy to exploit in the first place. Then they completley nuked the exp in MA which left a lot of the MA farmers out and got them annoyed, now they put it back again and people are back to farming. Having on/off changes like this every two minutes makes people not want to play it or make content because they dont know what the next nerf is going to be.

PvP changes were a big part of the game for a fair amount of players, with i13 the devs promised a decent, working and fair combat system. What we got is a more unbalanced system than ever and a system that quite frankly, fails. DR was a bad idea to start with, how damage is calculated now also sucks, the way status changes are handled is rubbish and even PvP IOs are damn near impossible to get. Theres more issues than whats listed but there all over pvp forums so I dont need to go into detail. The point is though, alienating your veteran players with PvP by bringing in a crap system that fails for the sake of people who dont even play the pvp system is an idiotic move. Mixed with the lack of any real updates in issues afterwards made a lot of old skool pvpers leave. Having vet pvpers leave whilst attempting to bring newer ones in is a bad idea as well since your losing your sub from people leaving, your not gaining anything from new players coming in.

New issue releases have also been very poor, or very poorly brought in as of late. The last few issues have had very little real content compared to earlier issues and the ones that do make a difference like i17, have been brought in with a stupid amount of bugs that were reported and ignored in beta just so they could rush a release for the anniversary. Some players crash at tailors and talking to contacts, some lag like hell and dc all the time, some cant even log in. If you want to chase away your players, this is the way to do it.

All in all, its the devs and marketings choices that are pushing more people away, not the age of the game. If i17 was implemented properly Im sure it would encourage more players in with new graphics since that was the biggest issue with the game, since it looked so dated. However if we continue getting gamechanging 'updates' such as the pvp change, you will surely only alienate even more vets.

Learn from Star Wars Galaxies mistakes, once you have the game out theres no need to remake the entire thing again, players play the thing as it is. Changing the entire thing does nothing but annoy players who enjoy the current system.

Thats not to say players dont enjoy updates, but they should be kept to things that dont affect the game mechanics. i13 pvp was a bad move for instance and proof is in the fact now that you have less pvpers than ever. Despite if Positron or Castle think pvp is fine now, there not the entire community and if they like it, good for them but the players actually playing it tend to hate it.

As I mentioned above, if you need evidence that game mechanics changes arent good, look at NGE for star wars galaxies, within a year the game was dead. Its a miracle Sony still bother to keep it open.

GR could be a savior to the game if its brought in well but I suspect there will be a lot of 'lets wait and see' players that wont buy the game until they see how the population is affected. EU in particular arent happy with how marketing is handling stuff there. Keeping the servers for EU seperate from the list of American servers and charging for a completley seperate game despite it being the exact same thing was a bad idea as well. I dont know of any other game who does this.

Many EU players (me included) have gone to america simply because theres more players. A lot more have actually left the game because of it since they dont want to buy everything all over again. If I could have EU servers in the same list as american ones Id be more inclined to make a charecter there.

Demon pets are annoying enough with the lag and squeeling pig sounds they bring.

Making Demon Prince massive would just be another annoyance, although I do agree with the wings idea to make him seem a bit more 'special'.

I started my pvp career back on union in the arena, now im on freedom.

I have to say you would be better going to arena before trying out zone pvp because zone pvp is a lot more annoying lately with a buttload of blasters and stalkers running the show (nice balanced pvp build i13 )

Arena pvp lets you iron out any problems you have with your build before you take it to the harder points of the game. Sirens call for instance, tends to be flooded with a load of 50s with set bonuses, which although there level is lower, the bonuses still apply making it almost impossible for a non setted toon.

Rather than apply for the events though, your better off asking in SG or coalition if anyone wants a pvp match, the more you get wanting in, the bigger the match you can have

If your new to pvp, i recommend pvping with friends rather than the true pvpers because there are a lot of gloating douches who will put you off pvp if you let them and experience means a lot in pvp as well, so if your a newcomer fighting a more experienced player your more likely to lose as well.

Either way good luck to you, if you want an easy win, look up dahjee lol. He likes to think he knows a lot about pvp but in practice hes easy kills, its kind of an ongoing thing on the pvp forums now to ignore any advice he offers since its always bad.

Ok guys I play on a laptop, its not the fastest of computers but my load times were terrible.

By terrible I mean 2 minutes average per load screen, I could go downstairs, make a cup of coffee and be back in time for it to finish loading lol.

I figured it might be fragmented files or a bad hard drive, since laptop hard drives generally arent as fast as desktop ones but nevertheless I tried O&O defrag.

Speed increased slightly but not anything massive, i probably knocked about 10 seconds off load time. Windows defrag had same effect.

I read on a forum somewhere that Disktrix UltimateDefrag was the best defrag on the market. I have to say I was skeptical as to whether it would do anything different to O&O, however I have to say it was a great move.

You can set it so it places a file of your choice on the faster part of the hard drive (the outer part) meaning your load times will greatly increase. I set CohUpdater.exe and cityofheroes.exe to the priority files in the options menu for the drive, and set it on auto and started defrag.

It took a good few hours to do the entire drive (left it on overnight from 12 midnight and checked it 6am it was only on 72%) but it was very worth it. Now my map loading speed is about 10-15 seconds. For anyone having similar issues I strongly recommend you give this a try, particularly on laptops.

Theres also a feature letting you defrag your files when you reset the comp, so you can include system files but I havent tried this yet so I cant comment on it.

More crash fixes I hope/pray?

My friends getting tired of me bugging him to log on my account to change my costume since I crash when I try it lol.

Already went back to xp before you posted back sorry.

Strange thing though, since i reinstalled XP I installed my drivers and everything like before, however now i have better graphics and less lag in CoH, although I do still get the crashes on using anything requiring a photo of the charecter (tailor, name entry screen, contacts etc)

Less lag I could put down to less fragmented hard drives etc since its a clean formatted disk but the graphics? I used the same drivers as before as well which is why I cant explain it.

I may try try linux again in the future but I think its simply too complicated for me atm, everything depends on how many commands you know and a lot of them arent guessable in any way whatsoever.

For instance to download a package its 'apt-get' unless I read that elsewhere I wouldnt have guessed that in a million years lol plus I wasnt happy about how a driver that linux tells you to download can make your entire screen disappear. It maybe free but its also not very functional unless you have experience with it and i dont.

Thank you for all the advice though guys. Like I said I may have another go at some time in the future on a seperate pc just to tinker around with it.

Another odd bug I just found, is when i step away from a contact there face disappears and I can see through them... This didnt happen pre i17.

Piccy below, sorry for size but if I move closer the face reappears. Its very strange.



My question I want to ask the devs is, are the charecter photos set to display in Ultra mode?

If this was true then those of us that cant support it will crash every time.

Just thought you guys maybe interested in a new design I found, which I suspect is another bugged early release



Now the question is, GR or mutant pack? Im thinking GR since doesnt really have a mutant theme :P

Well its the second server to go down, if its anything like freedom its just to fix it, since people are getting random global crashes right now on freedom.

Guessing virtue was same?

As you can see, siggy updated

Oh wow!

Thanks guys you rock ^^

Still getting this as well....

I also crash when i get to name entry screen with new charecters, and also when i get an MA contact, or a selection of contacts from a contact.

Single contacts just show a blank picture. I know this is to do with the game taking photos of the charecters and not displaying them, because every single screen it crashes on is causing this issue.

Name entry - self charecter photo is there
Mission contacts (single) - there photo doesnt display but still work to talk to just about
Mission contacts (selection)- there photos crash the game
AE missions - there photos crash game
Tailor - Costume photo crashes game
Costume selection - Costume photo crashes game

Reported this bug god knows how many times now, been told its been handed to engineers last friday but still nothing done about it despite there been a fix on Tuesday that seemed to do nothing whatsoever.

Not happy at all tbh. Im on the same 3d card as above btw, geforce mx440 with the final drivers, tried several others as well and also double checked to make sure they werent corrupted by redownloading again, weirdly enough the compatible ones gave me better in game graphics but didnt solve the issue.

Ive tried lowering and raising all available settings, ive tried reinstalling the game, I even tried linux to see if there drivers were any different.
I also tried my desktop pc as well with a geforce 7300 in but still crash the same.

Hi,

Ive been after a decent sig for a while but my art skills arent very good so I figured it cant really hurt to ask if anyones open to requests?

Im currently very limited on cash so cant really afford a commission but I was wondering if anyone would consider looking into something a little different.

The only restriction I will place is that it has to be in that style to match my avatar, the third one being the one Im using for that currently.

These are images from Deviant art uploaded on imageshack but I did ask the original creator if these images were ok to be used and he said its fine as long as he gets to see the final result

My charecter looks very similar to this already in game, but since I cant log on due to bugs to take photos right now I'm kind of stuck without a screenie

Shes a dual pistols/storm Corruptor, if anyone felt like doing any art at all I would be greatful, whether its a sig or regular art.

Images:
http://img156.imageshack.us/i/bbcatgirlbysnovie.jpg/
http://img28.imageshack.us/i/blowingbysnovie.jpg/
http://img63.imageshack.us/i/catgirl...kboardbys.jpg/

lol consider yourself lucky you dont just crash when opening any costume change window, at tailor or on menu. AE contacts also still crash

The issue in question though with the jittery menus, I had before on my old pc in a previous game, it was down to the drivers for my 3d card, and upgrade fixed it but Im guessing you have already upgraded so thats out of the question.

i17 is very buggy at the minute though so Im just guessing its from the lack of driver support Ultra Mode brought with it. Apparently engineers are working on support for more drivers so hopefully this should get fixed with that.

Thank god its maintenence.

I just tried to log in and then saw this post when I was unable to connect, I was thinking 'oh my god not again, first the game crashes whenever i try to do anything now it wont even let me on'. Im glad somewhere cleared this up because I just changed my account password and i thought id broke it lol.

Definately sounds like overheating, back with my old desktop I had the exact same issue whenever I turned the graphics settings up.
After taking stuff apart there was a wall of dust on it, which I cleaned and it still did it so I ended up getting a new fan installed which was fairly cheap and sorted the problem out.

I dont recommend taking your case off though to let air get to it. As someone explained in an earlier thread, think of your case as a wind tunnel, it concentrates the air where it needs to go (to cool stuff down), it you take away the walls (casing) you end up losing a lot of the concentration making it less effective.

Nevermind, void the subject now.

Gave up and went back to windows xp lol, I think I fried my brain.

Id personally love to see the charecters in game, even if people do whine about wanting a gun/sword combo.
People have been whining for that for ages anyway, even when dual pistols came out some people kicked off because scrappers couldnt get them which made no sense in first place but people did