T_Immortalus

Games should improve as they age, barring hardware and software incompatibilities.
This one started out from a position that it is more likely to just get worse, which it arguably did get worse.


Edit:
Yes, it is stable enough, for enough people, but how long will that last?
How long will it last when their standard operating procedure is apparently something akin to "make something and leave it alone unless it has a serious issue"?

This I would like to see. It would be better to have a new "well designed from the ground up" system for making transfers on your single account better.

I don't care how it is done(so long as it works). I just hate having to transfer items one...at...a....time.
(FYI, some of us do need to transfer a lot around relatively often, especially when we have Halloween salvage and keep switching mains every month or so. Yes, I have alt-mainitis. Don't judge me! )

1) Actually, my original position was that EVERY system is exploitable. Somebody always finds a way, so you may as well not make it too hard on the honest folks.

2) I really don't see how checking to see that the sender's global handle is the same as the recipient's global handle is ever exploitable.
Seriously, they would need to match exactly, which can't EVER happen between different accounts. Different accounts, because they sell stuff to different accounts, is the problem.

I think it's pretty obviously a good idea that they should have done in the first place, but they probably thought "it's good enough, they can deal with it".

where did I say "remove all"?

I'm just asking for "same account to same account"(like my main to my alt) to be made easier. That wouldn't be exploitable by RMTers as they still have to get it to a different account.


That is where the developers went wrong. They screwed the honest safe trades within the same account to try to stop account to account transfers.
Why didn't they put in the effort to make the system check if the receiving global handle was the same as the sender?

Dumb poor design as usual.

They use local and help because they can spam people faster and easier and more people.

I'm not sure, but emails also have a report spam button right? Chat makes you click the name and report spammer that way. Sure, they're both easy, but the latter isn't as obvious. They can also get out more tells before they're reported/ignored than emails.


My point about the money was they obviously spend a good deal of money to farm and are willing to spend that money to advertise as well sometimes. In fact, there were spammers in CoH before trial accounts existed.



The reason there aren't as many RMT spammers in CoH now? AE
Everybody, and their dog, seems to have an incarnate fire farmer now. They can easily get another character to 50. The farmer doesn't even need to be on the main account since all it takes is an AE license and the ability to team. That's dirt cheap for the benefit.
the real money trade guys lost business to the legitimate players.

But, they are still in CoH as you can see in Atlas Wentworths local chat every day, and even Cap Au Diable also.



Though, if they are supposedly "virtually gone" then why aren't the item email restrictions lessened? Afraid they will come back?



Edit:
They need the AE license to be able to farm using AE. They need the invention license to farm anywhere though since they either can't get the rewards they can convert into loads of INF or sell for real cash or can't purchase them with AE tickets or reward merits.

1) Support will always try to do 2 things:
A) Assume the specific reporter is the only person having the issue and that their end is at fault to remove that variable and because it is likely simplest to deal with.
B) Blame the user to shift blame away from the company and probable customer discontent while saving the company work if the customer finds "a work-around to the known issue".

If you keep the customer thinking it is their problem then it is much less work for the company running the game.

2) I don't think support has that much knowledge of how the game works and why problems could arise. They also don't have much communication with those who can and will have to fix the issues.
(Edit: Many of them likely don't even play the game to see and learn the issues that we as players do. They would have a better idea of the cause of a problem if they did play the game and experience it.)


So, you get the standard "blame it on the user" response until they just hit the limit of that line of thinking and say "this must be a bug, we will pass it along to the next person...", and the issue either stays in varying degrees of severity or eventually gets solved(and often comes back if they change something with that system again).

Its enough to make somebody swear off of ever discussing reports, just automatically filing them.

I was just pointing out that practically everything is limited in some manner, either sooner or later.
Also, it would have made more sense to allow invention access earlier in the paragon reward tiers than the merits/tickets used to purchase specific ones. This would turn it into a "quality of life" reward where suddenly you find IOs easier to get with each new form of currency you unlock.

Alignment Merits also need something worthwhile to give people reason to stay full hero or villain, as intended, even if they do not have IO access, simply because IO access is completely separate. Right now, there is NOTHING that alignment merits can buy for anybody without an invention license. Maybe inspirations or SOs, but wasting 2 days of work on that is a joke.

How much money did they really have? How much money could Cryptic have made if they made the game just a little better so that it could have kept more people from the start and during its lifetime?
WoW was Blizzard's first MMO. Where does CoH rank for Cryptic and NCSoft? Just partnering with NCSoft improved Cryptic's chances compared to Blizzard.

I don't think it was a question of money. I think it was a question of intent, and the original management at Cryptic just wanted to cheaply push out a money-maker, not a long term reliable product.

I'm not even talking about travel powers, at least nothing more than sprint.
The game just completely LOSES movement commands. You can be standing in one spot for a long time and then decide to move and if you have any network lag then you're going to see your character move and then the delayed "sorry, you were actually back there" server confirmation will throw you back.

Essentially, they made this game so sensitive to lag that any lag is more obvious than anything in any other game(well, except for other Cryptic games and equally shoddy messes).




You should try Champions Online on a connection that is certainly fast enough to run smoothly(a low end speed though like 256k, 4x dial-up) but occasionally drops packets(to be expected with any network as none of them are perfect) and see what I call "infinite rubber-banding".

"Infinite Rubber-banding":

1) An error such as packet loss, or simply a terrain glitch, causes the server to "think" your character is in one position while your game client places the character in another position.

2) The game client re-sends the packet, but, before it is sent, the server has sent the confirmation "you are not there, you are her" to which the game client has to obey and forces you to where the server says.

3) The server then receives the lost packet that had your new position. It sends the command to move to that new position.

4) In the meantime, your character has moved and now sends a new position to the server for confirmation through the tracking system.

5) Your client receives the confirmation of the original lost packet position now. You are "rubber-banded" for the second time, to the position you originally intended now.

6) Your client receives the confirmation from #4 and now rubber-bands you again, sending a new position tot he server after.

7) The server checks the new position and finds it is different than the one it expected, throwing you around again.

8) This goes round and round because the client and server are slightly out of sync due to lag, bouncing you faster and faster as the lag decreases even(commands go faster but are still out of order).


So, one little lost packet, or just disagreement between the server and the client about character position, and a little network lag causes an infinite loop of rubber-banding your character back and forth between 2 points.

This either causes the client to disconnect form the server, crash or you have to forcibly kill the program to fix it(which you will just get stuck in again if you reload the game too quickly).



Yes, I experienced this a few times in Champions Online, along with the usual amount of normal rubber-banding such a flawed system produces.


Rubber-banding should never ever happen to yourself on your client computer. Sure, you may see others bounce once due to missing their movement commands, but it will be a lot smoother than if each client is forced to bounce again and re-update the position.


Essentially, the fact that rubber-banding exists causes exponentially more lag and rubber-banding.
There obviously is a solution as World of Warcraft uses, and I have witnessed it due to finding myself in a part of the world with no NPCs present until the server caught up with me. In fact, it was not unlike our bug here where we are out of sync so the zone areas away from where we entered are empty and we are unable to enter the mission door or other zone doors.

Sure, that could seemingly allow players to move past NPCs and other "active objects" without having to deal with them, arguably cheating, but that would require a lot of wizardry to do that and still be able to play while also meaning they don't get rewards for the bypassed objectives/enemies and may not be able to advance/complete the content they are doing.
Honestly, it's a non-issue.

All for the sake of preventing cheating and ensuring propriety of code that is already protected by copyright, they have crippled this game.
those were not worth crippling the game when there are other solutions.




Edit:
Rubber-banding and "infinite rubber-banding" are not a symptom of "too much speed" either. They are a symptom of a flawed real-time tracking system that is then exacerbated(made a lot worse) by the speed at which we can move.
So speed is a problem, but not the cause.

Essentially, the game is tracking our position even when we don't move. When we start to move at a really fast speed then the game is tracking both position periodically(like every whatever interval the client checks this) and the movement commands issued by yourself. when those commands and the position interfere, rather than working together, then we get the problems with speed.


The only problem we should ever have with movement speed is increased graphical load due to rendering more of the environment at a faster pace, not network lag.

Maybe you don't believe me. Maybe it's hard to understand. I just honestly think I know a way to greatly minimize network lag issues and almost eliminate rubber-banding and other positioning errors. I have given this a LOT of thought occasionally over the past few years and I'm pretty good at logical deductions and problem solving.



Edit 2:
WoW has several movement speeds actually.

First, the running speed of your character is based on level.
Second, consider their "mounts" like our "movement powers". They also have 3-dimensional flight.
They have different "mounts" with different speeds at intervals 60% boost, 100%, 150% flying, 280% and 310% boost in speed.
They also have other separate powers which don't work with mounts but work in their combat ready phase with lesser speeds.

It's not an issue of speed or variations of speeds or even a difference between 2D tracking and 3D.

They simply know how to code to make tracking issues almost nonexistent.

/SIGNED

But yes, never going to happen, despite the fact that the game could run better if they tried to make it so.

I understand that newer hardware and software can cause conflicts as well, but it just boggles my mind that things have to work so drastically different and break when all they're doing is the same things they have always done: making ones and zeroes in a certain order and showing pixels on a screen.
I guess I'm just saying that the heart of every computer is the exact same things. There has to be a better more universal way of programming for that. It could be that the operating system, which once facilitated programs, is now hindering programs.
I don't know though.


FYI, my monitor's native resolution is 1920x1080, so I'm not changing that. I also get 60 FPS in most settings in the game(barring teaming, high populated areas and skyscraper areas that have a lot of things to render and just areas with a lot of small objects, which all stutter my graphics at least a little bit) with the settings I have it set to.

My point was about the background performance, the bugs, which my graphics has nothing to do with, even though that could use a lot of work to be more efficient so we could have even more awesome visuals with less powerful hardware.




Edit:
Hopefully, they are working on a worthy successor to what made CoH great. Whether it is a superhero game or not, I just want lots of customization, cool effects and to feel super.

Edit 2:
I also meant it performs much worse than even games of the same age as it, both how they did perform and how they now do. Arguably, City of Heroes isn't more graphically taxing than Wow. The similarity in amount of polygons and textures is hidden by the graphical style difference(and WoW doesn't make a lot of use of reflections honestly but they have even better shadows), and that game has always performed better than CoH by far

The worst thing, though, is that even with my crappy internet, which used to be worse because I had a worse router and the service was new(antenna wireless link), WoW has always ran smooth as butter, without any rubber-banding aside form really bad bugs with the code. Their character tracking is that efficient and coded well.


That's one thing I wish this game would have done: look through the character tracking code to optimize it and make it so that rubber-banding rarely, if ever, happens, and powers go off more reliably with less lag and, if there is lag, go off at precisely 1000ms(arbitrarily selected lag of 1 second, 1000 ping) from activation if you have 1000ms ping.
(Yes, WoW does this, so I was able to compensate for the lag I did have to make my character's performance look and behave as if I wasn't lagging at all. Now that is very nice!)

The crazy part is that to fill your email with the 20 inbox limit it would take 5 minutes minimum. That adds up if you need to send a lot more.

How did it stop spam?
They can still send limitless text-only emails, except they get flagged as a spammer.

We're talking about the item transferring, which spammers have a way around by using physical trade and the unlimited INF cap for a single email.

I don't see how this system even attempted to address the issue of spammers, let alone how it is "good" for any reason.

I really hate the "single item per email" limit though.

There is absolutely no reason to have a limit from your account to your own account, or same account to same account. There may even no longer be a reason for the limit at all.
1) You're not selling anything to yourself.
2) The gold spammers just send a few really high priced items and probably physically trade, which has no limits, instead of email anyway.

I really hate that stupid limit on both how many items per email and the max per day limit.
They are now pointless and just aggravate us.

Actually, I'm leaning towards Radiation Blast because it is THE most synergistic with Time's melee nature, given the pbAoE and tAoE that are very quick as well(burst feels better than DoT in my opinion). It also doesn't have too low damage actually because of its speed. (Edit: I also find Rad easy to use, even while hovering way above the ground where rains wouldn't work well.)
Also, defense debuffs are actually extremely useful to me. First, they mean a little less need for accuracy, which is great for SOs/HOs only where slots will be very precious until HOs at least. Second, with all the to-hit debuffs and defense buffs that enemies have, defense debuff will help with those quite a bit. It also helps everyone else hit the enemy, not just yourself.


I'm still debating Ice and Psychic though. I think part of the problem is I'm not sure how effective the recharge slow is.

How does recharge slow behave? Is it on an exponential decline in effectiveness like recharge buffs are?
Is there a recharge slow cap?
How much does it actually reduce incoming damage?

I've been here for years and I'm still figuring out the numbers and how to slot better.



Edit:
I also have a main Fortunata that I greatly enjoy, so I'm wondering how the Psychic powers of corruptors compare.

That was my thought. It's hard to believe this is "user error" unless "user error" means "playing the game as intended"(arguably could be in error ).


I've seen worse behavior than ever before with this game since issue 17, and especially issue 19, but, yes, it has been really odd since issue 22.
I find it hard to believe that a patch will solve the issues that this game has, especially without causing more, but it should "reduce the worst errors" to less often and/or less severe, though I bet they will still be present.

A) Every reward eventually reaches a point of "I don't need anymore". That's justa fact, but "when" it reaches that point varies.

B) Those aren't the only drop with that issue.
Well, there are other things with most of that issue though not entirely useless.

3 examples:

1) Alignment Merits
I can't buy anything worthwhile with these, if I can buy anything at all, due to no invention license as a Premium Tier 6, and refuse to pay a subscription let alone a "sneaky subscription". I'll deal with what I have available permanently for a one time payment, but it is stupid that I can get these drops and can't use them.

2) Reward Merits
I can only buy the lowliest offerings with these because of "no inventions" again.

3) AE Tickets
No invention access to spend these on as well.


I was actually hoping Hamidon Origin/Synthetic Hamidon Origin enhancements would have been put on the alignment merit vendors and reward merit vendors, but that never happened.

I don't think it will change either.
I have almost no reason to run TFs/SFs, other than the ones granting special rewards I can actually use such as HOs, and I just let the "rewards"(which don't fit the definition of that word anymore, honestly, due to being useless) pile up. I have no incentive to do content anymore, elt alone content that is still poorly designed.

It's funny. They work so hard to get people to run all the content, not just the "most rewarding", and then they found a way to make the incentives they had mostly useless for many(maybe most) people so that they no longer have a reason to run that content.
Good way to shoot your own foot, Devs. Now the game is even more boring all too often with more people unwilling to run the "less rewarding" content.

1) When CoH starts behaving oddly for someone suddenly with a patch then it is the game code that is the problem, especially when there were no documented changes to the way the game runs at the core.
(Really, they need to include notifications of even attempts at improving performance/stability, or just modifications that are not meant to directly alter performance, in the game code so that we can know what is likely causing our issues with a patch. "
Stealth changes" are never good. FYI, the competitor labeled "WoW" actually shows such information and runs better than this game ever ran or could ever run the way it is. It works.)

2) When CoH starts behaving oddly for someone suddenly without a patch, and nothing on the person's computer has changed otherwise, then it is likely it is the game code that is the problem yet again.
Games don't stay in perfect working order at all times even if their code is perfect. A game that has shoddy code will certainly suddenly have severe problems with even a slight performance difference, especially with hardware shared by multiple instances of the game code(the servers).
The servers are running old bad code. They're bound to not run it well these days, and the game code makes any little hiccup a lot worse because it doesn't run that well anymore even on perfect hardware.

3) I would bet money that Techbot Alpha is quite a ways away from "computer illiterate". I bet he/she knows exactly what is going on with his/her computer, so that it likely is the game that is at fault.
I know I exhaust all possible solutions to a problem on my end before complaining.
The problem is, the game has some really impossible to solve problems that are not on my end these days, such as where the game crashes for absolutely no reason out of the blue(summoning a leprechaun pet immediately on entering an AE mission seems to do this).

4) You just told him/her "don't blame the game because it is you that is at fault".
Wrong. Obviously, he showed that other games work fine, but City of Heroes has the issue.
What is the "lowest common denominator"? City of Heroes
Thus, City of Heroes is the liekly source of the problem, not the hardware and software of the computer that City of Heroes is on, least of all when that setup has not changed since long before a problem suddenly appeared for no inexplicable reason.




Seriously, an older game should be performing much better on newer systems, or not performing at all. If it works at all then newer more efficient hardware and software(such that we should have now and arguably do have) will run the game better than ever.

City of Heroes runs worse than ever. (Anybody think that is untrue?)



I don't think you can give the default "answer to everything" of "what did you do? you screwed something up didn't you?" to knowledgeable people with a proven record of their system working fine for a long time, despite known issues even.

We all know that the first answer from tech support about a problem is "play the game in safe mode and make sure that all your hardware and software is in proper working order", so we make sure of that before ever contacting them(the knowledgeable ones among us anyway).

We've "been around the block a few times".
Maybe you should listen to us when we say "exhausted all solutions, the problem is not on my end"(or at least, not the source of the problem) instead of "dismissing it out of hand" as "user error", especially when that user doesn't change anything without knowing exactly what it will do because they know to avoid causing problems.




TL, DR:
Don't say "don't blame the game" and then turn around and "blame the user" when you don't know the level of competency of the user, especially when said "game" should be playable by laymen(people who just want the game to run and don't care to go through troubleshooting even if they could understand it) as it is intended because laymen have money to spend as well.
If they want people to stop complaining about problems then they need to make the game "fool proof" so that it runs well even for those who don't know how to solve their own problems, let alone the fact that it doesn't even run well for "advanced users".